New York Times covers place-based culture

The article "The Social Building" in the New York Times illustrates what I am trying to explore with this blog.  Here are examples of residents in a building in NYC who have found a common desire to build relationships with each other in the group context.

This article points out two factors that promote this phenomenon:  a situation where many of the residents have moved in recently, and a situation where many of the residents are at the same stage of life (in this instance being parents).  The former situation levels the hierarchy, the later provides common goals and incentives for sharing resources. 

It would be interesting to follow these buildings over time and see if the social fabric endures.  In 1990 when I was in graduate school, I studied several living situations that represented place-based culture.  One was the Sunlight community in Portland, where I had dinner with one of the founding couples.  They reported that in the early years, they had done lots of socializing together, but at the time I interviewed them, the socializing was less frequent and less on a community-wide basis. 

In my own experience in cohousing, I find that the durability of the social fabric of our community is based to some degree on the fact of our common ownership and management.  Our structure requires us to work out complex problems together.  We learn and grow together, and that makes living here interesting.  But we also need to come here with some desire to share our lives in some way.  Otherwise the management of the place becomes a chore.  We need the potential of the place to inspire us to work at the difficult or rote stuff. 

I wish for more people to find community where they live, no matter how durable or transient it may be.

Mercer Island Preschool Association funds Adventure Playground

Adventure Playground. Isn't every playground an adventure playground?
Well, most playgrounds kids play on the climbers and slides that were welded and painted by adults in a factory in god-knows-where. In and adventure playground, kids make the fort, spaceship, maze, kitchen and then play out their fantasy games with it. For some, the building is the main attraction. See a great summary of adventure playgrounds here.

Mercer Island Preschool Assocation just donated $6k to start up an adventure playground at Deanes (Dragon) Park next to Island Crest Park. This will be a summer and early fall program run by the City. This is the first adventure playground in the pacific northwest and one of only a few in the US. These playgrounds are popular in Europe, but are scarce here because of the expense and insurance concerns. Follow this program at http://www.mercergov.org/Page.asp?NavID=2561