Modern Housing With Village Virtues

Working families in the United States have many struggles today: expensive child care, not enough time to cook
healthy meals, disconnection from nature, a sense of social isolation what the sociologist Robert Putnam famously
called bowling alone and more. Older Americans, a booming population, often end up segregated generationally and
in dire need of care and companionship.
What if there was a potential salve to all of these struggles? One that was introduced to Americans 25 years ago, but
hasnt yet gone to scale? That potential solution is cohousing, a form of shared living in which groups of families with
their own private homes (usually about 15 to 40 households) also share common spaces a kitchen and eating area, often
a garden, tool shed, or laundry facilities, or all of them, and a set of principles and practices about living interdependently.
Since 2013, I have experienced the benefit and challenges of living in cohousing as a resident of Temescal
Commons, an interfaith community in Oakland, Calif. The principles of these communities vary, depending on their size
and type (urban vs. rural, religious vs. secular, intergenerational vs. over 65); still, most groups hold in common a belief
that a high quality of life is achieved not through self-sufficiency, but through a village mentality. Families will often
share meals, yard work and repair labor, sometimes even cars; they also help one another spontaneously in many other
ways.
Louise Dunlap, 78, has rented a studio apartment in a nine-unit cohousing community for the last six years.
Interdependence, she says, goes beyond turning the compost and fixing the washing machine. I get a chance to share
meals and deep conversations. Theres a kind of love that grows out of these connections not romantic love, not family
love, but something about our common humanity. I wish everyone could experience this.
The first distinctive cohousing community in America, Muir Commons, was built in Davis, Calif., in 1991 by the
architects Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett, who became familiar with cohousing while studying architecture in
Copenhagen in the 1980s. They have written an authoritative book on cohousing in America and today run their
architectural firm, the Cohousing Company, from Nevada City, Calif.
Europeans have been the pioneers in this particular form of shared living; there are more than 700 cohousing
communities in Denmark alone. In comparison, according to the latest count done by the Cohousing Association of the
United States, there are only 160 established in just 25 states across the country.
So why have we been so slow to catch on?
First, theres a lack of awareness. People often picture hippie communes when they hear cohousing. Alice
Alexander, the executive director of the Cohousing Association, draws this distinction: Theres nothing wrong with
communes, but cohousers actually value privacy and structure highly.
Another big hurdle is financing. When they set out in 2009 to create a 24-unit cohousing community in downtown
Durham, N.C., Alexander and her co-founders were turned down by 10 institutions before getting a loan. The project
didnt officially open until 2014.
The problem, Alexander says, is that banks have no mechanism set up to get a loan for a cohousing community to
buy land or fund marketing so you can find your tribe.
Traditionally, many people who want to build a home finance the purchase of the land themselves and then use the
property as collateral for a building loan. But if youre buying the larger piece of land necessary to build a comprehensive
cohousing community, the cost can be prohibitive. Alexander says that National Cooperative Bank is on the cutting edge
of trying to figure out new mechanisms, but its slow going. Cohousing communities are typically structured and
incorporated as homeowner associations, condo associations or housing cooperatives.
But there are alternatives to building from the ground up. More recently, people have been gravitating toward what
is called retrofit cohousing, in which neighbors transform an existing neighborhood over time. There are 11 retrofit
cohousing communities operating in the United States today, and more in development, according to the Cohousing
Association.
Residents of a cohousing community in Sacramento,
Calif., sharing a dinner. CreditMax Whittaker for The
New York Times
Americans interest in cohousing is growing. The Cohousing
Association knows of 120 communities currently in formation. The 2015
National Cohousing Conference was the largest yet, and dozens of
architectural firms and real estate developers have specialized in working
on these types of communities. At Alexanders community alone, 300
people are on a waiting list.
According to Alexander, aging baby boomers are driving the
expansion; many want to downsize and find supportive communities. Additionally, millennials, many of whom
experienced co-op living in college, are just starting their families. They are accustomed to a sharing economy that
subscribes to many of cohousings principles and practices.

For some, the many benefits of cohousing make the challenges of creating or finding such a community feel worth
it. In expensive cities, it can be cost-effective and stimulating, intellectually and emotionally, to share regular meals in a
group. Rather than depending on the nuclear family unit to meet all emotional needs, cohousing participants have a wide
range of people to talk to.
Proximity and regularity matter. A recent study found that most people report having only two close confidants with
whom they have important discussions on a regular basis. Its a lot easier to sit down next to someone at a weekly
common meal and spontaneously troubleshoot how to handle a rude boss or health problem than it is to call an equally
stressed friend in hopes that it is a moment when he or she can talk. Matthew Brashears, an assistant professor of
sociology at Cornell University, who conducted the research, told NBC News: Discussion partners provide both
emotional support and ideas for how to solve problems, so a shrinking discussion network may lead to more stress and
poorer outcomes.
Cohousing also can provide a safety net at times of natural disasters like heat waves or hurricanes. Eric Klinenberg,
a sociologist, has found that the tight-knit bonds that are formed set these neighborhoods apart more so, even, than
money or preparedness in effectively surviving such calamities.
Evidence of these benefits and others has mostly been anecdotal, at least in the United States, but it is drawing new
attention from social scientists, some of whom have created a national Cohousing Research Network. A study they
conducted in 2011 found that 96 percent of people interviewed who lived in cohousing reported an improved quality of
life; 75 percent felt their physical health was better than others their age; and 96 percent had voted in the 2008 presidential
election.
Angela Sanguinetti, the director of the network and a postdoctoral researcher at University of California,
Davis, recently published a paper in The Journal of Environmental Psychology on a survey she did of 559 cohousers.
They reported a greater connection to nature based on two different widely used scales. (Many cohousers build
sustainably, often using solar panels and other techniques that meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
standards.)
Heidi Berggren, an associate professor of political science and womens and gender studies at the University of
Massachusetts-Dartmouth, found that interdependent living often coincides with greater involvement in civic or political
action, or both, including voting at twice the rate of the average American. Her research was recently published in Social
Science Quarterly.
While the research of both Sanguinetti and Berggren suggests that cohousing could benefit society as a whole, there
is little public support for it. One reason may be that the majority of those who benefit from cohousing, so far, have been
white and relatively affluent. Susan Friedland, the executive director oft Satellite Affordable Housing Associates, an
Oakland-based nonprofit organization, was part of a team that built a cohousing community designated affordable housing
in Sebastopol, Calif., in a project funded by the federal government as well as private dollars. She said the federal support
latter hamstrung them in many ways.
Federal fair housing policies are in place for good reason to prevent discrimination, she said. But they also
prevent us from giving preference to people who want to live in cohousing or involve low-income residents early in the
design process. As a result, Petaluma Avenue Homes, as its called, has had a mix of people, some of whom love the
cohousing aspect, and some of whom are understandably lukewarm to the experience, quite possibly because theyve been
subjected to the obligatory bureaucratic requirements and vetting often required of the poor by government agencies.
Nevertheless, Friedland retains faith in the concept. Developers, architects, builders, we could all learn from the
design principles of cohousing the common house, moving the parking out of the central space, having the front
porches, the centrality of the gardening. All of these are based on human experience and a balance of privacy and
connectivity. Of course another formidable hurdle is how difficult it is to predict the dynamics of a complex group. Many
cohousing communities fall apart early on because they fail to agree on principles, practices and finances.
Life together hasnt been a Cinderella story, Kate Madden Yee, a founding member of Temescal Commons
Cohousing, has written. Its not easy, hanging in there with ones fellow cohousers, despite disagreements,
disappointments and disillusionment. Yet therein lies the reward: In our time together, my neighbors and I have learned a
thing or two about how to not only create, but negotiate our common life with more ease and compassion.
Twenty-five years in, although the experiment is still small scale, it has yielded a generation of Americans who
grew up in cohousing. Many are evangelical about the ways in which the experience has shaped who they are.
Ravenna Koenig, now 26, grew up in Vashon Island Cohousing in Washington. It taught me communication, she
says, not just as a tool, but as a value. When you share your home with 17 other families, all those conversations that
youd normally just have with your spouse or your kids about what to do when two kids from different families get in a
fight, or whether to prioritize filling potholes or weeding the garden first those conversations become much bigger. You
have to learn how to articulate what you want, and empathize harder than you ever thought you could.
Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/opinion/modern-housing-with-village-virtues.html?ref=opinion

Ugly Is the New Look for Cigarette Packs

When it was introduced in the late 1920s, Marlboro was a womans cigarette Mild as May, said the ads. Ads
showed glamorous and fashionable young women smoking. Marlboro left the market during the war. But in the 1950s,
scientists began associating cigarettes with cancer, and smokers flocked to supposedly safer filtered cigarettes. To combat
the view that a filter was for sissies, Philip Morris needed a new, masculine filtered cigarette. The company took Marlboro
and fitted it with a filter and a cowboy.
The success of Marlboros masculinization shows the importance of brand imagery and advertising. With cigarettes,
they are practically all that matters. The vast majority of smokers start when they are young, and virtually none start
because they like the taste, or the product itself. Its the image: Smoking makes them feel defiant, feel cool. Young people
create a self-image with their cigarette brand.
This is why its significant that Britain has just adopted something
Australia has been doing since December 2012: unbranding the pack. And the
latest evidence shows that it is working in Australia. Plain packaging was
recommended in the World Health Organization Framework Convention on
Tobacco Control, the worlds first public health treaty, which was adopted in
2004 and now has been signed by 180 countries. I wrote about Australias plans
to start plain packaging in 2012, but now the idea is taking off. France and
Canada may be next; several other European countries, along with South
Africa, Singapore, New Zealand and Chile, are taking steps.
Although everyone calls it plain packaging, standard packaging would be more accurate. The packs arent plain at
all they are covered with garish photos of smoking-related illnesses blobs of tumor, diseased heart muscle and rotted
toes, along with haunting pictures of young cancer patients on their deathbeds.
They are standardized in the sense that all brands look the
same. The parts of the pack not covered with pictures of diseased
tissue are an unappealling green-brown called Opaque Couch
which won the title of ugliest color in surveys of Australian
smokers. It was perhaps the first time anyone asked market
researchers to come up with the packaging most likely to drive
away customers. (The government at first referred to the color as
olive green, but the Australian Olive Association objected.)
The only way to tell the cigarette brand is to find the name
in small letters in a standard font on the pack front.
There is nothing promotional about that pack any more,
said David Hammond, an associate professor at the University of
Waterloo who has advised several tobacco-control initiatives, including the British plain packaging project. Its an
unequivocal message that this is a dangerous product and not a lifestyle product.
Cigarettes enjoy the most brand loyalty of any product. Teens, moreover, are more heavily swayed by brands than
adults. They choose a brand when they first start smoking, and only 10 percent of smokers switch brands in any year.
Curiously, this brand loyalty comes despite the fact that many smokers cant identify their brand just by smoking.
When states attorneys general sued the tobacco companies at the turn of the century, the giant settlement produced a trove
of internal tobacco company documents, which have been cataloged and archived. One analysis of cigarette
advertising from British American Tobacco (the author and year are unknown) concluded that one out of every two
smokers is not able to distinguish in blind (masked) tests between similar cigarettes, and that for smokers and especially
for the decisive group of new, younger smokers, the consumers choice is dictated more by psychological image factors
than by relatively minor differences in smoking characteristics.
A cigarettes taste matters but perceptions of taste are also shaped by the brand. People rate the same cigarettes
differently when they come indifferent packages. The same cigarette tastes much better in a branded pack than in a plain
one. Theres an existential question here: Is a Marlboro in a plain pack even a Marlboro? For many smokers, the pack, not
the cigarette, makes the brand.
Tobacco companies have fewer and fewer ways to tell people about their brand. More than 100 countries ban some
kinds of cigarette advertising, and several countries ban all of them. The United States is not among the strictest. Cigarette
ads on television and radio have been banned for 45 years, and more recent bans cover billboards and sponsorship of
events.
Whats still legal is print advertising in publications with no youth readership, and store displays, including the pack
itself. If all you have left is the pack, then you have innovation in the packaging, said Matthew Farrelly, senior director
of the Center for Health Policy Science and Tobacco Research at the North Carolina-based research group RTI. Point of
sale in the U.S. is really the last frontier.

So tobacco companies concentrated their efforts on the pack. An internal memo from the Brown & Williamson
tobacco company in 1979 said that under conditions of total ban an objective should be to enable packs, by themselves,
to convey the total product message.
Packs are powerful enough to do it. Unlike packaging for many other products, people carry around the cigarette
pack and use it over and over. Tobacco companies have deliberately made packs that have to be removed from pocket or
purse to get a cigarette. Smoking requires flashing the pack before your friends: taking it out of your purse, throwing it
down on the bar. The pack is what advertisers call a badge something you wear that tells people who you are.
Its similar to carrying around a bottle of beer, said Farrelly. The brand you choose is one expression of your
identity. Ive heard anecdotal stories that smokers will buy cheaper brands during the week and buy premium brands on
the weekend when theyre at bars.
Cigarette packaging is also used to mislead. (This is hardly unique to cigarettes, but the stakes are higher.) The
word light is no longer allowed in the United States or European countries (light cigarettes are actually no safer than
other smokes), but tobacco companies still use light colors to give the impression of mildness and safety. Some packs use
terms like organic, natural, additive-free or 100 percent tobacco code words that imply (misleadingly, in this
case) that they are healthier. Other brands promise to help keep women thin the most overt being Reach for a Lucky
instead of a sweet. Manufacturers also alter the pack to connote slimness. Virginia Slims, for example, come in a tall,
thin box.
Plain packaging is designed to stop the pack from making a statement or conveying wrong information. It also
seeks to reduce cigarettes appeal. Minors, especially, find the plain packs to be ugly decidedly not something they
want to flash to their friends.
Another goal is to make health warnings on the packages more effective, since the warnings take on more visibility
and importance when they dont compete with branding. In addition, plain packaging reduces the utility of store displays
as a sales tool.
One indication of the power of plain packaging is the ferocious barrage of lawsuits that tobacco companies
unleashed against Australias law. They have sued in Australia, in the World Trade Organization and in Britain to block
implementation. So far, they have not won a case.
Continue reading the main story
When the British High Court upheld plain packaging in May, its ruling included a minute dissection of the evidence
presented by both sides, and the judges conclusion that the tobacco companys evidence fell below acceptable
standards. It was almost universally prepared without any reference to the internal documentation or data of the tobacco
companies themselves, he wrote, adding that it either ignores or airily dismisses the worldwide research and literature
base which contradicts evidence tendered by the tobacco industry.
Vast numbers of studies have shown that plain packaging should work. (Here, here and here are three compilations
of the evidence.) But plain packaging has a track record only in Australia, so thats the only place to see whether
it does work. This question is complicated because plain packaging was introduced alongside new tax increases and health
warnings on cigarettes. In addition, its a long-term strategy, which should increase in impact as brand associations
weaken over time and young people grow up without promotional images.
Nevertheless, there has already been an effect. Adolescent smoking in Australia has hit a record low. The
governments official review of the law, published in February, concluded that packaging changes strengthened a decline
in general smoking prevalence by just over one-half of one percentage point, producing millions of dollars in savings each
year. The review also said that the policys impact on smoking would likely grow over time.
How about the United States? It doesnt even have graphic warning labels, thanks to industry lawsuits. (See a Fixes
column about soda, alcohol and tobacco warning labels here.) More than 80 countries use graphic labels, and there
is overwhelming evidence that they work, but in the United States, cigarette packs still carry only ineffective chunks of
30-year-old text on the sides. The tobacco companies winning argument was that the labels went beyond factual
information into antismoking advocacy, and that violated their First Amendment rights.
The United States is perhaps unique in the degree to which it protects free speech, but there might be a workaround:
do plain packaging without the graphic warning labels. Packs would be truly plain just a boring greenish-brown box
with a few lines of text. After all, its not just the health warnings that make plain packaging work. Its also that plain
packs turn a cigarette into a commodity, stripped of its ability to make a statement about the smoker.
How many teens would start to smoke if sometimes a cigarette is just a cigarette?

Sumber : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/opinion/ugly-is-the-new-look-for-cigarette-packs.html