Nothing happens in isolation, especially a project with the breadth and vision of ours. To understand its evolution, we need to look back to an earlier exploration of community and sustainable living, the Ecovillage group, that in many ways provided the fertile soil from which our project has grown.
In the winter of 1992 a series of meetings were held to explore the idea of building an ecovillage based on permaculture principles. From these meetings a core group, including Robin Allison, were elected to take these ideas further and report back to the whole group. Over the next 2 ½ years this and other groupings within the Ecovillage group formed, flourished and waned as we explored environmental issues, ethics, consensus models, and group dynamics, and struggled with how to progress towards the reality of an ecovillage while still allowing sufficient time for the building of community.
After developing a comprehensive vision statement (which was subsequently adapted for our cohousing project), researching financial and legal structures, and beginning an excellent newsletter, the core group dissolved itself back into the wider group in the interests of group empowerment. Five task groups were formed, and these met every six weeks as the Full Council Meeting at the Hendrickson's farm at Mangawhai for a weekend of talk, song, and fine food. These were great occasions!
While many had a vision of settling together on semi-rural land within one hour's drive of Auckland, the Ecovillage group remained more of an umbrella group from which several projects could arise. One of the biggest challenges was finding a balance between task and process; honouring both what needed to be done and how we worked together. Another major drain on energy was the continual turnover of people joining and leaving, with the need to revisit old ground when new people came on, and the uncertainty about people's level of commitment.
In response to these challenges a small vision group formed within the larger group at the end of 1993 to build deeper personal relationships and a shared vision from which the ecovillage could grow. This 'hedgehog' group included Geraldine Hughes, Peter Scott, and Robin Allison, and met for 6 months until personal issues and the task/process dynamic again proved too much. By the end of 1994 the ecovillage group had effectively ceased.
While an ecovillage didn't arise directly out of those 2 ½ years, it was an enormously useful time of exploring ideas, learning about group dynamics, and developing skills and experience to move the concept towards reality.
Having been part of the Ecovillage group from the beginning and active in all the different manifestations, Robin wasn't ready to leave the ideas behind. After a major reassessment she decided to put her energies into developing an urban sustainable community or 'eco-neighbourhood' based on cohousing principles. This was boosted in March 1995 with the visit to Auckland of Dr. Robert Gilman, founder of 'In Context' magazine and author of the report "Ecovillages and Sustainable Communities". Robert lived at that time in Winslow Cohousing in Seattle, and gave several illustrated talks describing the layout and workings of the community, including the coloured card consensus system. His many useful insights and advice were very inspiring.
With initial vital support and encouragement from friends Warwick Pudney and Katrina Shields, and after discussions with various supportive councillors and staff at Waitakere City Council, Robin drafted a proposal to the Council to establish an eco-neighbourhood on the Harbour View Estate on Te Atatu Peninsula, then being prepared for development by the council and their property arm, Waitakere Properties. With help from Warwick and Mary Rose a public meeting was held on 14 June 1995, and the Waitakere Eco-Neighbourhood Project was born!
The invitation put out at that meeting was clearly that if people were excited by the vision as presented, they were very welcome to be part of developing the project from the time they joined, but that in order to progress and avoid the frustrations experienced in the Ecovillage group, major revisiting of the concept would not be appropriate. The meeting generated a high level of excitement and interest, especially from Cathy Angell and John Hammond who immediately got involved and have been an integral part of the project ever since.
Mary, Cathy, John, Rose Lightfoot and Robin met weekly over the next few months, joined by Simon Moore in August. Early meetings discussed basic meeting procedure and agreements and adopted the coloured card system. Ongoing talks were held with Alan McGregor of Waitakere Properties and a submission prepared for the council. Monthly Sunday pot-luck lunches were started as a way of reaching out to interested people and drawing them into the group. A germ fund of $100 per working group member was started, and there were discussions and arguments over whether a Trust was the appropriate legal structure. Project Facilitator Chris Patterson spent several meetings helping us to put together a Critical Path Programme and timeline, identifying key tasks and milestones and the links between them.
Towards the end of 1995 there was increasing conflict between task and process. Some felt frustrated with the rate of progress and felt that too much time was spent on personal issues; others couldn't function while tensions went unacknowledged between members. After several increasingly tense meetings, one involving an outside facilitator, guidelines for communication and interpersonal relationships were drawn up and agreed, and a comprehensive Meeting Procedure adopted. Both these agreements were seen as vital for establishing safety and honouring both process and task. Immediately after this both Simon and Mary withdrew from the working group (Rose having retired earlier), leaving Cathy, John and Robin to carry the project.
We three met generally once a week (sometimes more!) for most of 1996. After the upheaval of the past few months we agreed to put the basic framework together, including the Trust and our internal organising agreements, before attempting to attract other people into the group.
The first task of the year was writing detailed submissions to the Waitakere City Council Proposed District Plan. In line with their policy of increasing the density of housing around public transport nodes, the Council introduced the Medium Density Housing criteria. These criteria allowed a much more flexible housing layout than standard subdivision rules, while safeguarding such aspects as privacy and sunlight, and were so in tune with what we were proposing that they felt like they'd been written for us! Much effort went into writing the submissions and further involvement and submissions were required throughout the year.
Many meetings went into drafting the Trust Deed, which was completed in April. Unfortunately and frustratingly it then languished with the lawyer until August, despite many reminders and phone calls. The Handbook, including our Vision Statement, proposed environmental and social design aspects, working structure, communication and consensus agreements, and meeting procedure, was completed in June. By then we were really feeling the strain of carrying the project between the 3 of us, and looking at how we could include more people. An enrolment meeting was held in July and there was a good level of interest and much affirmation of what we'd done, but very little tangible support came out of it. A walk over the Harbour View site was organised for August and again there was a lot of interest but little follow-up.
We realised that we'd reached a crossroads, and needed to explore the physical aspects of the project so that both potential residents and council contacts could more fully understand what we proposed. The idea was to choose a theoretical site at Harbour View and start working on concept plans in order to help clarify what we did want as a group and to boost our enthusiasm. To safeguard our energy we wanted only those people seriously interested in being involved and set a $100 fee to be part of the new Design Group. On 7 November 1996 John, Robin and Cathy were joined by Bruce Montgomerie, Ketana Saxon and Karl Scherer at our first Design Group meeting.
While the 3 Trustees continued to meet weekly, the Design Group met every two weeks, focusing specifically on the practicalities of living in cohousing. Any new grouping of people needs to find out about each other, and we began with exercises to find out more about our strongly-held beliefs, visioning the future, and exploring a number of key issues such as food in the common house, pets, and the closeness of dwellings.
Towards the end of 1996 we also realised that the magnitude of the task was such that we just couldn't make sufficient progress in our spare time, fitting it into the cracks of our already busy lives - it felt like "chipping away at an iceberg with a teaspoon". We started looking into funding possibilities to pay for a one-day-a-week Project Co-ordinator position for Robin. Although many funding organisations were approached, we didn't seem to fit neatly into any of their criteria, and eventually felt the effort required to chase funding was yet another load that we couldn't handle.
Ongoing negotiations with Waitakere Properties had continued all year over possible purchase of a site. As the year progressed the prices firmed up and moved further and further out of our reach. At the end of 1996 the decision was made to let go of that particular part of the dream and to look around for other suitable sites in Waitakere City, primarily around town centres and transport nodes in line with eco-city and urban sustainability values.
By the beginning of 1997 the Waitakere Eco-Neighbourhood project had 4 levels or groupings:
The first part of 1997 saw more meetings with various council officers, developers, etc., and several sites investigated. The Trust Deed was eventually finalised in March - phew! A display of our project at the Environmental Building Field Day in March generated lots of interest and some new supporters. A camp at Pataua South near Whangarei Heads over Easter was much enjoyed by the 19 adults and children who attended, providing a glimpse of community life and much needed rejuvenation.
In April, 1 ½ acres of land with a well-designed house came on the market that met many of our criteria. This precipitated an enormous flurry of research and meetings with lawyer, bank manager, developers, and members to reach the position where we could put an offer on the land if we wanted to. After 3 weeks of intensive effort it was decided at a special meeting of those interested that there just wasn't enough support to put an offer in. A strong sense of both disappointment and relief was felt by many; at the very least it had been useful as a trial run.
However the stress of this event, combined with personal circumstances, took its toll and feelings of burn-out increased over the winter. For various reasons Karl, Bruce and Ketana had all withdrawn by July. By August both Robin and Cathy were severely stressed and both felt the need to take a back seat in the project for a while. John and Rowan Bell, who had joined the Design Group in June, agreed to keep the project ticking over for a month or two.
Earlier in the year a supporter, Cathy Sheehan, had set up a website for us, and had also written an excellent article about cohousing in general and our project in particular for the EECA magazine EnergyWise News. This was seen by a surprising number of people, including David Steemson of Radio New Zealand who subsequently interviewed Cathy, John and Robin for his programme in September.
In October 1997 the group restarted with new vigour. The Design Group swelled to 7 with the addition of Peter Scott, Geraldine Hughes and Robin Lightfoot. Much research and discussion was had over a promising site near Henderson, and at one very enjoyable meeting we arranged scaled house blocks on a site plan to get a first feel as a group for how our cohousing village might look. With our increased numbers we felt able to divide the tasks into 3 areas of Legal and Financial, Membership and Promotion, and Site and Feasibility. Each member became involved in 1 or 2 of the specific task groups and only met as a full group every second week.
Although the Trust had never been formally legalised, it had still been a working entity, with 3 founding Trustees and the expectation that these would increase 'organically' as new people became sufficiently involved. However the fresh energy and commitment shown by the reconfigured Design Group was such that that became in effect the core group, and the Trustees simply stopped meeting separately.
Another cohousing group started up at this time. Jill Whitmore had bought land in Mission Bay several years before with her husband Peter, with the intention of building a cohousing community. A previous attempt at forming a group had faded, but in October 1997 Jill established a company called Green Village Developments to initiate a developer-led cohousing project on the land. As part of this strategy she arranged and financed Katie McCamant and Chuck Durett of the CoHousing Company, the authors of the original book on cohousing, to come to Auckland for 4 weeks in February 1998 to run workshops with them. This was very exciting for our group, and seen as a fantastic opportunity both for us to learn and gain inspiration, and for publicising our project and gaining new members. We arranged with Katie to run a workshop with us also.
After a flurry of preparation and effort, Katie and Chuck arrived and gave a well publicised and inspiring public talk to a full hall of interested people. Twelve people, "up to speed and all-but-committed" to our project, attended our workshop on 20 February 1998. Katie covered a range of topics that we'd suggested including membership structure, developers, financial and design issues, in a day packed full of information, advice, discussion and humour. The combined wisdom and experience of the many cohousing groups that Katie brought with her was fantastic and gave our project a tremendous boost.
Our numbers now grew again. Eric Gill had joined in December, and after the workshop we were joined by Lynette Loffel, Eve Campbell, and Barbara and Clark Thomborson. The immediate outcome of the workshop was a revamped membership system based on what had worked well for other cohousing projects. Peter compiled a very comprehensive and impressive Information Handbook which was ratified by the group and is now a wonderful resource for introducing people to our project. With the added numbers and 3 task groups the project has been progressing on many fronts, and a goal was agreed of having a site secured by spring 1998.
By May 1998 our numbers had increased again with the addition of Narelle George, Poul Lauritzen, and Fenella Gill. At a hui in May we acknowledged a major milestone with a ceremonial signing of our Initial Organising Agreement, and the feeling that the project is launched into the world! We are 15 people, and growing!