Cohousing on Main and 41st

3 homes remaining. Looking for 3 more neighbours.

Tomo and Our Urban Village Cohousing pioneered a streamlined approach to make it easier for community groups to develop missing middle housing. We designed this 12-family building for families and intergenerational living. It’s also a Passive House, built with triple-pane windows, so your home is quiet and energy bills are low. In addition to your own kitchen, you can cook up a feast with family and friends in the 1,000-sf shared kitchen.

We have studio and 3-bedroom homes for sale. Let us give you a tour! email hello@tomospaces.com

Studio

3 bedroom townhome

2 bedroom + lockoff unit

 

Project Description

Cohousing

Cohousing describes an intentional community centred around social connectedness in which residents actively participate in the design and operation of their housing. Despite its many affordable advantages, the typical cohousing process has many barriers, including escalating land bids, long development timeline, and considerable expertise and time commitment. Cohousers report that 70 to 80% of groups that start projects are unable to overcome these barriers and complete them.

Tomo and Our Urban Village, a Vancouver-based cohousing group, worked together to pioneer a more streamlined approach called “Cohousing Lite.” Our goal is to make cohousing development easier for members, deliver homes faster, and with less risk.

Socialbility

Happy City has gathered evidence on the relationship between design and social connections in multi-family housing. Building on this work, Tomo applies the following design guidelines for sociability:

  1. Keep social group size smaller. Clusters of housing featuring 8 to 15 units in walkable, transit-served neighbourhoods are ideal to nurture supportive social connections.
  2. Invite people to do things together. When people self-organize to work on causes that are bigger than themselves, they feel happier and more connected to each other.
  3. Enable a social gradient from public to private spaces. Delineating a gradient of communal, family, and personal spaces provide sense of control, invites participation, and creates feeling of safety.
  4. Spark frequent informal encounters. Positive relationships need purposeful social contact; but informal, unscheduled encounters with neighbours nurture trust and belonging.
  5. Integrate with nature. People’s ability to experience nature with all their senses is strongly linked to positive relationships and social trust.
  6. Lengthen housing tenure. Residents who are able to live in the same place longer, either as owners or renters, build stronger bonds of trust and social connection.

Sustainability

Passive House is one of the leading global standards for energy efficient buildings. The appeal of this approach is its simplicity: a super-insulated structure with careful use of high performance windows. It reduces the building’s energy consumption to virtually zero and minimizes long-term maintenance costs by eliminating complex active mechanical systems.

Update

In the spring of 2024, Happy Cities published their key learnings from this cohousing lite community to explore how cities can add gentle density and grow in a sustainable and social way. Read the report here.

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