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Better than Tearing Down or Moving Out...

12/17/2015

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Post by Mark Lakeman

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Here's a very welcome breath of fresh air, especially In the face of so much gentrification that is going on in Portland! This remodel for Sellwood residents shows how you can adapt and reuse our precious historic houses so that they can accommodate more people while also providing more income to support the existing home.


In this case, the resident family loves the neighborhood and intends to continue to live in the home. They asked us to design a way for them to lift up the existing structure and then add a sizeable new living unit underneath. The new space is about four feet underground and four feet above ground, which lifts the existing two level house up just a few feet more, well short of the overall height limit of thirty five feet. 


Unlike the seemingly pervasive method of simply tearing down existing buildings so that new giant ones can be built, this approach achieves upgrades in energy efficient living places and adds density while retaining the continuity of our beloved historical urban environment.
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Desk Available in Our New Location

12/15/2015

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We are seeking to expand our collective office environment in inner Southeast Portland. Our shared office space already includes The City Repair Project and permaculture designers. Our hope is to find an individual who will complement our existing trades, and embrace a shared and collaborative work setting. This is a great fit for someone needing a space in which to use a laptop, but not suited to daily customer visits or drop-in clients. The office is on the second floor and is one large shared room. The building is rustic industrial, but the community within is warm and uplifting, enjoying shared meals and happy hour toasts together in the office.

Amenities & Perks:
- Your own reserved desk
- Utilities & high speed internet included
- Shared use of printer/scanner and/or computing facilities can be negotiated
- Open project space and lounge within shared office
- Large street-front conference room for occasional meetings
- Kitchenette
- Shared use of printer and/or computing facilities can be negotiated
- Indoor bike parking (upstairs)
- Free street parking
- 24-hour access to a secure building
- Conveniently located in inner southeast at SE 9th & Alder
- Close to coffee shops, restaurants, bus lines and the interstates
- Rent $175/month
- Month-to-month agreement

Does this sound like  a great fit for you? Please click HERE to provide your information and we will contact you soon.
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New Home for Communitecture and City Repair

11/23/2015

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Post by Robin Koch

Our team is in the midst of moving to our new location and we're thrilled to be sharing work space with City Repair, Guildworks, and other community-buildin' colleagues.

We will be set up by Tuesday the 1st. In the mean time, please forgive us if there is an interruption in our phone access or if we don't respond to your email right away. We look forward to connecting with you as soon as we're able!

Please note that our new address for all meetings and all mail is: 
840 SE Alder Street
Portland, OR 97214
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Shared, Modest, Humble, Tiny, Teeny, and Eeantsy-Beantsy Homes

11/1/2015

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Post by Mark Lakeman
 
To Begin With:
It seems that tiny homes and tiny home villages are all the rage these days. From individuals to communities, people all over North America are talking about smaller, simpler, more ecological and community-oriented modes of living. They’re not just talking, they are building, attracted to affordable ways to lower their cost of living, while also refusing to work thirty years just to pay for a place to sleep and store stuff. They have numerous motivations, including to simplify their lives while off loading accumulated mountains of stuff, have less debt, and to increase their quality of life by having more free time. Not so much a rejection of the classic “American Dream” as an updated vision for living, this broad movement is gaining ground because it is relevant to the pressures, demands, and realities of modern life. Perhaps more than anything else, though, the overall movement appears to driven by an aesthetic search for meaning, beauty, and liberty.
 
Wait though, because the movement to reduce and simplify is even broader than just tiny home enthusiasts. It actually includes a much wider spectrum of scales of experimentation, design, innovation, and real building projects. All of the scales are driven by similar motivations. For the purposes of this brief article, I will describe some of the options that have emerged, including Shared living, modest homes, humble homes, tiny homes, then getting down to teeny, and then finally eeantsy-beeantsy. Then there are the villages, clusters of these scaled-down palaces where people create entire landscapes of mutual benefits and shared cultures. Here we go!
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Re-Inhabited Homes: At left, a small mansion in NW Portland where between 1975 and 1999 dozens of artists thrived in a live-in arts collaborative called ‘The Last Thursday House”. It was an artist’s dream, of collaborative, shared culture and inspired community. This where Portland’s Last Thursday movement started in 1990 when a tremendous monthly, four-level vertical arts festival began, and happened in great style every month until 1999. At right, Sellwood’s Planet Repair Institute where five permaculture activists live and lead “re-villaging” projects in the blocks around their home.
​Shared Living: Re-inhabiting The Normal
It’s powerful and important to point out that, since before the 1960’s economic pressures and obvious benefits have moved people to combine their incomes and share their living environments. Whether in the popular form of individuals sharing space and costs in previously single family homes, or in the emergence of rural and urban ecovillages, decades ago many people found that they could simplify and reduce costs while improving their quality of life by living with people with whom they found common ground. Such arrangements could occur at almost any scale, from an ordinary home to a mansion. These kinds of local models have certainly emerged organically in a universal way, from city to city, in response to similar pressures that characterize modern life. These pressures include devaluation of the dollar, which erodes individual buying power, which in turn drives up the cost of living even as more and more people increase the overall demand on limited resources. So, sharing has emerged as a natural strategy in reaction to modern economic dynamics. However, there have clearly been enormous benefits in the rediscovery of the benefits of community living. I can personally attest to this story, because I have lived in shared “community houses” since 1976. In fact, as a child living among dozens of young artists, my life was immeasurably enriched and my formative creative life was given quite the leg up because I was surrounded by inspiration.
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Modest Home: The image here is of a modest Portland Craftsman home, renovated as part of Sabin Green, the famous urban infill micro-cohousing project we designed in 2008. Now it will remain vital and functional for many decades to come. At about 1000 square feet, it’s much smaller than what is usually being built in 2015, but plenty for a modest family. However, its’ scale and charm remain extremely attractive, and more affordable, than bigger and newer homes. It still fits perfectly into the humble scale and character of most Portland neighborhoods. 
​Modest Homes: 800 to 1200 square feet
Then there are “Modest Homes”. How to define these, when in the last few decades the average sized new American home has grown from around 900 to somewhere over 2000 square feet? For today, let’s say Modest can range from between 800 square feet (The upper limits of an Accessory Dwelling Unit or ADU) to 1,200 square feet. This scale of home has become an intentional choice by many families and individuals, partly motivated by cost factors, partly by a strong disdain for the grossness of scale that has become common, and mostly by a desire for modesty, personal balance, aesthetics, and a desire to not consume too much. In our architecture studio, the homes that we design in this scale range are happening mostly as part of urban-infill cohousing projects. People who want to inhabit this scale, usually young families and midlife couples, also want the benefits of shared living with neighbors that they can collaborate with in terms of shared community and land stewardship. Usually working with Orange Splot LLC, these very popular and influential cohousing projects include Sabin Green, Peninsula Park, Woolsey Corner, and also Cully Grove where we consulted. The individual homes within these varied projects range from 500 to 1500 square feet.
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This ADU became quite famous, making quite a splash on national TV as the story of this 580 square foot home was replayed over and over. Located within the Sabin Green cohousing community, it has an innovative floor plan that is subtly subdivided by a central spiral stair, and it has everything a home needs to provide.
​Humble homes: The ADU
Until the advent of the Tiny Home, the most frequently invoked alternative, simple-living idea in the common urban vocabulary was the Accessory Dwelling Unit, or ADU. Also known as a Secondary Dwelling Unit (SDU) or “Granny Flat”, in Portland where we do most of our design work, the ADU is usually designed and built from about 400 square feet up to the legal limit of 800 square feet. However, they can also be as small as you might like. The key distinction that qualifies an additional structure on your site as an ADU is that it is considered a distinct, new address and has its’ own separate kitchen. It can have as many bedrooms, bathrooms, and other features as you like, as long as it fits within the size limit and is the second home on a lot. The scale of these projects used to be based upon a scale ratio so that no new ADU could be larger than 1/3 the square foot area of the existing primary home, which would be required to already exist on a given site. No more though, as that limitation has been removed, and any new ADU can be as large as 800 square feet outright. One last bit- ADU’s can be built as separate structures, or they can be located within an existing house, carved out of a basement or a converted second floor. They can also simply be attached to an existing house. There’s a great deal of flex in the way you can approach the design.
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This 700 square foot accessory building includes a kayak workshop with tall ceilings on the first level, and a small office above. The office features a bath with shower and a certified kitchen. Additionally, guests are able to stay there if it’s absolutely necessary.
​Also Humble: Accessory Buildings
Among all of the possible tools in the urban infill and voluntary simplification toolbox, accessory buildings offer some of the most flexibility. Though this kind of building cannot officially house “habitable” sleeping areas, it should be mentioned here because the activities that can be included are certainly complimentary to sleeping and living. Uses that can be accommodated include home offices, creative or production spaces, play rooms, certified kitchens, workshops, and other functions. These small buildings can be taller (20 feet high) than an ADU, and also up to 800 square feet in size.
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Tiny Homes: These 180 square foot tiny dwellings were built using the “detached bedroom” provision in the residential code of Portland, Oregon. For those who say that “the code is the problem”, here’s a prototype that shows the way forward.
Tiny Homes: On or Off Wheels!
Perhaps the most famous version of the tiny home idea is the one on wheels. Much has been written about them, and they are extremely popular. Tiny homes on wheels are not quite like mobile homes. They are usually not aerodynamic, designed to drive around from place to place. Much more sturdy and well-built, tiny homes on wheels are more homey, energy efficient, and meant to stay somewhere for a long while. On the other hand, the built-in mobility allows someone to easily move if they want to. There are lots of upsides to mobility, but there are also limits that include planning and building codes. For instance, most cities will not permit a mobile structure to be slept in as a ‘habitable structure” unless they are located in a zone that allows a trailer park. If they are to be legally habitable they will also need to meet structural and energy codes. These are easy enough to meet, but they usually require a permanent location that costs money. The up-to-code design will cost more money too, as will the land, and then we begin to move away from what motivated the desire for a tiny home to begin with. However, this situation will not last, because as demand increases it becomes more likely that the planning and building code challenges will be resolved. 
 
While this very attractive mobile version can face difficulties, the permanent version is well underway. Many people don’t realize that cities can already have codes that will allow versions of a tiny home to be built. For instance, in Portland, Oregon we have a provision that allows for “detached bedrooms”. These are classified as additions to your existing home, as if you’ve simply added a new bedroom. But they can be separate, as small as can be, have one or more bedrooms, and feature a bathroom. If you’re a little creative you can also shift the sink outside of the bathroom to create a quasi-kitchenette. You can potentially have several of these on your site, as long as all your structures and hardscape fits within your total lot coverage limitation. It’s also true that , using the detached bedroom code, you are able to build a habitable ADU-scale building without triggering “tax reevaluation” based on current value assessments. The main functional difference is that this ADU-like version can’t include a complete kitchen with a range, but it can include a functional kitchenette with a sink, hotplate, refrigerator, dishwasher, and other common appliances.
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On the left, a 200 square foot strawclay studio in NE Portland that accommodates a variety of uses. On the right, a 120 square foot hybrid cob and compressed straw structure that serves as a community sanctuary and multi-use space, located in the Sellwood neighborhood.
​Also Tiny: Accessory Structures
These popular structures do not require permits, and have historically been limited to 120 square feet, as is still true in most other cities. However, in Portland the size limit has been raised to 200 square feet, and a typical residential site is able to have as many as three such structures as long as they don’t help to exceed the overall square foot limit for structures and impermeable hardscape. Though not technically “habitable”, these little buildings usually take the form of small studios, saunas, sheds, or storage units. However, this scale has also proven to be an ideal size for ecological experimentation, often used for natural and recycled building demonstration projects. They are also sometimes used for guests when absolutely necessary. That these don’t require permits has made this “type” a more accessible way to build functional, multi-use places.
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On the left, a 56 square foot “Teeny Home”, located at the Planet Repair Institute in Portland’s Sellwood Neighborhood. Used mostly for summertime guests, it is enough for a couple to stay awhile, or for an individual to live in for an extended period. On the right, a teeny home in the Mt. Tabor neighborhood that features two sleeping bays that extend outward from the main space of 38 square feet.
​Teeny Indeed !
Very simply, “Teeny Homes” are smaller than tiny homes. Teeny seems to begin when you go below 85 square feet. C’mon, now that’s just teeny. There’s pretty much just enough room for one space inside, a do-everything room for sleeping, studying, eating lunch, meditating, or having a guest over. There are a few of them around though, and they are sometimes confused with doll houses or kids playhouses. They are real though, and if they are built to the energy and structural code then people can live in them (legally!), and they are more cozy than anything that is larger in scale. Such projects can also be built without permits, but then they are not technically “habitable”. However they are built, they are the most intimate spatial experience that you can have, the kind of place that gives you sweetest memories like nothing else before in your life.
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This Eeantsy Home was built by a dedicated surfer, to be super-inexpensive, low-maintenance, and utterly minimal in every way so that the surfer could minimize her belongings and needs while maximizing time in the ocean.
Eeantsy-Beantsy Homes
Yes, these exist. You may ask yourself “but, but, but how is this even possible?” You may say “no, only in Hong Kong could this be happening, with those sleeping tubes I saw in National Geographic!”, but you’d be wrong. They are around in every town. These are for people who are really clear minded, don’t buy into consumerism, and love to be in nature and get plenty of exercise. They tend to rely on bikes and public transport, and may share a distant relation in Henry David Thoreau. These small structures are big enough to house a bed, cabinets and shelves, some lighting and a guest. They are also small enough to be self-heated by one’s own body, or by simply aiming the windows towards the sun. COZY !!!
 
Yet…ultimately, HOW SMALL CAN WE GO? When I was asked recently whether tiny homes, and villages of tiny homes may be THE answer to affordable housing or even to homelessness, my answer was “yes for sure, for this moment!” Personally, I am absolutely enamored by the idea of simplifying and reducing as an expression of better priorities and personal liberation. But I also answered “no, not in the long term”, because I see these initiatives as only a partial solution in the present time. As building smaller does indeed do all that we want it to do, at the same time we can already see that the powerful pressures driving gentrification and the overall cost of living are systemic and relentless. Unless we can successfully address and resolve the unbearable contradiction of our society’s voracious appetite for “growth” within our Earth’s finite biosphere, nothing we can invent will ultimately prove sustainable. In response to ongoing economic pressure as the cost of land and living only increases, the pressure to reduce in scale will clearly never end. So I’m asking you, the reader to consider the question of “how small can we go?” Can we get shorter, or thinner, or halve our personal scale every few years in response to the cost of living, as we keep making our places smaller, teenier, or even microscopic? How small can we go, and how much are we willing to give up as we try?
 
For now, let’s take the steps that are in front of us, learn as we go, and then see what our next steps will be. This is a powerful movement, one that brings more to everyone through sharing, simplifying, and reducing our individual and combined impact. I’m betting that as building and planning codes adjust in response, so will bureaus and leaders, developers and bankers, and very likely everyone else.

Want to learn more about building small? You may be interested in the upcoming 2015 Build Small Live Large Summit on Friday November 6, 2015. It will be held at the PSU Smith Center. The summit will cover topics like ADUs, cluster cottages and small house communities, space-efficient design strategies, and much more. You can register here.
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South Burlingame Message Board

10/1/2015

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From Concept to Creation: A Community Message Board
By Tammy Straw-Dunn

Initiated by a small group of neighbors, this community message board was brought to fruition through donations & volunteered time, collaborating with The City Repair Project & the Portland Bureau of Transportation. The design, includes exciting features like living roof, re-purposed hardware, and artistic mosaic work at the foundations, created by neighbors of all ages.
 
The South Burlingame neighborhood is a mix of residents who have lived here since they grew up in the neighborhood in the 1950s, including active senior walkers & gardeners, empty nesters, renting students, and many young, new families. The residents are excited to meet and participate in activities with their neighbors and were looking for better ways to share their interests and hear about planned activities than word-of-mouth or scattered email list serves. 
 
The planning, construction, and continued use of this message board all represent a wonderful and engaging way to foster community… that is easy for any neighborhood to replicate!
 
Here is a fun, pictoral How-To of our process!
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​Concrete Foundations
Build form work & structure; pour concrete; remove forms once set.
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Mosaic Artwork
Collect, break, & sort tile pieces; mortar design to backer board; mortar designed panels to pair of concrete foundations; grout & sponge-rinse completed tile work.
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Living Roof & Sign Board
Mill salvaged wood to build sign board; stain wood surfaces; build roof with waterproof membrane, root barrier, flashing, & drainage openings at lower fascia; line roof bed with moisture blanket & filter fabric;  spread river rocks at lower edge for drainage & roll filter fabric beneath to hold in place; fill roof box with soil mixture; plant with sedum in autumn.  
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Communities vs. Networks

4/9/2015

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Article from The Art Of Manliness, July 1, 2014
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Communities Vs. Networks: To Which Do You Belong? 

In making his newest documentary, Korengal, author and filmmaker Sebastian Junger wanted to explore the answer to the question of why — despite its dangers and deprivations — men actually miss war when their tour of duty is over. A large part of the answer is the intense camaraderie created in combat — a brotherhood that they lack when they return home. In a recent interview, Junger posits that this absence of camaraderie is often at the root of why soldiers sometimes struggle so acutely to adjust to life after deployment. They come home, Junger says, and realize for the first time what an “alienated society” they truly live in. What they need, he argues, is a country that “operates in more of a community way.”

He then adds: “But frankly, that’s what we need.”

Unfortunately, true community in our modern world is hard to find for soldiers and civilians alike. Instead, we increasingly live out our lives as members of networks. This transition from community to network life is truly at the heart of the increasing feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and anomie that many people experience in the modern age. We’ve never been so “connected” — and yet so isolated at the same time.

While networks often borrow from the language of community, the two models of sociality are not the same. In an essay included in the book Dumbing Us Down, author John Gatto sharply elucidates the differences, and argues that if we truly want to experience “the Good Life” and develop fully as human beings, we need to spend more time in communities and less time in networks.

Today I will share some of Gatto’s key points, explore the way networks emptily ape communities, and touch on a few things we can all do to create a greater sense of community in our lives.

Networks vs. Communities

Networks Are Large and Anonymous; Communities Are Small and Intimate

With networks, the bigger they are the better. As Gatto notes, “’More’ may not be ‘better,’ but ‘more’ is always more profitable for the people who make a living out of networking.” Continually increasing in size may even be necessary for a network’s very survival. For example, as a platform like Facebook increases its number of employees, the cost of its servers, and its obligation to please shareholders, it has to keep on accumulating more and more users to stay afloat.

Because networks are so large, anonymity reigns. Members do not meet face-to-face, do not know if the people they interact with digitally are even who they say they are, and may have no idea who also belongs to the network. Because of the lack of physical intimacy, a culture of honor and shame cannot function, necessitating the erection of numerous rules and regulations to check and control members’ behavior.

In contrast, communities have inherent limits on size. Unlike networks, if communities don’tstop growing, they’ll die. According to Dunbar’s Number, most humans can’t maintain more than around 150 meaningful relationships. Anthropologists have found that hunter-gatherer societies hover around 150 members before they split. In Western military history, the size of a military company — the smallest autonomous and fully functioning unit — has been around 150 members.

If a community gets too big, people get overlooked. And because members no longer face the social scrutiny of their peers, they can opt out of contributing without shame or consequence. Once that disengagement happens, community life slowly begins to crumble.
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Networks Are Artificial, Top-Down; Communities Are Organic, Bottom-Up

Networks are typically artificial; they rarely form organically. And they’re invariably created, and then governed, in a top-down fashion. Policies and regulations are decreed from on high with little or no input from the majority of the people who make up the network. Because those at the top are so removed physically and psychologically from those at the bottom, the solutions ultimately proffered are often out of touch and highly ineffective. Here’s a perfect example: The other day I was at a big-box retailer and mentioned to a cashier how warm it felt inside. She told me that the store’s thermostat was controlled from the corporate headquarters…in New Jersey. “They obviously don’t know how hot it gets here in Oklahoma,” she said with a sigh.

Even when the powers that be in a network ask for input from its lower-level members, the request for feedback is usually a token gesture lacking in any efficacy. For example, corporations sometimes survey their employees about their satisfaction with their job, but don’t make any changes after reviewing the results. Similarly, the White House has created the “We the People” petitioning system where, if 100,000 people sign a petition within 30 days, an official from the administration will offer a response; no action is taken beyond this token acknowledgement. When networks solicit feedback, the aim is to pacify members with the illusion, and only the illusion, of their having a voice and influence.

Communities, on the other hand, are organic and autonomous. They’re made up of a collection of real families that are bound together by geography and shared values. When facing a problem, individuals within a community band together to come up with a solution that will work for them. Because the people trying to address problems within the community — including its leaders — are familiar with the group’s unique needs, the solutions that are generated are typically more effective.


Networks Encourage Passivity and Consumption; Communities Require Action and Contribution


Because there are so many people in a network, members assume someone else will take care of problems that arise. But because that’s what everyone else is thinking, nothing gets done. People will step around someone in distress on the street in a big city, or pass the collection plate at a giant church, figuring other people will help. The anonymity of the crowd allows the passive bystander to escape shame.

Networks not only breed passivity, but encourage consumption. They’re all about what you can get, rather than what you must give. Oftentimes you can buy your way into networks, and because you’re paying for the service, you don’t feel obligated to offer any other form of contribution. The network doesn’t ask for anything either. It’s a business transaction. When you join a gym, for instance, once you pay your monthly dues your part of the deal is done — nothing else is expected of you. In a network, the members provide the money, and the network provides the experience. You are wholly consumer, rather than creator.

Even when contributions are mildly encouraged, because networks are large and anonymous, people can get away with taking from the pot but not adding to it. For example, you can join an online forum, and post some questions in order to pick the brains of other members. While it would be nice to offer advice in return, you’re certainly not obligated to do so. You can come in to a network, get what you need, and leave.

In contrast, in communities you get and you give; you can take from the collective pot, but you’re required to add to it too. There’s a sense of duty and obligation on this point. In a community, the group is small enough that people know who is and who isn’t being taken care of, and who is and who isn’t stepping in to help. If you don’t pull your weight and you’re perfectly capable of doing so, you face social repercussions.
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Networks Can Be Location Independent; Communities Are Attached to a Place 

With networks, you don’t actually have to be physically in the presence of the other members of the network to participate in the group. You can work from home for a corporation whose headquarters are halfway around the world or take part in online discussions about starting your own business while you’re vacationing in Thailand.

Communities, on the other hand, are attached to a physical place. They require you to be geographically close to your fellow community members. By necessitating physical presence, and face-to-face interactions, communities force individuals to be accountable to one another.

Networks Divide a Person Into Parts; Communities Nurture the Whole Person

Networks only ask for the part of a person that’s pertinent to that particular network’s limited and specialized aim. When we go to work, we don’t talk much about our politics or our religious beliefs (in fact, asking people about those things can get employers and co-workers in trouble with the law); when we attend PTA meetings, we don’t bring up our work; when we go to our CrossFit class, we talk burpees but not about burping babies. The offering of only one narrow slice of ourselves is especially pernicious on social networks like Facebook and Instagram, where we show others a glowing highlight reel of our lives, but hide the not-so-pretty behind-the-scenes parts.

By splitting the person up, the network promises efficiency. But according to Gatto, “this is, in fact, a devil’s bargain, since on the promise of some future gain one must surrender the wholeness of one’s present humanity. If you enter into too many of these bargains, you will split yourself into many specialized pieces, none of them completely human.” Because we divide ourselves between so many different networks, “no time is available to reintegrate” the different pieces of our personality. “This, ironically, is the destiny of many successful networkers and doubtless generates much business for divorce courts and therapists of a variety of persuasions.”

Communities, on the other hand, nurture the whole person. A community, as Gatto puts it, “is a place in which people face each other over time in all their human variety: good parts, bad parts, and all the rest.” There’s no identity splintering in a community. Yes, you may have the role of town barber, but people don’t treat you merely as a barber in one-off transactions. They treat you as Bill — husband to a wife with terminal cancer; father of three beautiful children; cantankerous man who’s capable of immense kindness; devout and dedicated deacon in his church who also happens to be a free-thinker. Oh, and you cut men’s hair for a living.

When a person suffers a crisis in a community (say for instance a debilitating accident), the community comes to help the whole person. Food is brought over; yard work is done; rooms are cleaned; hats are passed around; spiritual and emotional comfort is given. The same person steeped in network living would have to depend on paying strangers specialized in different areas to get the same sort of help: a cook, a house cleaner, a yard worker, and a therapist.
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Is This Group I’m Part of a Network or a Community?

Ever since I learned about the network/community distinction, I’m continually analyzing whether the groups I belong to are one or the other.

In our modern age, intimate, face-to-face communities are hard to come by; while exceptions exist, networks have almost completely taken over how Americans socially organize themselves. So in evaluating the groups you belong to, it’s perhaps better to ask if they aremore like a network, or more like a community. The following questions can help you think through where your group falls on the spectrum:

  • Do the rules, regulations, and culture of my group come from top leaders that I have never met personally, or do they originate from the group itself?
  • Do I know the names of every person in my group and interact with them face-to-face?
  • Does my group have a physical meeting place?
  • If I left the group, would anyone know I was gone? Would there be any repercussions for doing so?
  • If I got sick, or needed a favor, how many members of my group could I count on for visits and assistance?
  • Am I required to contribute to the communal pot, or can I utilize the benefits of the group without making any contributions beyond dues/fees/taxes?
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Beware of Networks Wearing Community’s Clothing!

For most of human history we ran in small, intimate tribes. We’re social animals, and our brains are evolved for life in close groups. We crave the bonds and sense of belonging and stability that communities provide. In the modern age, these vital communities have disappeared, so we have turned to networks to fulfill our social needs.

But networks can never be a fully satisfying replacement for communities. They’re not designed for social intimacy and fulfillment — they’re designed for efficiency and growth.

And yet we continue to hold out hope that networks can perform a function for which they are fundamentally unsuited. And this hope is so tempting to buy into because many networks attempt to provide what Gatto calls “cartoon simulations of communities.” In other words, networks like to dress themselves up in the clothing of community.

For example, the idea of a “global community” has been much ballyhooed in our time (see The World Is Flat), but running it through the above requirements quickly reveals the idea to be an utter farce. If your only obligation to helping other members involves texting a $10 donation to aid tsunami victims every now and again, what you’re part of is a network, not a community.

Another perfect example of networks masquerading as communities is when giant corporations claim that they consider their employees and customers to be “family.” Except in the corporate version of “family,” members are charged for basic services and can be fired if another “brother” or “sister” will work more cheaply from India.

Marketers perpetrate what is perhaps the most insidious form of networks pretending to be communities. Taking a cue from religion — a strong source of community identity for tens of thousands of years — marketers have turned commercial brands into counterfeit communities. In his book Primalbranding, marketing expert Patrick Hanlon shows how businesses can turn their customers into cultish zealots by taking advantage of humanity’s innate desire to believe in something higher than themselves and to belong to a group. According to Hanlon, successful brands should mimic religious faiths by having a creation story, creeds, icons (logos), rituals, a charismatic leader, sacred words, and non-believers who the believers can use as a foil to buttress their identity.

Apple is perhaps the most successful of these pseudo-religious brands. We all know Apple’s creation story, we know their creed (Think Different), their ubiquitous half-eaten apple icon, their charismatic leader (Steve Jobs), and who the non-believers are (those philistine PC users). Apple even has their holy sanctuaries (the Apple Store). People who use Macs feel a connection to one another. Like they’re part of a community. Except they’re not.

The growing fitness industry is another example of the way in which businesses have done an excellent job of gilding what are really networks with the polish of community life. Enterprises like Crossfit and Tough Mudder have managed to make lots of money, while elevating their businesses into “movements” of loyal, zealous followers.

Online entrepreneurs have become especially adept at creating networks that have the veneer of community. Thanks to Seth Godin, many websites and blogs will have a big square in their sidebar saying something like “Join My Tribe! Sign up for my email newsletter!” But the idea of an online tribe completely contradicts what an actual tribe is. Members of true tribes live and work together on a daily basis, see each other face-to-face, are expected to contribute to the well-being of the tribe, and are rooted to a physical place. In online “tribes,” however, you’ll likely never see your fellow “tribesmen” in the flesh, you can drop out anytime, and your only interaction with other members will be about the specific topic that that particular online community is dedicated to, be it fitness or entrepreneurship.

(I should note that the forum section on The Art of Manliness was originally called the “Community.” I gave it that name back in 2009 when I didn’t know better. I naively hoped it could be a place where genuine community was fostered, but like all online forums, it’s definitely just a network. While the URL is still community.artofmanliness.com, instead of calling it the “Community,” I’m just going to start referring to it as the “Forum” because that’s what it is. You live and you learn.)

The façade of community quickly disappears when emergency strikes in your life and you really need somebody. Is the Apple community going to rally behind you and help you out? Of course not. Your fellow online “tribe” members might raise some money for you if they even know about your problem, but they won’t come visit you or provide actual human-to-human services. The fact that the only thing online communities can really do for their members is raise money is a telltale sign that they’re actually just networks and not communities. Community contributions should “pinch” — they should feel like a sacrifice. Lots of people are willing to click on a link to Paypal, but how many will come over to clean out your bedpan? As Gatto puts it, “when people in networks suffer, they suffer alone.”

The lack of genuine care from people in network life isn’t malicious. They are more than likely very caring people. The problem is they’re part of the network, and networks artificially divide us from each other. “I really would like to visit Jim, but you know, we’ve never hung out outside work, so it might be weird if I came by.” The unfortunate result of networked life is that it makes us feel lonely even when we’re surrounded by masses of people. Gatto describes the sad, shallow nature of networked life:

“With a network, what you get at the beginning is all you ever get. Networks don’t get better or worse; their limited purpose keeps them pretty much the same all the time, as there just isn’t much development possible. The pathological state which eventually develops out of these constant repetitions of thin human contact is a feeling that your “friends” and “colleagues” don’t really care about you beyond what you can do for them, that they have no curiosity about the way you manage your life, no curiosity about your hopes, fears, victories, defeats. The real truth is that the “friends” falsely mourned for their indifference were never friends, just fellow networkers from whom in fairness little should be expected beyond attention to the common interest.”

So beware of false tribes, which come to you in community’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening networks.
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Learning How to Live in a Community Again

While I’ve certainly put the idea of networks through the ringer in this post, I don’t want folks to get the idea that they’re evil. They can serve a good purpose. They’re good for moving ahead in business, sharing information, raising money, and even meeting acquaintances that later turn into deeper relationships. They’re just not a replacement for true communities. Unfortunately we treat them as such. The result is a world where it is as if people eat only junk food, and don’t understand why their bodies are wasting away. Communities provide us with vital physical “nutrients” that we all need to thrive and be happy.

While it’s difficult to find “pure” tribe-like communities in our modern age, it is definitely possible to cultivate a greater community ethos in the groups you already participate in. As mentioned above, it’s better to not think of communities vs. networks as an either/or proposition, but rather as a spectrum. Churches, neighborhoods, schools, gyms, clubs, and so on can be more like networks or more like communities. Here are a few suggestions to move the ticker towards the latter:

Shoot for small. We’re made to run in tribes of around 150 people. When looking to join a church, deciding what school to send your kids to, or even joining a gym, keep that number in mind. Join groups where you’re able to know every other member by name.

Break larger groups into smaller ones. Belonging to a larger network isn’t a bad thing, if you can find a way to create smaller, more intimate groups within it. Megachurches, for example, often encourage members to join one of their many small groups in order to establish more close-knit bonds than are possible during their huge Sunday worship services.

Create you own tribes. Don’t just be a joiner. The best way to find a community is to start your own tribe. And when you do, don’t take the easy way out of borrowing a preformed, predefined structure; create your group’s culture from the ground up. People often ask me to start an official Art of Manliness men’s group. I have no plans to, because the result would be a top-down network, not a true community. It’s the latter that men need. You don’t need me to show you how to make your own fraternity of men — figure it out together with your brothers.

Get involved. The more passive people are, the more a potential community devolves into a network. For example, many people today treat public schools as a consumer transaction; I’ve paid my taxes, and once I drop my kid off at the curb, my part of the deal is done. Instead, you could volunteer and get involved with the school, get to know the teachers and the other families, and boost the school’s feeling of community. Same thing with your neighborhood --start actively finding ways to get to know the people on your block.

Meet physically. There are churches out there that offer online “services” where you watch the sermon online, give money online, and even pray and chat with other members online. The intention is good — bringing the bread of life to those who otherwise might not get it at all. But such a set-up only feeds one part of the soul; their need for community will remain famished. Online interactions can be fun and convenient — a supplement to our lives — but they can’tsubstitute for in-person meetings.

Share your whole self. The more your group encourages people to bring their whole self, rather than just a slice of it, the more the group feels like a community. For example, many corporate globo-gyms are soulless networks, but small powerlifting gyms often feel like communities, as the members not only know each other’s workout habits, but about their families and jobs, too.

Be prepared to sacrifice. Oftentimes people lament that they want to be part of communities, but what they really mean is that they want to enjoy the benefits of communities without having to deal with any of their responsibilities and hassles. They want to get, but not give. Being part of a community means not only taking from the pot, but putting into it; if you’re not willing to help out fellow members when they’re in need, and deal with the annoyances inherent to any close-knit group, you’ll never move beyond existing in a network.

Live by family. These final two suggestions will likely be controversial, but I would argue that they truly represent the best ways to be part of a community.

The heart of community is family; not just the nuclear family, but extended family. For centuries people lived near their parents and grandparents, along with their uncles, aunts, and cousins. They were your go-to, tight-knit support group. In our present age, one’s parents and siblings are strung out all across the country. You see them once a year at Christmas, and keep track of each other through your Facebook updates. Family has become just another network.

I have long struggled with the fact that while I’d like to live somewhere that allowed more opportunities for outdoor recreation, like Colorado or Vermont, both Kate and my parents and siblings are here in Oklahoma. I have long pondered which is better: living in a place you love, or living by family? While I still pine for the mountains, for now, family wins hands down. Our kids adore their grandparents (and vice versa!), and they’ll get to romp around with their cousins throughout their youth. They’ll get to feel like part of a familial community, rather than nodes in a disconnected network.

Some people relish being far from their families, because then they don’t have to participate in the inevitable hassle of familial drama. But that hassle is part and parcel of our humanity.

Don’t move very frequently. In order to form a community, you need to live and interact with the same people for a long time — to go through a myriad of ups and downs together. People will never know your whole self if you trade them in for new friends every two years. Community requires being rooted in a single place for an extended period of time.

The likelihood of 20-somethings moving to another state has fallen 40% since the 1980s. Various reasons for why young people are staying put have been floated: some posit that the trauma of the recession has made them risk-averse, that Facebook has made them less adventurous, or that they’re just plain unambitious. As such, my fellow Millennials have been derided as the “Go-Nowhere Generation.”

I’d venture to say there’s another reason for the trend that everyone else seems to have missed: my generation, having grown up socially famished in the vacuous network, now rightly craves the nourishment of true community.
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Images courtesy of The City Repair Project's archives & events.
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Lessons from Wright & Taliesin West

1/20/2015

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Text and pictures by Mark Lakeman, January 2015
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I have just returned from a journey to Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. The trip was extremely successful, and also deeply inspiring. 

As many of our friends know, communitecture does a tremendous amount of outreach as part of our goal to inspire and activate people everywhere. We travel all over North America, to as many as four cities per month to share stories of how we have been able to achieve great things by working together with people to design and create sustainable and beautiful environments where communities may thrive together. These stories are always told as being in the context of Portland, Oregon where the larger culture is steadily evolving and becoming more sustainable as a whole. Our hope is that we motivate people to act where they live, to get off the couch and work to transform the spaces where they live into vital, beautiful, and sustainable places. 

This recent journey took me to Frank Lloyd Wright's home in the desert, the legendary nexus of visionary design known as Taliesin West. There is so much to say about the place, and of the experience of being there, and can share a little of it now. Foremost that it is a shockingly beautiful place that embodies and expresses all that Wright espoused during his long and brilliant life. The people who remain there are a thriving community, working well to understand and further develop Wright's ideas so that they are broadly owned, diverse, applicable to contemporary culture, and timely in their ecological relevance. 
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Any visitor to Taliesin – and the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture that still thrives there – will be blown away by the sheer power of its architectural reality and the living legacy of the culture and school that carries on more than 56 years after Wright's death. They have gone through a series of inevitable growing pains over those years, and have come through the other side still standing strong. The architecture school has an excellent, highly qualified faculty who bring a broad set of backgrounds and experiences to the design studio. They are doing an outstanding job of preparing their students for a very high rate of graduation and placement in the field, more than 90% in both categories.

The professors are doing well at interpreting an extremely strong design tradition that is the most creative of all schools in the USA, while at the same time instilling new ideas that appear to push the boundaries of what even Wright understood in his time. Urban issues, sustainability, and ephemeral projects all sparkle on the design boards of the studio, where an endless stream of brilliant ideas have been hatched before, for nearly a century.


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Talk about an inspiring atmosphere: inside the design studio of Frank Lloyd Wright & now the students at Taliesin West.
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It's all smiles & thought-provoking conversation with faculty Michael DesBarres (left), student Daniel Chapman (right) and me, Mark Lakeman (middle)
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A peek inside the theatre where I presented on January 15th. 
The Frank Lloyd Wright School has an accredited master's degree program, and the student body is as diverse and inspired as any. The students are energized, respectful, and immensely helpful to all who pass through their home. Out in the desert beyond the amazing campus that seems to rise out of the landscape and gleam, the students have built generations of amazing experimental housing projects. Some nestle into the landscape quietly, while other designs declare themselves in the sun and harshness of the relentless heat and climate of Arizona. 
Here are just a few examples of the creative, student-built structures in the Taliesin landscape; this aspect of the architectural curriculum truly embodies the “learning by doing” educational approach advocated by Frank Lloyd Wright. 
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The whole experience was viscerally transformative and it is difficult many days later not to continue feeling absolutely motivated. Wright proved that design could transform the world, to help people come closer to nature, to reflect the best of their character, to express solutions to vexing problems into the built world. Though he is no longer living, his ideas live on and are becoming stronger, not weaker, through designers like us who live on to carry forth the work of designing a better world.
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This is how Frank Lloyd Wright deals with a decorative vase that's too big for the window shelf: cut a hole in the glass! 
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Every one of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings includes his red "signature" tile; I found it at Taliesin!
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Even his building's doors are no simple design, but an elegant and expressive craft.
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Even the giant LEGO model of Taliesin is on display here!
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Mark Lakeman & City Repair

1/12/2015

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By Jeff Stein, President of the Cosanti Foundation
June 2014
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above: community members of all ages gather annually to repaint their beloved Share-It Square intersection
“Grow where you’re planted,” is a famous saying of the traditional Hopi people. It’s what placemaker Mark Lakeman has done. Mark has spent most of his life planted in Portland, Oregon, where in 1996 he began growing the City Repair Project. 

Through City Repair, communities of volunteers have built over 300 sustainable works in Portland, making places that connect people to each other and their city. City Repair shows a way to reclaim and repopulate public space to help make cities sustainable in the long run. 

Mark’s placemaking is a result of good parenting. I smile when I say that, but it’s true: his father, architect Richard Lakeman, founded the urban design division of Portland’s planning department and helped create Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square. His mother, too, concentrated on design and public space. Architecture professor Sandra Davis Lakeman is famous for her investigations of natural light and the Italian piazza.  

American cities west of the Ohio River were planned by the Continental Congress’ National Land Ordinance of 1785, which organized most of America into a Roman colonial grid. As Americans we have the right to free assembly. But our gridded American cities have fewer public spaces than cities in any other developed country. We have the right to assemble but no place to do it; streets and intersections but no piazzas, plazas, or gathering spaces. In Portland, or Phoenix near where I live, the grid extends as far as you can see. But it’s about cars and separation – not places people can belong to. 
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left: 24-hr self-service cob Sellwood Bee station at Share-It Square; right: Tivnu Youth volunteers installing a Free Little Library
Mark Lakeman is reclaiming street intersections. City Repair has painted them over, planted around them, and even de-paved them, taking up asphalt and replacing it with pavers or bricks. Create a really beautiful place and people will slow down to be part of it. What has followed at these intersections is bulletin boards, meeting places, pop-up tea houses. Here is character, lovability and work that is sustaining to a community. 

In too many locales if you try to organize a community gathering place officials will point out, “That’s public space, no one can use that.” It happened at Lakeman’s first project.  300 projects later, placemaking has proven to be at the core of sustainability.

below: neighbors and community gather annually to repaint Sunnyside Piazza
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SOTOKOTO Japanese Magazine Interview

12/30/2014

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Published in SOTOKOTO Japanese Magazine, November 2014

Sotokoto is a popular Japanese lifestyle magazine that offers tips on leading a comfortable and fashionable life to those who follow the “Lifestyle Of Health And Sustainability” (LOHAS). The goal of this lifestyle is balancing the coexistence of individual comfort with the sustainability of the entire society.

The target readers of Sotokoto are people who are city-dwellers, respecting the positive aspects of traditional culture while also seeking enrichment through a modern lifestyle of health and sustainability. It is also an in-­flight magazine of Japanese Airlines.

We are pleased to represent one such model lifestyle here in Portland. Mark Lakeman’s community activism and work with the City Repair Project are examples of reviving traditional values through reclaiming the public commons in our contemporary urban grid. 

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Sebastopol VBC

9/29/2014

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Sebastopol's First Annual Village Building Convergence

This is the first year of village-building in Sebastopol, California, as they gear up to change their own part of the world! This small-town convergence was like no other event, with a huge percentage of the local population involved in painting installations in downtown streets, numerous ecological building projects, and lots of ways to engage kids... 

...including the design and creation of an actual Fairie Village among an urban grove of lovely coastal cedar trees! Here's a peek a the creativity and imagination found in almost 40 tiny fairie homes! 
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In addition to the imaginative and kid-friendly Fairie Village, the Sebastopol VBC featured more than 15 outdoor projects and installations! These included the most urban street paintings we've ever seen. The whole assemblage was more than 800 feet long, with a fiercely beautiful "Spirit Bird" and a giant "Spirit Wolf's Head," both made of combinations of elements, animals, fruits and vegetables grown locally. There were also a plethora of animal tracks all across the streets in every direction, and a huge school of triumphant salmon swimming against car traffic! Other projects included permaculture installations of every sort! Amazing and inspiring!
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During the Village Building Convergence in Sebastopol, there were tours of various unique and inspiring aspects of this small California town. This particular neighborhood was among the most inspiring of the places we visited in Sebastopol. A beloved, internationally-acclaimed sculptor named Patrick Amiot has been offering his work to dozens of neighbors up and down his own street, and now Florence Avenue is one of the most amazing streets in this galaxy! They are masterful, inspiring, and hilarious!
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