Intentional Communities Newsletter: April 6, 2013

Bookshelf Special - Pocket Neighborhoods

Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating Small-Scale Community in a Large-Scale World   
  by Ross Chapin and Sarah Susanka
  Hardcover, 2011. ISBN 978-1600851070. 9 x 9.5 inches. 224 Pages.

Pocket Neighborhoods is one of those books you'll want to show your friends and family. An exceptionally beautiful book with full color pictures on every page, showing small homes built close together, common spaces, gardens and people interacting! In most pictures focusing on home design the people often are curiously absent, but in this book about designing for community, the shots include the people actually living there.

Even more useful, there are many sample floor plans and community layouts . Ross Chapin's projects have won numerous awards and been featured in over 25 other books. In this one, he explores the idea of a "Pocket Neighborhood" which takes cues from Cohousing to turn the lifeless, car-dominated streets of suburbia into vibrant and thriving neighborhoods. These magical places are booming in popularity as regular people, previously unindoctrinated in the wonders of intentional community, re-examine the American Dream and discover that perhaps McMansions aren't it.

The book starts with an exploration of history, looking at some older neighborhood designs that really fostered a sense of community, it proceeds with several case studies of projects embarked upon by Chapin and others. Sprinkled throughout are design principles, the kind that "make the difference between a neighborhood and a subdivision." In a Pocket Neighborhood, a front porch isn't just an awning, the placement of the door in relation to sitting space is considered, also how wide the the porch is, the height of the railing, etc. If you are interested in how design can affect the life of a neighborhood, this book will be enlightening and well as visually seductive. 

On sale this month for $25.50, a 15% discount from the usual price of $30.00!

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