Springdale Gardens CoHousing Group
We have submitted our planning application, and hope to receive news from Hackney Council quite soon. As we expected, there are some neighbours who are opposing our scheme. We empathise with them and can understand that any type of change affects us individually so it is usually difficult to accept - but after 2 years of careful consideration, we feel certain that this will be a good thing for the whole in the long term and are actively trying to keep good communication going between us.

For this reason, we have set up a website click here where you can find FAQ, hopefully making things clearer to local residents. Fortunately we have also gained support from other neighbours who realise that change is inevitable and that we are building something more friendly than any profit-orientated commercial developer would. We choose to live in London after all and it is an amazing place to be able to achieve co-housing... we hope that we are on the right track!
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(from last year 2010)
We are a small group of mixed households, currently 7 adults and 6 children overall, developing a small cohousing project in Stoke Newington, North London. We came together by chance (or destiny, depending on how you look at it!) when two members, after looking around for almost 2 years, had found a rare opportunity to purchase a disused, 1000 sq. m. backland site within their local residential area, and asked others to join them to be able to co-create their dream of building a community in urban London.

The current group formed over a period of 12 months (meeting almost every Sunday) and were fortunate enough to be able to collectively purchase the site in September 2009, We are now working with local architects to develop a scheme for the project. Our hope is to build a modest but architecturally innovative set of buildings that embrace cohousing principles within an urban context and make use of properly sustainable approaches to construction, energy use, transport, and land management, maximizing shared resources, such as laundry facilities, where practicable and affordable. A 70-100 sq. m. shared communal space is at the heart of our ambitions for the scheme, which we hope will be able to host a range of activities. Communal gardens and organic vegetable growing space are also core aspects of the project. Working on a tight urban site surrounded by residential homes provides a set of challenges not typically found in many other cohousing schemes, but we are working hard to create something elegant and compact that can integrate sensitively into the existing neighbourhood.

We are constituted as a company limited by guarantee and operate consensus decision-making procedures in all aspects of the project - something made easier by being a relatively small group. We were able to purchase the land outright using existing funds or additional mortgage borrowing and are exploring options to finance the construction, either through a company loan or individual mortgages. We come from a variety of cultural and professional backgrounds, from designer to artist to psychotherapist, and have not adopted any particular philosophy, beyond the basic principles of cohousing and a wish to work democratically and considerately.

SGCG is not currently taking on new members, though this may change in the future. We welcome contact with other cohousing projects or those considering starting up, especially within urban settings, as we feel that exploring different ways of living within cities is increasingly important.

The group's website is under development and a link will be posted here when it goes live.

To contact SGCG, please email Giovanna Mabanta at gioi...@gmail.com (click on 3 blue dots to get full email.)