Resources for Designing Communities
This page needs a researcher, someone to find good web and print resources related to designing communities. Please send us your stuff. Things this page needs: Journal and magazine article listings, good design examples on the web, some samples of site designs culled from community webpages, pointers to examples from communities. Send comments and resources to NICA@ic.org

If you are looking for eco-building stuff, click here

Web Resources

Tierra Nueva Cohousing plans 
Online plans for their site showing the arrangement of the units. 

The Group Design Process  
A chapter from the Community Resource Guide that covers working with a group to design spaces, programming, etc.

Designing the commonhouse
A chapter from the Community Resource Guide that covers issues about commonhouse designs.

Site and Home designs for social community 
A chapter from the Community Resource Guide that covers issues about site and home designs for social community.

Books

Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett. 1994.
This is clearly the best book on social design going. Lots of good practical design advise with plans and pictures galore. Highly recommended. Available from Community Bookshelf

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction Christopher Alexander 1977 Oxford University Press.
This is a classic text. It has lots of good advice in it but takes a fair amount of effort to dig it out.

Small Houses Fine Homebuilding 1992 Tauton Press
Some good practical advice and interesting designs for small spaces.

Rebuilding Community in America: Housing for Ecological Living, Personal Empowerment and the New Extended Family Ken Norwood & Kathleen Smith 1995 From the founder of the Shared Living Resource Center in Berkeley a comprehensive approach to planning, organizing and designing for sustainability. $27.50 Post paid from Sharing Living Resource Center 2375 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley, CA 94704. Available from Community Bookshelf

The Efficient House Sourcebook Robert Sardinsky & the Rocky Mountain Institute. 1992. 1739 Snowmass creek rd., Snowmass, CO, 81654. Also quarterly newsletter.

Small Spaces Azbt Brown. 1993

Housing as if People Mattered Clare Marcus 1986 University of California Berkeley Press.

Gray World, Green Heart: Technology, Nature and sustainability in the Landscape R.L. Thayer 1993. John Wiley and Sons. Deals with site planning and has a good bibliography.

Design with Nature Ian McHard 1969 Doubleday/Natural History Press.

Collaborative Communities: Cohousing, Central Living and Other New Forms of Housing With Shared Facilities Dorit Fromm 1991 Van Nostrand Press.