Page 23 - C.A.L.L. #45 - Summer 2019

“We are a neighbourhood in the true sense in that we know our neighbours and we keep an

eye out for them.

“If you go back several decades, to potentially when I was a child in the 50s, people knew
their neighbours and kept an eye out for the local kids.

“You could play on the streets then because there was hardly any cars like today. Your
mum knew where you were. It was a whole different way of life to how it has developed

today with its pressures of modern life, car usage, and the lack of walking.

“Cohousing is about intentional communities and a build that fosters community
engagement and opportunity. This is why we have a shared common house where we‟ve got a
number of shared facilities. We have a community kitchen that we can use to do shared
meals and other events.

“Our overarching rule is respect. Respect for each other, our built environment, our
natural environment and the environment in the greater sense.

“We are not green but we are all keen on recycling. We didn‟t want gas on site so
everything is electric and we all use suppliers who use renewable energy.

“Everything is designed to lighten our
footprint on the environment. We
also have a gym and workshop and the
great hall where we have community
meals, community rooms for pilates

and meetings, craft groups, mother
and baby meetings.

“It is all for us to use as a community.
When we are full, there will be
around 100 people plus kids. We all
know each other. It is about getting
back to a collective responsibility for
Marmalade Lane in Cambridge
the community and ourselves, each
other and the environment as well as being connected. “Don‟t get me wrong, we

communicate in the modern ways, but modern life today is totally disconnected.”

Marmalade Lane is also the first council-led cohousing scheme in the city, and was
designed by Mole Architects for joint developers TOWN and Trivselhus. It involved
extensive collaboration with the cohousing residents, with planning permission being
submitted in December 2015 and granted the following October. Construction commenced
in June 2017 and finished in January 2019.

There are currently 21 cohousing groups in the UK. The inaugural national community-led

housing conference took place in November 2017. A £200 million community housing fund
was announced at the conference by the Minister of State for Housing and Planning at
that time, Alok Sharma MP.