TO SEE PLANS CLICK ON “WHAT WE DO” -  THE AURORA STREET POCKET NEIGHBORHOOD!

Picture by permission from Ross Chapin Pocket Neighborhoods: Project: Greenwood Avenue Cottages Architect: Ross Chapin Architects Developer: The Cottage Company. This picture is a representation of the two homes adjacent to the alley in the Aurora Dwelling Circle.

New Earth Living LLC is a housing development company and general contractor committed to creating a new model for living that fosters social connection, affordability and a small ecological footprint!

These micro-communities are designed to foster interaction among residents and make it easy for neighbors to share resources and live happier, simpler, less resource-dependent lives. Residents can participate in the design of common spaces and the customization of their individual homes. email: coz@newearthliving.net  607-327-1081

We are currently designing the homes of the Aurora Dwelling Circle to incorporate many of the principles from the book: Pocket Neighborhoods,  by Ross Chapin: www.pocket-neighborhoods.net

Just beyond the porches of the three new homes are small private gardens creating peaceful personal spaces for residents to nurture and enjoy.

By Anne Marie Cummings in Tompkins Weekly

Susan Cosentini and Rob Morache at the communal garden of the Aurora Dwelling Circle.

The Aurora Dwelling Circle
(ADC) brings the principals of
EcoVillage to downtown Ithaca.
Susan Cosentini, of Cosentini Construction and New Earth Living
is at the helm of  ADC, a pilot project located
at 519-523 N. Aurora St. She will receive $25,000,
a portion of the federal grant, for energy modeling
and monitoring equipment .
Cosentini expects the groundbreaking
for the pilot project, with a total estimated cost
of $800,000, to happen in late summer or early
fall.
As the founder and owner of New Earth
Living, as well as the developer of the ADC and
future dwelling circles, Cosentini is thrilled.
“Dwelling circles are small, urban eco-villages
of five to eight households, supporting neighbor
relationships and resource sharing, while
respecting privacy and individuality,” she
explains. Dwelling Circles offer complete, individual
dwelling units, with shared indoor and outdoor
spaces for social gatherings, recreation,
and other uses such as a bike garage, workshop,
yard and garden, root cellar, basement storage
area and a large kitchen and entertainment area
available for community dinners.
One of eight advisors on New Earth Living’s
board is James Howard Kunstler, an expert in
suburban and urban development and peak oil,
as well as the author of “The Geography of
Nowhere” and “The Long Emergency.” “New
Earth Living is doing a great job of re-thinking
the way we live in the U.S.A. as the fiasco of suburbia
becomes more and more self-evidently
crazy,” he says.
Riane Eisler, another New Earth Living board
member, is a social scientist and the bestselling
author of “The Chalice and the Blade” and “The
Real Wealth of Nations.” “This paradigm shifting,
comprehensive approach to living offers a
new model for people to live in partnership with
each other and the earth,” she says. (more…)

Expert in suburban and urban development and Best selling author, of The Geography of Nowhere, and The Long Emergency, J Howard Kunstler: “NewEarthLiving is doing a great job of re-thinking the way we live in the USA as the fiasco of suburbia become more and more self-evidently crazy.”

Riane Eisler: Eminent social scientist.  Bestselling author of  The Chalice and the Blade and The Real Wealth of Nations and president of the Center for Partnership Studies.  “I enthusiastically support New Earth Living and the Dwelling Circle concept, this paradigm shifting, comprehensive approach to living offers a new model for people to live in partnership with each other and the earth!”

When Brian and Colleen Ducey’s two adult children moved out, their large empty home on a quiet dead-end street in Seattle suddenly lost its homey feel.

They looked for something smaller, but their only options were condominiums — until they saw an ad for an unusual new development just across city limits in Shoreline, Wash.: Eight cottages around a central garden. The first view from the access drive was the gable of a commons building and colorful rooftops jutting up behind it.

One look at the charming cluster of small homes (less than 1,000 square feet) and the Duceys put money down, sold their house and moved in five weeks later. (more…)

Pocket Neighborhoods

Dwelling Circles are Pocket Neighborhoods plus three important additions: Sustainability, social justice and intentional creation of trust, respect and care with the Listening Workshop.

Good developments come in small packages

Review by Philip Langdon New Urban Network

Pocket Neighborhoods Creating Small-Scale Community in a Large-Scale World By Ross Chapin

Ross Chapin’s  cottage courts and clusters of eight to 12 modest-sized houses, organized around a shared green space, looked immensely appealing every time I saw them pictured in magazines.

In this beautifully illustrated hardcover, Chapin, tells how, as a young architect, he focused on “designing individual homes fitted to the clients’ particular needs and their sites.

“Yet no matter how well designed these homes may have been, I was left with the nagging feeling that I wasn’t able to address the needs and desires of living in a community,” Chapin writes. “Nearly all the neighborhoods I worked in were merely collections of individual houses … with little real connection among neighbors.” Eventually he met developer Jim Soules, who set him on a course of designing clusters of cottages — mini-communities tucked into their larger neighborhoods. He and Soules were onto something: “pocket neighborhoods” which “can help mend the web of belonging, care, and support needed in a frayed world.” They found there was a market waiting: people who desired simplicity in a home, who “wanted to live in a ground-based single-family neighborhood, without the long to-do lists that come with family-sized houses (more…)