In Tucson’s western foothills, 28 households have spent 28 years building something that most neighborhoods have lost — a place where knowing your neighbors isn’t incidental, it’s the whole point:
The Milagro Cohousing community is a place where kids can roam freely because the cars park at the edge, and the paths between homes belong to people. Its inhabitants benefit from this simple yet effective design that (once in the community) revolves around people, not cars.
The design started not with the homes, but with the water. In a desert, that makes sense. Dozens of earthen basins and rain gardens are scattered across the site so the water soaks into the earth where it falls, within 20 minutes of a storm. And all water from toilets, sinks, and showers is treated on-site through a constructed wetland, and then pumped back up to irrigate the landscape.
Credit to : Kirsten Dirksen
