03 September 2015, The Tablet

Why can’t we just live together?

by Sarah Hayes

 
A Place of Refuge: an experiment in communal living –the story of Windsor Hill WoodTOBIAS JONES Under One Roof: the story of a Christian communityROGER SAWTELL Dreamstreets: a journey through Britain’s village utopias JACQUELINE YALLOP Community is something that modern life keeps at arm’s length. Even in overcrowded cities, we live in small, separate units and we relish our privacy. In simpler times, when community life and sharing accommodation was an economic necessity, people were considered odd if they left their towns or villages, or even if they lived alone. Today it is the odd who live in communities. Is it this oddness that makes experiments in living with strangers so fascinating to us ordinary folk? Or is it that living outside the norm has a built-in poten
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