Folks, it’s been a wonderful adventure, but after almost 4 years of van living, it’s time to come back inside.

Living in the van was my way to access architecture school, and I’ve made a decision to stop that pursuit: there are certain kinds of architectural ideas that excite me (as you’ll see below), but architecture as a business is not for me. Having made that decision, and having returned quite happily to the field of social services, I find myself more than ready to reconnect with the pleasures of an indoor home. I’m excited to cook properly again, I’m excited to have an indoor place to practice my ukulele, I’m excited to have a place that’s big enough to do my physio exercises, and I’m excited to have room-mates.

Speaking of which… being who I am, of course my living arrangements will still be unusual. This year I’ve been thinking a lot about how people live together. I’ve been imagining scenarios in which we aren’t so compartmentalized, so separated from our neighbours. I believe that responsible use of space on our planet means we have to be open to living densely, that we have to give up our expectation that we each have a piece of land that is for the sole enjoyment of our little nuclear families. But currently our only model for population density comes from towers that actually prevent people from interacting with their neighbours, except through binoculars. So my question was, what would it look like to be living in close proximity to each other, where each of us has a small amount of private space and a large amount of shared space, where we live with the explicit intention of supporting and interacting with each other? Not just our lovers and our children, but our actual communities? Turns out lots of people have similar ideas, and in fact there’s a co-op in Kits where they’ve been doing it for about 30 years.

And I move in on Sunday!