christine, Author at Our Urban Village

Just blocks from our doorstep: the new Oakridge Community Centre

A fifteen-minute neighbourhood walk. A five-minute rapid bus ride. A 6-minute bike ride. We’ll be just minutes away from the new Oakridge Community Centre, slated to be finished sometime in 2024. The centre is one of the community amenity contributions provided by the 28.4-acre redevelopment project of the old Oakridge Mall property. The new Oakridge …

Is urban cohousing cost effective?

There is no escaping the fact that housing in Vancouver is expensive. It’s all people talk about here in the city (apart from the rain) so despite all the great positives of living in cohousing it should be no surprise to anyone that market-priced cohousing also has a high entry point. As house prices continue …

Developer Mark Shieh sees shared living spaces as a way to bring fractured communities together

Mark Shieh understands the power of transformative spaces — he started his career working as an Imagineer for the Walt Disney Company, designing theme parks. “I still have a little of that pixie dust in me,” he says, recalling how transfixed he was by the magic of Disney’s parks and how they felt like the …

What it means to live in a Passive House

Tomo House is being built to Passive House principles which fits well with our cohousing community’s commitment to live as sustainably as we can. The positive impacts of this type of construction were brought home to us recently when we had a workshop on how Passive House is being applied specifically within Tomo House. This …

Tomo and OUV — a bit of history

In 2017 Our Urban Village began a partnership with innovative developers, Tomo (formerly known as Take Root) to build a cohousing community using a model that hadn’t been tried before in North America. OUV’s founders were struggling to find a way to build cohousing in one of North America’s priciest housing markets. When the cost …

6 ways cohousing saves money (in the long run)

It is nearly impossible to build urban cohousing below market price. In a previous article we highlighted the reasons why: astronomical land costs, expensive common space, smaller communities, inexperience of cohousers and expensive change orders during the building process. But there are other savings for families thinking about cohousing to consider. Cohousers share a lot …

TOMO House Discussed on the CBC (kinda!)

We are thrilled that our future home, TOMO House, was discussed during a recent piece on CBC’s “Spark”, a show that explores technology innovation and design in our daily lives. The host, Nora Young, was leading a discussion of what “home” will look like in 50 years alongside Sonia Solicari from the UK’s Museum of …

Viking adventurer

Carol’s Norwegian roots are obvious in her fair complexion and height, but the wandering spirit of her Scandanavian ancestors wasn’t apparent in the first years of her life. “We lived on a farm in Saskatchewan and regularly saw our extended family. Chickens, farm animals, open space — it was a wonderful childhood,” she says. When …

Excavation underway

In the past few weeks our project has gone from the removal of the single family home on the site to a giant hole in the ground. It’s been astonishing to see how quickly progress has been made. First a digger appeared on site and next thing you know, there’s a hole in the ground. …

Urban vs rural

Vancouver sea wall by Kyle Ryan - Unsplash

My friend Cathy and I ride our bikes along the streets of Vancouver often and find ourselves admiring various houses and have concluded that we suffer from “lot” envy. It’s disheartening to see huge lots with a single family home. We’re constantly comparing those lot sizes to our future development. On Instagram and Facebook, I’ve …

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Author: christine