Glossary
Every word this world uses, said plainly. Each term links to the concepts near it and the pages that use it.
46 terms
A small team with a defined domain it may decide within, linked to the wider group in both directions.
Private self-contained homes clustered around shared facilities — usually a common house — with residents managing the whole.
The shared building at the centre of a cohousing project, usually a large kitchen and dining room plus what homes were built small enough to do without.
A single pot all member income flows into and all needs come out of. The defining feature of an income-sharing community, and a minority arrangement.
A community that shares income and usually property, so membership means economic interdependence rather than proximity.
A non-profit holds land permanently and leases it to residents who own their buildings, separating the two so homes stay affordable after the first sale.
A decision method requiring the agreement of all participants. Powerful for trust, slow under scale and fatigue.
A decision passes when no one has a reasoned, paramount objection. Not the same as everyone thinking it is the best idea.
A fixed delay between a decision passing and it taking effect, requiring no one's approval to expire.
A table mapping each kind of decision to who may make it, by what method, and within what limits.
Sorting decisions by what they cost to get wrong, and giving each class its own method and timeline.
A window after a proposal is published and before voting opens, during which nothing is counted yet.
The decisions a circle or role may make alone, and the limits it may not cross without asking.
The slow failure where nothing breaks. Agreements stop being read, shared habits thin out, and nobody ever decided any of it.
A community consciously designing its social, ecological, economic and cultural systems to regenerate the place it sits in.
The written terms on which a member leaves, or the community winds itself up. Agreed while everyone is still calm, which is the only time it can be.
Running a meeting's process without taking a side on its content. The role that decides whether a decision method works at all.
Turning the authority that built a community into something anyone can hold or inherit. Communities that skip it cannot disagree with their founders or continue without them.
Responding to a first breach differently from a fifth. One of Ostrom's design principles, and the answer to a rule with no stated consequence.
A long lease of the land under a home you own. The mechanism that takes land off the market permanently and makes the house cheaper to buy.
Influence nobody granted and nobody can withdraw. It forms whether or not a community writes a structure down, and denying it only makes it unaccountable.
A group who chose each other, live together or close by, and have written down how they decide things.
The noticing, remembering and smoothing that keeps a community running and never appears on any rota. It distributes itself unevenly.
An hour of work counted against a member's quota. The accounting that lets a community treat cooking and earning as equally valuable.
Ownership where your return on exit is deliberately capped, so the home stays affordable to the next household rather than rising to market.
The document setting out what a member pays, contributes, may decide, and receives on leaving. The eight things a good one covers are checkable.
A proposal written precisely enough to be decided — stating what changes, who decides, and by when.
Under consent, an objection serious enough to stop a decision — a named harm to the group's aim, not a preference.
The graded path from fully public space to fully private. It lets a resident regulate contact without having to announce that they want to be alone.
A probationary stage with real obligations but not the full stake, during which either side may still stop without anyone having failed.
Members rank the options; last place is eliminated and its votes transfer until one option holds a majority.
A hold between a proposal passing and it taking effect, during which the result is confirmed before it becomes real.
The agreed route a conflict takes. The test is not which method a community uses but whether someone who is not in charge can start it.
The rule that sets what you may sell a home for. It is why the home stays affordable for the household after you, and why your gain is capped.
Money saved each month against future major works. A community with enviably low dues is often one that is not saving, and the bill arrives later.
A governance system organising a group into linked circles, each with its own domain, deciding by consent.
A one-off charge on every household for work the regular budget cannot cover. The bill that tests whether a community's finances were real.
Recording that you disagree with a decision without stopping it. The release valve that makes consensus survivable at any size.
A pass threshold above half, usually two-thirds, used where a bare majority is too thin a basis.
A period after voting closes in which a member may still object, stopping the decision from taking effect.
A defined stay during which a prospective member lives roughly as a member does. Where most of the mutual assessment actually happens.
If you had to look it up somewhere else, that's our bug.
Tell us the term and where you met it. Every definition here says what the word means, where it applies, and what it is often confused with.