Cohousing is in some sense as old as civilization. People living in villages and towns have traditionally shared resources and governed their own communities. But in the last two centuries, and especially since World War II in the United States, this pattern has been broken. Urbanization, railroads, the development of suburbs, mass media and the automobile have increasingly left people feeling submerged in, yet alienated from, larger and larger social groups. We are dependent on cars, isolated in single-family homes on larger and larger lots, separated from friends, extended families and other traditional systems of support and from the natural environment. Yet there are compensations: our horizons are so much broader, our experiences more perse, our freedom to develop our own identities so much greater.

Cohousing differs from some types of intentional communities in that the residents do not have a shared economy or a common set of beliefs or religion, but instead invest in social capital. A non-hierarchical structure employing a consensus decision-making model is common in managing cohousing. Individuals do take on leadership roles, such as being responsible for coordinating a garden or facilitating a meeting.

There are 3 cohousing communities in Ann Arbor:

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