Co-Housing Grows in Brooklyn

"They envision an arrangement called "cohousing," a place where neighbors sit down to share meals several times a week, where children roam freely from home to home, and where grown-ups can hang out in a communal living room. They plan, in short, to create a village within a single development, and their chosen site is in the middle of a tree-lined brownstone block in Fort Greene.

The group, which has been incorporated as Brooklyn Cohousing L.L.C., is in contract to buy an unfinished project known as Carlton Mews, whose developers had planned 40 high-end condominiums. The developers drew up plans for apartments surrounding a common courtyard, with the units to be built in an long-abandoned Episcopal church, its former rectory and a new building with a facade that mimics the stately town houses on the block."

Wikipedia has more on the co-housing movement for the uninitiated.