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Olamina Commons - Urban Microvillage & Community
Mission of the project
Mission of the project
We are developing a “microvillage” on Wexford Road with a blend of housing options and a shared open space for gardening and gatherings. This project envisions a community intentionally designed to foster connection, abundance, inclusivity and economic sustainability.
Village Values
Village Values
(January 2026 draft)
We are creating a village as a deliberate way of living together — grounded in care, connection, and shared responsibility.
This community is intentional.
We choose to design how we live, rather than inheriting default patterns. Our structures, spaces, and agreements are shaped with care and purpose.
Our village is designed for connection.
The village and spaces invite rhythms of everyday interaction, shared life, and belonging while honoring the importance of privacy and autonomy.
We are emergent.
We know strategy grows through the deep relationship between listening and lived experience. We allow space for uncertainty, discovery, and wayfinding, and we adapt as we learn.
We honor difference.
We shape village life to support people across ages, identities, and economic realities, without requiring sameness to belong. We stay attentive to how power, resources, and opportunity move through the community.
We practice mutual care.
Care is part of daily life here: offered with consent, grounded in respect, and shaped by real capacity. We aim to support one another without expectation of sameness or sacrifice.
We steward land and place.
We live in relationship with the land, water, and more-than-human life around us. Our choices aim toward ecological health and regeneration.
Everyone in the village shares responsibility.
We enter village life knowing it depends on participation, integrity, and transparency.
We are economically resilient.
We adopt models of housing, work, and shared resources that support long-term stability, affordability, and mutual benefit — prioritizing livability over profit.
Together, these values form the ground we stand on as we imagine, build, and live into a shared village life. Welcome home.
We are inspired by...
The stories and links below are inspirational models we can learn from as we move forward.
How to turn your neighborhood into a village
How to turn your neighborhood into a village
Mark Lakeman initiated a movement in Portland to transform the homogenous neighborhoods of the city into places that have many of the qualities and characteristics that are found in some of the most treasured villages on Earth. Mark reveals the things you need to know to transform your own neighborhood into a village.
Radish CoHousing
Radish CoHousing
"Radish is built around the “Obvious Truth” — that people are happiest and healthiest surrounded by people they love and admire," they explain on their website. Phil Levin and Kristen Berman wanted to live near their friends, but they didn’t want to sacrifice their privacy, so they started their own intentional community where you can choose your neighbors and eat together but still have your own home. They called it Radish. They all have their own homes, but they eat dinner together (nowadays, they have hired a cook which they can "afford to split among 20").
Co-Living Creatively
Co-Living Creatively
Creative urban infill provides affordable rental housing and community connections.
Project designs: https://www.polyphon.com/flora-and-ulysses-coliving
Great article about co-living: https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/land-lines-magazine/articles/why-housing-design-has-to-evolve/
Sonora Cohousing
This is what 36 cohousing dwelling units in an urban location on 5 acres looks like.
Shared resources include: pool, chickens, garden, lawn, children's house, common house, work shop, art room, guest house and abundant fruit trees.
Sonora Cohousing, Tucson AZ
https://www.sonoracohousing.com/
Crow Woods
Village Instigator Jane Lester from Seattle realized no existing co-housing community had room — so she created her own!
South Park Cottages in Atlanta-
Developer Booker Washington of Atlanta has created a modern tiny house & cottage home community in the Atlanta metro. Includes 29 two-story small & tiny homes, 399 to 635 sqft--energy efficient with smart home features & luxe finishes. Situated on 2.5 acres around communal spaces, including walking trails, gardens & fire pits with parking on the perimeter.
Here is a great explaination of MICROVILLAGE
A micro-village is a purposeful neighborhood that is designed to promote ommunity, interdependence, and wellness for its residents and surrounding neighbors. The design incorporates walking paths and green space in order to center human interaction and keep cars at the periphery. Micro-villages often utilize green building practices, alternative energy sources and permaculture to steward the land that they are built upon.
Learn about Missing Middle Housing
Opticos Design
Opticos work with the city of Winston Salem lead to adoption of new planning and development ordinances that enable building missing middle housing. See the 2019 presentation here: https://www.cityofws.org/DocumentCenter/View/1467/Missing-Middle-Housing-May-2019-PDF
RESEARCH: People who live in community are happier.
Amid a growing loneliness epidemic, many people are increasingly interested in cohousing—a form of intentional community where residents choose to develop a home together and cultivate a more social, supportive community of neighbours. However, cohousing communities face many challenges in developing housing, including expensive land, significant time and financial commitments, and complex municipal policy processes.
Financial support for a suburban home food forest.
Cottages on Vaughn
0.5 acre lot, a block from downtown Clarkston in the Atlanta Metro. Includes 8 tiny homes & micro-cottages situated around a common green space with edible regenerative landscaping. Total project costs: $1.2M including land acquisition and infrastructure.
$110K costs per home were sold for $175K average.
Earthseed is a center for community resilience through cooperative ownership of land and resources. Earthseed is a transformational response to systemic oppression, committed to centering People of Color and other communities pushed to the margins.
Projects include Tierra Negra Farms near Durham, a collective of farmers, educators and cultural workers, striving to model a community-controlled food system that is just and sustainable.
https://www.instagram.com/tierranegrafarm/
https://earthseedlandcoop.org/
Building affordable duplexes that help residents generate wealth
Donovan Adesoro explains a project:
$50K lot, $250 build, Buyer has $1800 mortgage with $1200 rental income
Neighborhood gets revitalized
Foundation for Intentional Community https://www.ic.org/
South Park Village
America’s First Black-Owned Tiny Home Village near Atlanta
Developer Booker T Washington
https://southparkcottages.com
Building Small
Building Small
Jim Heid, FSLA
Integrating the best thinking in economic resilience, authentic placemaking, and social responsibility https://www.jheid.com/small/
The CoHousing Company
The CoHousing Company
Investing Strategies
Lili Invests breaks down house hacking (rehab, not new construction)
Microlife Institute, Atlanta Georgia
https://www.microlifeinstitute.org/
Envisioning the SITE layout
This is what typical Winston Salem suburban sprawl looks like
0.21 acres per densely packed 1900 sf house, built on slab
Minimal open space. Significant portion of land for cars, not people
This is what we are disrupting
This is what upscale urban development can look like
3 acres
29 free standing homes
330 to 700 sq ft homes
This is the site plan for South Park Cottages in Georgia (SOLD OUT)
https://www.gacities.com/Resources/Reference-Articles/Combatting-the-Challenges-of-Affordable-Housing-in.aspx
This is what a pocket neighborhood in a high density neighborhood can look like.
1.37 acres
8 Cottages, 4 ADUs
Cottage (1220 sf), ADU (400 sf)
https://opticosdesign.com/work/wine-country-pocket-neighborhood-riverhouse/
Here is what you can do with 7 acres and mixed-sized proprties
Operates like a homeowner's association.
Each family owns their own home and shares ownership of the common house, playground, workshop and garden space.
A portion of the 5,000-square-foot common house and the 7 acres of land is deeded with each home at closing.
https://www.prairiehillcoho.org/
Here is a conversion of existing lots to a shared common property
Chase Street Commons
1 acre with existing and new housing and shared resources
https://chasestreetcommons.org/
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3860-Chase-St-Wheat-Ridge-CO-80212/13737202_zpid/
Mix of single family codo units with shared inside 'street' with 3 common rooms on each street.
The community features 34 privately owned townhomes, a 5,000-square-foot common house with a communal kitchen and dining room, shared laundry, underground parking, organic gardens, and preserved green spaces.
Here is a great explaination of MICROVILLAGE
A micro-village is a purposeful neighborhood that is designed to promote community, interdependence, and wellness for its residents and surrounding neighbors. The design incorporates walking paths and green space in order to center human interaction and keep cars at the periphery. Micro-villages often utilize green building practices, alternative energy sources and permaculture to steward the land that they are built upon.
This is what 36 dwelling units in an urban location on 5 acres looks like.
Shared resources include: pool, chickens, garden, lawn, children's house, common house, work shop, art room, guest house and abundant fruit trees.
https://www.sonoracohousing.com/
Design principles and research into how site design support happiness and social interaction.
Thought Leaders in the Intentional Community Movement
Developing Intentional Community is NOT a new concept, though it is an ever-evolving concept. Here are some resources we value:
Kirsten Dirkson has done an outstanding job video story-telling what is possible: https://www.youtube.com/@kirstendirksen
Whole Systems Network - building an HQ in North Carolina
Live Near Friends: Reach out if you want access to our "minihood" https://app.livenearfriends.com/minihood/neighborhood
Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute (Adrienne Maree Brown, et al) EESII is a portal for people who are transforming from the current paradigm of racial capitalist, patriarchal, power-over, scarce and disconnected existence into one that is adaptive, relational, resilient, post-capitalist, feminist, BIPOC-centered and full of possibility. We invite people into a liberatory experience, giving people in movement both theoretical offerings to help them learn emergent strategy, and practice ground to help them embody it.
CoHousing and Intentional Communities in North Carolina (& nearby)
Cohousing is more common in other parts of the world, but North Carolina and Southern Virginia have a number of existing and formoing communities.
Emergent HQ is being seeded on 8 acres in Mt. Airy, lead by Whole Systems: https://growingsystems.org/about/
The Peace Pentagon is a retreat and training center located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia along the ancient New River. www.PeacePentagon.net This is part of www.TheOracleInstitute.org and on the land where the Valley of Light intentional community lives.
Pacifica Co-Housing is a cohousing community of about 100 people in Carrboro, N.C., that dates back to 2006 https://pacificacohousing.com/
CommonGround Ecovillage 100 acres in Durham https://www.commonground.eco/
EarthHaven rural EcoVillage in Western NC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybFE15LM1h8
Earthseed Land Collective: A center for community resilience through cooperative ownership of land and resources. A transformational response to systemic oppression. https://earthseedlandcoop.org/
Eno Commons is a cohousing community of 22 homes situated on 11.2 acres in Durham https://www.enocommons.org/
Blue Heron Farm Community
Village Hearth is a LGBTQ 55+ community in Durham https://www.villagehearthcohousing.com/ (Ex units: 2BR, 2B 1,152 sq ft $439K, 900sq ft condo $418K)
Durham Central Park Urban Cohousing https://www.durhamcoho.com/ (Ex: 2BR, 1.5B, $625K)
Elderberry Village Rougemont https://www.elderberrycohousing.com/ (Ex: 325 sq ft Tiny Home $165K)
Twin Oaks is an ecovillage community with 100 people in central VA https://www.twinoaks.org/
EcoVillage in Loudoun County near Washington DC is underway https://ecovillageloudoun.com
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