Hope everyone is having a great day so far!
Branching off from my previous blog, Post Food Scarcity, I wanted to more deeply explore something that I eluded to in that post, and that is the Community Kitchen. How a shared space amongst the community fosters a sense of togetherness while also helping to reduce the redundancies of appliances and tools since not everyone would need to procure their own. Is it possible for everyone to come together in such a way? And how does that impact the daily lives and spatial needs of the individual? Find out here:
What’s your opinion on this take? Could you envision yourself living in such a community? If not, what would you change? Always happy to hear other opinions, ideas, complaints, and experiences, so feel free to share! The more viewpoints I can experience, the stronger the ideas! 💪
If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read and hope you have a great rest of your day!!
Tangentially related: I like the idea of “volxküche” and other such communal food efforts and even though the food was often bland, I never minded the canteen in university. But I absolutely loath normal restaurants.
Yes sometimes the food is good, but everything around it: the long waiting for food, the isolating table arrangement, the often frustrated waiters etc. is a complete turn-off for me. Even the nicest places both in regards to ambience and food are just ruined by the totally alienating mode of food preparation and delivery (and high price tag in addition).
Yet somehow people claim to love going to restaurants… this has actually put some serious strain on some romantic relationships of mine in the past 😬
And talking to some restaurant owners (I used to work in kitchens as a side job some years ago) always told the same story: The a la carte method is bad for income and forces you to cut all sorts of corners that makes the quality of the food worse, and landlords ask for insane rents at the popular places, which really drives up prices.
In my post-soviet country, there are still apartments where bath and kitchen are shared. These are always more poor people that live there. From what I gather these become places where conflicts happen quite a lot. Maybe it’s because of higher alcohol consumption, but I can only see this working in already bonded community. Maybe problem is that right now, they have it like that due to lack of money and is not by a choice.
Very true. An already bonded community is key to making that work. Headcanon was already established communities, so the bond would be present already. I believe that there will always be some conflict, but as long as people are not forced to live together (as in mentioned, a lack of money to afford something better), then most people will either learn to live with each other and share or find somewhere else where they are a better fit.
Would make for some interesting story points, the clashes of personality around these shared spaces.
I think that’s an astute observation.
The idea of greater shared common space in a city appeals to me, though I’m very aware that it has to be abundant enough to meet demand even during high demand periods, and it has to be voluntary instead of just obligatory due to lack of facilities.
I set up a mailing list for my apartment building, and I find that there are some people who like the routine socializing that occurs, and others who really just want their solitude. I think before moving to kitchen space, I wish more apartments had a shared-use tool room, since this is something most people need at various times, though not nearly as often as kitchen space. I think it would need to have at least someone responsible for enforcing a shared expectation of cleanliness, though selected democratically so people don’t feel beholden to this person or group.
I think shared kitchen space and exercise space would work well if social structure developed around their management. Something like, “I want to use the big kitchen next week since my family is coming over for Eid.” “Have you been using the little kitchen lately? I think Davka requires folks to have used the little kitchen and cleaned up at least twice in the last month to schedule the big kitchen. Or you could get Raul to vouch for you, he uses the big kitchen every Friday.”
