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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
World
Max Rashbrooke

Hope and heartbreak for New Zealanders dreaming of a communal life

New Zealand
Three women standing in front of a row of new townhouses
Cohousing residents Laetitia O'Connell, Tania Sawicki Mead and Nicole McCrossin outside their development in Wellington. ‘We get to live close to people we care about,’ says Mead. Photograph: Tania Sawicki Mead

“Welcome to the site of hope and heartbreak.”

With these words Bronwen Newton greets visitors to a quarter-acre gravel carpark between two industrial buildings in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington. Still visible are the foundations of a sheet-metal workshop that once stood there; not visible is the cohousing project that Newton and 23 other families hoped to build, but now never will.

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