Pattern 26
Life Cycle
Context Community of 700012 · Identifiable Neighborhood14
Problem
Most environments are built around a single stage of life — around working adults, around young families — while birth, old age, and dying are pushed out of everyday view into clinics and institutions. People lose touch with life's great passages, and those passages happen hidden away instead of among everyone else.
Solution
Give the community visible places and occasions for every stage of life — birth, childhood, youth, old age, and death — and let the passages between them be marked as shared, honored events rather than things kept out of sight.
Usage Holy Ground66 · Household Mix35 · Old People Everywhere40 · Work Community41 · Local Town Hall44 · Children in the City57 · Birth Places65 · Grave Sites70 · The Family75 · Your Own Home79 · Master and Apprentices83 · Teen-Age Society84 · Shopfront Schools85 · Children's Home86 · Rooms to Rent153 · Teenager's Cottage154 · Old Age Cottage155 · Settled Work156 · Marriage Bed187