October 30th, 2009
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Communal Living: Love thy Neighborhood, an article in the Guardian this week, describes the many advantages of co-housing/communal living and shares resources with individuals seeking community in the UK. Reporter Miles Brignall profiles the recently formed Lancaster Co-housing project.
Share your car, share childcare costs, share energy bills, but still enjoy the privacy of your own home. Welcome to the new age of communal living.
Read the full article here.
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Written by:
molly
October 26th, 2009
Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is profiled in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch!
Residents of Missouri's Dancing Rabbit test the limits of green living
Missouri is home to more than 50 "intentional communities," a broad term that includes communes, co-housing, and student co-ops.
Ecovillages also fall under that umbrella, but what sets them apart is residents' dedication to an intensely green lifestyle. At Dancing Rabbit, for example, residents grow their own food, shun private vehicle ownership and live off the grid in homes powered by solar and wind energy generated on site...
Homes at Dancing Rabbit range from the modest - one resident lives in a renovated school bus named Aubergine - to more ornate straw bale homes complete with full kitchens.
Read the full article here.
And check out the companion video presentation here.
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Written by:
molly
October 9th, 2009
A recent NY Times article profiles several urban households that are currently forming small collectives. FIC's Laird Schaub shares details about the recent surge in community.
JOHANNA BRONK wants to make communal vegetarian meals and keep chickens. Mariel Berger hopes for social, artistic and political collaborations. Harmony Hazard is into hula hooping, book groups and anarchism....The impetus for the group home or collective they hope to form is less about finances - though it is true that pooling resources yields better real estate - and more about community building.
Read the full article here.
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Written by:
molly
September 30th, 2009
Short videos of Dyssekilde Ecovillage were created by participants in THINK2 Climate Change, a 3-month international blogging competition organized by the European Journalism Centre, focused on the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
To launch the competition, bloggers were brought to Denmark and toured the 25 year old ecovillage, a pioneering example of sustainable community in Europe.
VIew two short videos below:
Dyssekilde Ecovillage in Denmark - Impressions
Dyssekilde Ecovillage: Interview with Birgitta Steen
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Related Posts Tags: climate change, Community Blogs, Dyssekilde Ecovillage, ecovillage
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Written by:
molly
September 6th, 2009
Scott Merzbach of The Amherst Bulletin has written a piece on a San Francisco couple who are touring communities nation-wide, compiling footage and interviews for a new documentary on sustainable living.
A San Francisco couple's 12,000-mile bicycle tour around the country has connected them to a simpler life. It is also teaching them how to live a more sustainable lifestyle, a lesson they hope to spread via a feature-length documentary they are producing.
During their "bikepacking" journey, Mandy Creighton and Ryan Mlynarczyk are visiting more than 100 sustainable communities and co-ops, where they will be living and working alongside the residents, while also filming footage for a documentary titled "Within Reach."
Read the full article here.
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Written by:
molly
September 2nd, 2009
An article by Helen McArdle in Scotland's Sunday Herald describes plans for Owenstown, the first new town founded in Scotland for several decades. The community, based on cooperative principles, is named for Robert Owen, a visionary 19th century socialist who established the New Lanark Community in Scotland and New Harmony in the United States.
Dubbed a "model village for the 21st century", Owenstown is the first attempt by the Scottish charity, the Hometown Foundation, to set up a sustainable community built on the twin pillars of cooperative governance and ecological sensitivity.
The 2000-acre greenfield site purchased by Robert Durward, one of the foundation's four trustees, is expected eventually to support an "optimum" population of around 20,000, generating some 8000 jobs as it grows.
Read the full article here.
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Written by:
molly
August 24th, 2009
The Star, a major Malaysian newspaper, profiled EcoVillage at Ithaca in an online article this week, introducing readers to the ecovillage model and interviewing several community residents.
A 'village' in upstate New York shows that you can nurture community values and tread lightly on the planet without forgoing modern living.
Read full article here.
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Written by:
molly
August 23rd, 2009
An article this week in The Oregonian describes the flourishing artistic community at Milepost 5.
When the Milepost 5 dream - a development where artists could work, and rent or buy affordable condos - took flight in 2007, Portland's condo market was still healthy. City leaders were getting serious about supporting the "creative class" considered essential to Portland's identity and economy. Milepost 5 represented an unprecedented marriage of private money and nonprofit idealism.
In the beginning, two buildings along Northeast 82nd Avenue were to be converted from their retirement-home origins into a utopia for artists who never dreamed of owning homes. In this "intentional community," residents would shape what Milepost 5 would become. This experiment would be the launching pad for other such projects around the city. When the first phase of the development was completed in April 2008, hopes were high. The sky was the limit.
Read the full article here.
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Written by:
molly
August 25th, 2008
CNN has had two articles on community in the past few weeks, one on simple living and one on eco-communities in the UK.
The simple living article profiles a woman at the Keystone Ecological Urban Center in Chicago.
Keri Rainsberger isn't rich. She works in the nonprofit world for a relatively low-profit salary. Yet, as many Americans are scrimping for every penny, she hardly feels the pinch.
How is this possible?
For starters, she has no car and commutes by bicycle each workday. She also has no mortgage payment and chooses to live in an "intentional community," a partly shared space where $775 a month covers everything from utilities to meals.
Her private quarters -- larger and a bit more expensive than some -- are about 400 square feet, divided into a sitting room, a craft room and a small bedroom. She shares bathrooms, showers, a kitchen and a large dining room with 28 other residents whose ranks include young professionals, professors and retirees.
"It's like a college dormitory, but with better conversation," she often jokes.
The article claims that the poor economy is pushing more people to explore simple and cooperative living:
"The economy starts to tank. People get tired of it," says Daniel Howard, an expert in consumer research and behavior at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. "It's people saying, 'Let's get together and help one another.' And it works."
But those who advocate a simpler, less consumer-driven life say there are lessons in the strategies she and other intentional communities use.
By buying their food in bulk, for instance, Rainsberger and her neighbors spend $100 to $150 per person each month for meals. (Consider that the U.S. Department of Agriculture "thrifty plan" for a single person is $200 a month.)
The article comes around to point out someof the non-tangible benefits of community:
Rainsberger, whose closest family is in Ohio, savors the camaraderie.
"For me, to be able to walk out my door and have everybody in the hall know me, that's a really great experience," she says. "And if anything happens to me, I know there's somebody next door who'll take care of me."
The article on Eco-Communities stresses the sustainability focus of many intentional communities:
Communities that put an emphasis on green values range from isolated eco villages to sophisticated co-housing projects.
But where co-housing projects were once primarily intended as a return to a more collective, less isolated way of living, new projects often place an emphasis on sustainable living.
They mention Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm in New Hampshire and the UK community Living Villages. They go on to look at how widespread eco-communities might become:
Inherent to eco communities is their small scale. Not only does it provide the social glue that holds them together, it allows communal facilities and equipment, such as lawnmowers, to be shared, reducing the community's carbon footprint. But in a crowded world that size restriction limits how widespread these developments can become.
While these communities will never be for everyone, Berger maintains co-housing is a model for the future. "A lot of the basic concepts behind co-housing are applicable to larger housing developments," she says.
"Some of the principles could be woven in to conventional developments -- things like having the residential area car free, having a common house where you can eat communally from time to time, hold events, and have a children's room and games room for teenagers.
Read the Simple Living Article on CNN
Read the Eco Communities article on CNN
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Related Posts Tags: Chicago, CNN, cohousing, ecovillages, Keystone Ecological Urban Center, Living Villages, Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm, Simple Living, UK
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
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