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Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
"We're all in this together" is the headline of a recent article in the Real Estate section of the TimesOnline that looks favorably on the rise in sustainable communities in the UK.
What do you share with your neighbours? A cup of sugar? A dividing wall? Despair over the way that your recycling boxes always seem to be thrown back over the hedge?
For a growing number of communities across Britain, the answer is much, much more. New communes, ranging from listed urban properties converted into self-contained flats with communal space to new-build eco-villages on rural smallholdings, are springing up, offering communal living with a contemporary twist.
Read the full article here.
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Related Posts Tags: cohousing, intentional communities, London Times, sustainability, UK
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Written by:
molly
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
Thanks for responses to the recent post about Transition Towns in Australia. This is also a thriving movement in the United States, and we wanted to share this link for those further interested:
http://www.transitionus.org/welcome-transition-us
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Written by:
molly
Friday, December 11th, 2009
A recent article in Times Live explores "the green life" at Khula Dhamma eco-village in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.
In a place where being able to use an iPod depends on the weather; your supper grows in the vegetable patch outside your window, and you're forced to know where your number one and two goes - life is anything but normal for city slickers. But this is what the people of Khuladhamma eco-village have chosen as their way of life.
They are following a growing trend of people who are creating communities that are in harmony with the environment and who hope to become self-sustaining.
Read the full article here.
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Related Posts Tags: ecovillage, intentional community, Khula Dhamma eco-village, South Africa
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Written by:
molly
Monday, December 7th, 2009
New York Magazine profiled Brooklyn Co-housing, the first co-housing community in New York City, in an in-depth article recently.
This is a level of group interaction that the co-housers haven't been able to find anywhere else in the city, and that they are betting other New Yorkers would enjoy, too. "There's this thing called community" says one member, "and whatever it is, it turns out people are willing to sacrifice a lot for it."
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Related Posts Tags: Brooklyn cohousing, cohousing, intentional community, New York, urban planning
Posted in News Articles, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Written by:
molly
Friday, October 30th, 2009
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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Related Posts Tags: cohousing, communes, intentional communities, Lancaster Co-housing, UK
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Written by:
molly
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
By now, most have heard about the raid by Texas Rangers on the Fundamentalist Mormon community in west Texas. During the raid, 437 children were removed from the community compound based on concerns of child abuse and neglect, primarily based on the concern that underage girls were being forced to marry older men against their will.
We couldn't possibly keep up on all the coverage of the story here but it seemed incongruous to never mention this major media event in this blog about communities in the news.
Below is a small sampling of news and blog coverage on the story. We invite comments if people are interested in sharing.
New York Times Coverage of the story
NPR Coverage
CNN story on how the call precipitating the raid was a hoax
Civil Rights questions raised and ACLU questions threat to constitutional rights
An interesting Blog post comparing the historic Oneida Community to the current events
Blog post from Laird Schaub on the Texas Raid
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Related Posts Tags: Mormon, Texas
Posted in News Articles, Uncategorized, Video and TV | 1 Comment »
Written by:
Tony Sirna
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
A recent article in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix highlights a study claiming the best climate change solution is to invest in green building. The article sites the Rivergreen Ecovillage in Saskatoon as an example of such green building design put into practice.
The most cost-effective climate change solution
The article sites a study by Architecture2030 that focuses on how green building can both reduce carbon emissions, create more jobs, and save consumers money. The study says:
Investment in building energy efficiency is surprisingly effective. A single investment of $21.6 billion would replace 22.3 conventional 500 MW coal-fired power plants, reduce annual CO2 emissions by 86.7 million metric tons, save 204 billion cu. ft. of natural gas and 10.7 million barrels of oil each year8, save consumers $8.46 billion in energy bills annually9 (less than a 3-year simple payback) and create 216,000 permanent new jobs.
The article notes:
Improving the energy performance of existing and new buildings can begin to reduce emissions almost immediately. The required technologies are already available off the shelf. In contrast, clean coal is still experimental. Even its proponents don't know how well it will work or what the final costs will be. In any case, actual reductions of GHGs from investing in clean coal or nuclear power will not commence for 10 years or so, as the technology is developed and the plants can be built.
Ecovilages are pioneers in green building
Rivergreen Ecovillage is just one example of ecovillages pioneering green building. The Communities Directory lists hundreds of ecovillages worldwide, almost all of which incorporate some forms of green building and focus on solutions to climate change.
Sources
Star Phoenix story on Green Building as a solution for global climate change
Study from Arhcitecture2030 on comparing climate change solutions
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Related Posts Tags: carbon footprint, climate change, ecovillage, global warming, green building, RiverGreen Ecovillage, Sakatchewan
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
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