Posts Tagged ‘ecovillage’
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
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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
Monday, April 21st, 2008
In honor of Earth Day, the Washington Post ran an article on Arcosanti with a sidebar on ecovillages as a green vacation destination.
Arcosanti was started in the 1970s by Italian architect Paolo Soleri, a spitfire who seeks an alternative to a car-dominant, hyper-consumerist society. With his so-called urban laboratory, Soleri, 88, hopes to eliminate the automobile, promote frugality and create a functional metro center run on the Earth's resources: food from organic gardens, power from the sun, air conditioning from the shade, building materials from the natural surroundings. Though still a work in progress, Arcosanti in theory offers residents the same amenities as, say, a Manhattanite: housing, commerce, culture and dining.
Some have lobbed the word "commune" at Arcosanti; "tightknit community" is a better description.
The article includes a short slideshow and focuses on Arcosanti as a green tourist destination. The side bar lists a handful of ecovillages and other communities including: Findhorn, LA Ecovillage, EarthArt Village, Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, Ecovillage at Ithaca, and Huehuecoyotl Eco-Village.
I hope those communties are ready for a flood of visitors!
Washington Post article on Arcosanti
Sidebar on Green Tourism at Ecovillages
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Related Posts Tags: Arcosanti, Dancing Rabbit, EarthArt Village, ecovillage, Ecovillage at Ithaca, Findhorn, Huehuecoyotl, LA Ecovillage, washington post
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
 Forbes.com has a special feature section on Utopia which has a great article on intentional communities. The article gives an overview on the US movement with a focus on communities in New York and specifically the Ithaca area. The article includes Photo slideshow of communities around the world including Ecovillage at Ithaca, The Farm, Zegg, Twin Oaks, Arcosanti, Crystal Waters, Findhorn, and Yamagishi.
"The two groups growing dramatically now in America are ecovillages, which are usually rural or semi-rural, and cohousing, which tends to be in or near cities," says Bill Metcalf, a sociologist at Griffith University in Australia who studies communalism and has lived in two intentional communities.
Part of the motivation is that we have a very strongly increased sense of alienation in the country than we did a generation ago," said Laird Schaub, founder and resident of Sandhill Farm in Missouri.
Shared common spaces and clever architectural features--like thick walls and south-facing windows--contribute to energy usage per person that is 40% less than for the average American. A typical couple living in Ecovillage at Ithaca pays about $500 in energy bills a year, compared to a couple in a downtown Ithaca apartment who can pay hundreds of dollars a month during the winter.
There is also a short video on The Fellowship Community, a community which focuses on care for the ill and elderly. The video interview with the founders of the community describes their amazing experience in creating a community that could give long term care to their members and residents. Their unique experience offers an alternative to the wider culture's experiences with elder care. (Note video may not be viewable on Firefox)
But the utopia feature is not all positive on the concept of utopia. Forbes also has an article on the failures of utopian experiments. Mostly the article highlights all the "failed" communities of America's past and comes from an economic/business perspective (it is Forbes.com after all).
The competition for succession invariably favors not the wise, but the ruthless. This is especially dangerous in communistic societies. Where selfishness is a sin or a crime, everyone is guilty; you don't want your antagonists gaining the authority to sit in judgment.
A second lesson is that ideals are constraints, and the more constraints one tries to impose, the less viable the community will be. It's hard enough for a private company--an organization focused exclusively on economic success--to survive intact for multiple generations. Add to that special utopian claims on the firm by the employees and you can see how tough the odds are. The best bet is to run utopia as a business, which is exactly what many communities concluded.
A second lesson is that ideals are constraints, and the more constraints one tries to impose, the less viable the community will be. It's hard enough for a private company--an organization focused exclusively on economic success--to survive intact for multiple generations. Add to that special utopian claims on the firm by the employees and you can see how tough the odds are. The best bet is to run utopia as a business, which is exactly what many communities concluded.
This last argument seems to contradict the research presented recently in the Economist that claimed that religious communities were more successful if they had more strictures on their membership, not less.
Not to stop with things balanced, Forbes produces another article on the failures of American Utopianism including a photo slideshow including pictures of the Jonestown mass suicide.
But wait there is more! An article about someone's not-so-happy experience living in a shared household for a year in college. After a brief smack at Earthaven and Damanhur the author describes her brief experience in a dysfunctional version of community, drawing general conclusions from that experience.
Read the whole special report on Utopia.
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Related Posts Tags: ecovillage, Ecovillage at, Forbes, utopia
Posted in News Articles, Video and TV | 1 Comment »
Written by:
Tony Sirna
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
 Lammas Ecovillage in Wales is seeking approval for their ecovillage under new UK government rules to allow a new form of rural mixed use development. Theirs would be the first ecovillage approved under these new rules which allow a mix a residential, agricultural, and commercial enterprises on much more affordable rural land.
Lammas has been getting a lot of press and exposure on blogs but not all of it has been accurate. EcoWorldly and TreeHugger recently posted a notice saying Lammas had been granted approval but a Lammas member commented to say that they had resubmitted their plans but is still awaiting approval. For more accurate info keep an eye on the Welsh news or on the Lammas site itself.
You can also see videos about Lammas at undercurrents.org:
Living in the Future and
Ecovillage Pioneers
 I for one am certainly envious of their amazing scale model of their proposed village. If every ecovillage could bring together such a clear and compelling plan with models and video and detailed proposals it might shock planning departments into doing something!
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
The Wild Goose Bed and Breakfast got some publicity for ecovillages on the Ithaca, NY local news. The bed and breakfast is located in the Ecovillage at Ithaca community just outside of town and draws customers interested in a green lifestyle.
"I don't have to turn on the heat once the sun's shining in 'till late in the afternoon even on a bitter day like today," said Gail Carson, the owner. Thick walls and south-facing windows help make heating homes at EcoVillage more efficient than most houses.
Her business has doubled in the last year, while energy consumption at the inn continues to be minimal. Carson said one of the reasons she thinks her business has increased over the years is because people are simply curious about eco-villages.
See the Ecovillage Video.
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Related Posts Tags: Bed and Breakfast, ecovillage, Ecovillage at Ithaca
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008
Last week The New Statesman, a British current affairs magazine, carried a story about the LA Ecovillage in its online edition. The blogger, Johnathon Dawson, usually writes about life at Findhorn, an ecovillage in Scotland.
I want to devote my blog this week to an extraordinary development unfolding in a poor, multi-ethnic, working-class neighbourhood some 6,000 miles from here - in inner-city Los Angeles.
Why on Earth would I do that is a column called Life At Findhorn?! Well, first because we are part of a much larger global family, one of whose members, the Los Angeles Ecovillage, is engaged in quite wonderfully distinctive and inspiring work. Second, because I have just returned after spending ten days there, participating in the annual board meeting of the Global Ecovillage Network."
The Threat
"It is great, if all too rare, to see an ecovillage get stuck in in an urban context, really working in cooperation with their neighbours and helping transform and humanise an entire neighbourhood.
Now, however, the initiative is under threat - and this is where you, dear reader, may just be able to help. The LA school department is planning to locate yet another school in the neighbourhood - there are several there already. This would entail demolishing 35 affordable housing units (all to rare in the city) and even more bussing in of kids from other parts of town.
The ecovillagers are fighting it tooth and nail and have set up an online petition asking the authorities to find another site. If you feel inspired, visit http://www.laecovillage.org/ and sign up."
The next meeting with the school district is February 28. For updates and a direct link to the petition go to http://www.laecovillage.org/LAUSD2008.html
Read the whole article
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Related Posts Tags: ecovillage, Los Angeles Ecovillage, urban ecovillages
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Written by:
donna
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
 Abundance Ecovillage in Fairfield, IA made the local news with a wonderful piece on their growing ecologically focused community. The piece focused primarily on the ecological aspects: solar and wind power, energy conservation, rain water catchment, waste water treatment, food production, etc.
Co-founder Lonnie Gamble started the project after several people approached him about how to live a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, "Their beer is cold, their showers are hot, but we do it with one-tenth of the energy a conventional home would use."
The Ecovillage has room for 50 to 70 people to make their home for about the same cost as building a new home in Fairfield. But here there are no electric, water, or even sewage bills to worry about. Gamble asks, "If we can build homes like that for about conventional cost, why do we build anything else?"
See the Video on Channel 13's site: click the link in the upper left for the video.
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Related Posts Tags: Abundance Ecovillage, ecovillage, Iowa, solar power, video, wind power
Posted in News Articles, Video and TV | 1 Comment »
Written by:
Tony Sirna
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
With grass-roots ecovillages pioneering sustainable living, the mainstream wants in on the action. The Guardian reports that the government in the United Kingdom has plans to build 10 carbon neutral ecotowns by 2020. The towns will have up to 5000-20,0000 homes, 10-100 times the size of most ecovillages, but will share a focus on ecological living.
Most important, the whole town has to be carbon neutral. This means the amount of energy taken from the national grid to run the town is less than or equal to the amount put back through renewable power.
There are also groups working on helping ecotowns be car free but its not clear who will be helping the government develop the social sustainability aspects of the "three-legged stool" they mention on their ecotown website:
It is appropriate to start with an understanding of sustainability as a "three legged stool": in addition to environmental considerations there are the less well understood but no less important aspects of social and economic sustainable development to consider.
Perhaps they will be able to learn from the rich tradition of ecovillages and intentional communities in the UK on how to create opportunities for community and create a spirit of cooperation towards their ecological goals.
If only the US government were investing in sustainability at this level...
Guardian article on carbon neutral ecotowns
Ecotown website
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Related Posts Tags: car-free, carbon neutral, ecotown, ecovillage, UK
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Thursday, January 24th, 2008
The city of Ithaca was second on the list of Greenest Cities in part due to the work of the Ecovillage at Ithaca an intentional community with two 30-home cohousing clusters. The Ecovillage was recently featured in Time magazine and is a great example of a community moving towards sustainability.
Move.com profiled Ithaca and highlighted the Ecovillage as a major part of the cities green ranking:
The village is already at work on phase two: future developments are being considered and will likely include more accessible and affordable housing, a charter school, an education center, village-scale wind power, organic orchards, a roadside farm stand, graywater recycling, on-site biological wastewater treatment center, biomass energy crops, shuttle van, carshare, a natural cemetery, onsite biodiesel/vegetable-oil fuel production, and educational programs.
Not surprisingly most of the top green cities on the list are home to ecovillages, cohousing, and other forms of intentional community. Are communities attracted to green cities or are cities made green by community? I'm sure the answer is both.
Read the Article.
See the list of Greenest Cities.
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Related Posts Tags: cohousing, ecovillage, Ecovillage at Ithaca, Green Cities, Ithaca, New York
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Monday, January 14th, 2008
Environtal magazine E has an article on the ecovillage movement.
For some reason they lead off with six paragraphs on Arocsanti before the get into the general ecovillage trend, mentioning LA Ecovillage, Cleveland Ecovillage, the Ecovillage Training Center at the Farm.
According to the study, the 379 "eco-villages" registered with the Global Eco-Village Network (110 of them in North America) are proof of changing attitudes. Eco-villages are defined by Worldwatch as "human scale, full-featured settlements in which human activities are harmlessly integrated into the natural world in a way that is supportive of healthy human development, and can be successfully con-tinued into the indefinite future." The commun-ities can be urban, suburban or rural, and incorporate green buildings, local food production, solar energy, carpooling, and community building efforts. "More and more people are engaged in the idea of local sustainability," says Erik Assadourian, author of the study and a Worldwatch research associate.
Read the Article.
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Related Posts Tags: Arcosanti, Cleveland Ecovillage, E Magazine, ecovillage, LA Ecovillage, The Farm
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
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