Enter Intentional Communities

The best (and maybe the only) way to solve these serious problems is for people to band together into eco-villages or intentional communities.

Eco-village Defined
Robert and Diane Gilman (co-founders of the Global Eco-village Network) define “eco-village” as "A human-scale, full-featured settlement 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 continued into the future."

An eco-village is a neighborhood of people who share many basic common values and who cooperate to improve their collective lives. Some common features of eco-villages are:
· A combination of private households and shared common facilities such as gardens, community center, laundry-room, workshop and natural areas.
· Homes and common spaces built to minimize ecological impact
· A respect for individual and private pursuits, with an emphasis on common shared endeavors of the community.
Source: http://www.whitehawk.org/

One of the best examples of a highly developed eco-village is Eco-village at Ithaca, NY. Work on this community started in 1992 and was actually established in 1996. There are over 100 people living on 175 acres as of March, 2005; with further sustainable development planned. See their website at
http://www.eco-village.ithaca.ny.us/

Why Intentional Communities and Eco-Villages?Intentional communities and aspiring eco-villages offer the best realistic long-term solutions to the problems presented here because they are by nature experimental. There are no hard methods and few if any entrenched corporate or governmental cultures. Intentional communities exist to create new paradigms and new cultures.