Intentional Communities:

1. Intentional Communities: Wave of the Future or Relic of the Past? By Clay McGlaughlin

2. Communes Source: http://www.freehomepages.com/gingras/hip-01.htm

3. Communes Source: http://www.isar.org

4. Goals of Intentional Communities • Share Resources • Create Healthy Neighborhoods • Pursuit of Ecologically Sustainable Lifestyles • Self-reliance and voluntary simplicity • Help refugees, homeless, disabled

5. Background • Roots in counter-culture of 1960’s. • Over 700 Intentional communities worldwide. • 540 communities in the United States. Source: Intentional Communities Directory, 1995, http://www.ic.org

6. Types of Intentional Community • Ecovillages – Dedicated to alternative power, water and sewage systems. Seek to minimalize ecological impact. • Cohousing Arrangements – Planned, owned and managed by residents. Extensive common areas for cooking, socializing. • Residential Land Trusts – NPO created to hold land for benefit of community. Promote ecologically sound land-use. Preserve affordable housing. Source: http://www.homesteadclt.org/CLTFAQ.htm

7. Types of Intentional Community Communes – Shared resources, little or no personal property. Student Co-ops – Affordable student living provided through low interest loans managed by cooperative. Urban Housing Co-ops – Disadvantaged people work together to save money, find financial assistance, access land, and build infrastructure.

8. Demographics • Most members are between 30-60 years old. • Twenty-somethings and children growing in representation. • 54% Rural, 28% Urban, 10% Mixed, 8% Undeclared. • Tend to be politically “left of center”. Source: http://www.ic.org

9. Spirituality • Many communities share a religion or spiritual practice. • 35% are explicitly religious. • 65% are secular or don’t specify.

10. Intentional Communities: Sandhill Farm Source: http://www.sandhillfarm.org

11. Intentional Communities: Dancing Rabbit Source: http://www.dancingrabbit.org

12. Evaluating Communities • Quality Education • Affordable Housing • Low Poverty Rates • High Employment • Low Crime Rates • Healthy Environment and People Source: http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org

13. SARE’SThree Pillars of Sustainability • Economic Stability • Environmental Soundness • Social Justice

14. Economic Stability: Mainstream Communities

15. Economic Stability:Mainstream Communities • Composed of individual wage earners clustered by economic worth. • Wealthy communities stress city resources to meet infrastructure costs of suburban growth. Source: http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org

16. Economic Stability:Mainstream Communities • Composed of individual wage earners clustered by economic worth. • Poor communities don’t receive necessary infrastructure while paying to cover costs of suburban sprawl. Source: http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org

17. Economic Stability:Mainstream Communities • Both dependent on outside industry. • Far from centers of production and employment. • Continuous, conspicuous consumption is extremely resource intensive. • Avg. American uses 300 shopping bags worth of raw materials each week. • We would need 3 planets to support everyone at same level of consumption. Source: http://www.creativeaction.org/Facts/consumption.htm

18. Economic Stability:Mainstream Communities • Centralized food sources, very little food production. • SARE estimates food travels an average of 1500 miles before consumption. • Creates fragile, vulnerable system. • Prone to price fluctuations, collapse. Source: http://www.sare.org

19. Economic Stability:Mainstream Communities • Lifestyles in mainstream communities require exploitation of foreign labor. • Workers in Bangladesh receive 9 cents an hour to stitch shirts for Wal*Mart. • Wal*Mart buys from Chinese sweatshops. • 90 Hour work weeks • Exceptionally low wages • Prison like conditions • American labor is suffering as well: • Bottom 40% of families declined from 2001 to 2004. • Average income fell by 2.3%. Source: http://www.ufcw.org/press_room/fact_sheets_and_backgrounder/walmart/sweat_shops.cfm http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/income/2006-02-23-fed-incomes_x.htm

20. Economic Stability: Intentional Communities

21. Economic Stability:Intentional Communities • Economic situation varies widely. • Communal Resources • Individual Resources • Egalitarian structure allows rich and poor equal access to resources.

22. Economic Stability:Intentional Communities • Revenue Sources: • Produce • Crafts\Jewelry • Labor • Value-added products • Jam\Preserves • Honey • Processed meats • Nuts

23. Economic Stability:Intentional Communities • Alternative currencies • Everyone’s time is valued equally Source: http://www.dancingrabbit.org

24. Economic Stability:Intentional Communities • Focus on reducing consumption and achieving voluntary simplicity allows members to live better lives while consuming fewer resources. • Food is produced on-site or acquired locally.

25. Environmental Soundness: Mainstream Communities

26. Environmental Soundness:Mainstream Communities • Wealthy communities have huge houses, but few residents creating a tremendous waste of space. • Poor communities are often cramped and squalid. • Lack of affordable housing elsewhere forces poor into ghettos.

27. Environmental Soundness:Mainstream Communities • Low income housing is often built near chemical plants and other unpleasant and dangerous areas. • Less political power to fight environmental hazards. • Higher morbidity and mortality rates caused by poor conditions. • Impact compounded by lack of health care and health insurance. Source: http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org

28. Environmental Soundness:Mainstream Communities • Urban Sprawl • Uses up fertile, productive land • Perpetuates problems it is trying to solve: • Poverty • Crime • Bad housing • Bad schools • Creates disinvestment from impoverished communities. • Problems causing sprawl can only be stopped by reducing inequality. Source: http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org

29. Environmental Soundness:Mainstream Communities • Wildlife patterns are severely disrupted by sprawl and urbanization. • “Sprawl is one of the leading causes of species decline in the country.” –John Kostyak, NWF attorney. • Sprawl is also likely to reduce nitrogen in watersheds, resulting in loss of agricultural land and reduction in forest cover along streams and waterways. Sources: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1170/is_2000_Sept-Oct/ai_64196598 http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1046/j.1440-1770.2002.00203.x

30. Environmental Soundness:Mainstream Communities • Urban\Suburban communities are heavily reliant on industrial agriculture. • Industrial Agriculture puts a tremendous load on the environment. • Nitrate runoff creates “dead zones”. • Monocultures leech nutrients from soil and require large external inputs to maintain.

31. Environmental Soundness:Mainstream Communities • As animal concentrations increase, risk of evolution and transmission of infectious diseases also increases. • High concentration of humans and animals leads to higher incidence of zoonoses (diseases transmissable from animals to humans). • Prolonged use of low-level antibiotics leads to resistant pathogens. Source: http://www.ehponline.org/members/2006/8837/8837.pdf

32. Environmental Soundness: Intentional Communities

33. Environmental Soundness:Intentional Communities • Small scale housing reduces need for large structures. • Houses are often made using alternative materials (strawbales, adobe, recycled materials). • Even ‘poor’ intentional communities often work to improve land and soil quality.

34. Environmental Soundness:Intentional Communities • Potential to use undesirable properties in urban and rural settings. • Urban sprawl can be minimized by living smaller. • Intentional communities also reduce impact on wildlife.

35. Environmental Soundness:Intentional Communities • Local production reduces reliance on markets and industrial agriculture. • Agricultural efforts are generally small and organic with an emphasis on sustainability. • Poor intentional communities have a high level of food security compared to poor mainstream communities.

36. Social Justice: Mainstream Communities

37. Social Justice:Mainstream Communities • Social justice is secondary to profit and convenience. • Huge underclass required to serve the needs of the wealthy. • Decisions are made by groups of powerful elitists.

38. Social Justice:Mainstream Communities • The world economy is largely dependent on exploited\slave labor. • Antislavery International estimates that there are at least 12 million slaves in the world today. • More than 6 million of these are children. Source: http://www.antislavery.org

39. Social Justice:Mainstream Communities • Slave and sweatshop labor is used to produce many products consumed in modern homes: • Electronics • Carpets\Textiles • Charcoal • Bricks • Jewelry • Plastic goods Source: http://www.antislavery.org

40. Social Justice:Mainstream Communities • U.S. Agricultural system exploits immigrant labor and mistreats workers. • Ag industry accounted for 2% of overall employment, but had 13% of all occupational deaths from 1994-99. • Seasonal workers often live in unsanitary conditions in overcrowded and deficient housing. • Up to 85% of migrant workers are minorities. • Workers are paid avg. wage of less than $7,500/yr. Source: National Center for Farmworker Health http://www.ncfh.org/docs/02%20-%20environment.pdf

41. Social Justice:Mainstream Communities • Individuality and privacy are highly valued. • Community support is sacrificed in many cases. • People are cut off from each other, resulting in alienation. • Lack of social security nets.

42. Social Justice: Intentional Communities

43. Social Justice:Intentional Communities • Work is shared equally among members. • Member’s skills are used to the fullest, increasing satisfaction and sense of wellbeing. • Products not produced on-site are purchased locally whenever possible to reduce reliance on exploitive systems.

44. Social Justice:Intentional Communities • Important decisions are made by consensus, allowing for a greater sense of self-actualization. • Most communities strive for as few restrictive laws as possible. • Commonality and community are primary values, taking precedence over profit.

45. Social Justice:Intentional Communities • Lesser degree of privacy, more community support and camaraderie. • Shared goals and ideals allow for a greater sense of purpose and fulfillment.

46. Sustainable Practices

47. Sustainable Practices • Agroforestry • Alley Cropping • Forest Farming • Riparian Bufferzones • Silvopasture • Windbreaks

48. Sustainable Practices • Integrated Pest Management –builds and preserves soil health. Attracts beneficial insects, reduces destructive insects. Source: http://surgery-graphics.med.umich.edu/~matt/archives/images/Ladybug.jpg

49. Sustainable Practices • Management Intensive Grazing • Rotate animals through series of fields, allowing vegetation to regrow. • Distributes nutrients to depleted soils. • Easier on environment than feedlots. • Reduces risk of virulent diseases. Source: http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/cows.jpg

50. Sustainable Practices • Urban Agriculture • Makes use of abandoned land and empty lots. • Phytoremediation removes pollutants from soil. • Provides abundant food for poor urban populations. Source: http://www.fao.org/NEWS/FOTOFILE/IMG/20860lg.jpg