co-housing info
May. 17th, 2006 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonAnother nearby co-housing project I'm learning about: http://www.katywil.com/
These projects are popping up like mushrooms around here (and elsewhere, I assume). It's interesting to me that so many people with common ideals are choosing to manifest those ideals in the form of intentional communities right now. My intuition is that beyond the kinds of heretical utopian idealization and isolationist or insular community-building that have occured throughout many periods of human history (often religiously-oriented, often fleeing persecution), we're also seeing a kind of lifeboat effect -- groups oriented not around any specific religious belief, but instead, a common deep-seated unease with the dominant culture, and a growing sense that the current world, and the enormous but perhaps quite brittle structures we live in and alongside daily, are not remotely sustainable. Something has to give. I get the impression from talking to a number of my colleagues in community-building that most of these new intentional communities are not looking for the new Eden, not boldly seeking the Promised Land or questing after some romantically-imagined Utopia. They're just hoping to reduce their footprint, and live in a more sustainable, simple, healthy and life-affirming way. Not colony ships, or even vessels of exploration, crewed by bold settlers or pilgrims or pioneers enacting their Manifest Destiny to find and conquer the New World, but instead, lifeboats, filled with hardy, cautious people with more humble ambition, hoping merely to find a slower, more intimate, life-sustaining way of life, and to weather the coming storms.
These projects are popping up like mushrooms around here (and elsewhere, I assume). It's interesting to me that so many people with common ideals are choosing to manifest those ideals in the form of intentional communities right now. My intuition is that beyond the kinds of heretical utopian idealization and isolationist or insular community-building that have occured throughout many periods of human history (often religiously-oriented, often fleeing persecution), we're also seeing a kind of lifeboat effect -- groups oriented not around any specific religious belief, but instead, a common deep-seated unease with the dominant culture, and a growing sense that the current world, and the enormous but perhaps quite brittle structures we live in and alongside daily, are not remotely sustainable. Something has to give. I get the impression from talking to a number of my colleagues in community-building that most of these new intentional communities are not looking for the new Eden, not boldly seeking the Promised Land or questing after some romantically-imagined Utopia. They're just hoping to reduce their footprint, and live in a more sustainable, simple, healthy and life-affirming way. Not colony ships, or even vessels of exploration, crewed by bold settlers or pilgrims or pioneers enacting their Manifest Destiny to find and conquer the New World, but instead, lifeboats, filled with hardy, cautious people with more humble ambition, hoping merely to find a slower, more intimate, life-sustaining way of life, and to weather the coming storms.
