It Ain’t Your Father’s Hippie Commune

In LA, an Eco-Village that began in 1993 operates in a two square block, mixed-use, low-to-moderate income, neighborhood three miles west of downtown within walking distance of bus lines and two subway stops. Within that two blocks, the 40 ‘village’ residents have rehabilitated and retrofitted two buildings by making them more energy efficient and by reusing original building components in the remodel. They have a local food coop and are in the process of closing a street to develop an "Ecology Park" for the community—beyond that, however, little else has been done in the 15+ years since it began except to provide free eco-workshops and teach-ins for anyone wanting to know about eco-village living. There haven’t been a lot of ‘outsiders’ who’ve joined their efforts, even though they have been able to stay the course with several of the original members still residing in the Eco-Village.

Another of the 379 eco-villages cited by Worldwatch Institute is in Cleveland, where an Eco-Village began in 1996 as a pioneering effort to demonstrate what principles of sustainable development could become a part of the eco-village lifestyle. Since it’s founding, the Cleveland project has been revitalizing an urban neighborhood while incorporating the principles of green building design: solar panels, community gardening, green spaces, pedestrian oriented development and sustainable living workshops to educate the masses.

In Cleveland, however, as contrasted with most other eco-villages (including Arcosanti), there are no specific requirements for ecological living and their only rule is that residents have to participate in projects that attempt to benefit the 3,000 residents in the local area and not just the residents of the ‘eco village’ portion of the area.

That’s proven to be both good and bad: it’s good to ‘educate’ and get people to think about their personal eco-footprint, but it has proven to be difficult to convince members of the community at large to adopt an ecologically friendly lifestyle—especially if elements of that life-style are more expensive than not. As Detroit’s Shoreway Community Development Organization director Mandy Metcalf noted recently, "…people like living downtown or living in an energy efficient townhouse but they have not necessarily embraced every aspect of the eco-village vision."

It is clear that just because you build a "green" village, people won’t necessarily just be knocking down the gates to participate.

That is why the LA Eco-Village Institute’s Lois Arkin notes that most cooperatives are not "fully fledged and fully manifested" and are mostly "aspiring eco-villages." Lots of eco-village residents, she notes, "still own and drive automobiles…" — which begs the question, just how environmentally friendly do eco-village residents have to be to call their village an "eco" village?

If we are ever to realize our full potential to build ever-more energy efficient and sustainable dwellings, communities, and supporting infrastructure, we need to start with a common vision—Arcosanti had great goals but no common plan that included venture capital resources or even government subsidies to make it a reality.

But, Solari’s ideas have inspired a generation of architects who are beginning to share the vision that communities (i.e. villages) can become more sustainable if we start small and inculcate the principles of sustainable development in many different communities and in many different places. At its core, Arcosanti gave birth to the new millennium eco-village concept even though it was founded on 25 acres of remote desert land and not in a central city neighborhood. But Arcosanti’s slow growth should be a warning to eco-village planners everywhere: sustainable growth requires resources—in this case, real resources—dollars and cents resources.

One example is the small community of Rock Port in northwest Missouri that recently christened a four-turbine wind farm which makes Rock Port the first U.S. city to get all of its electricity from wind power! They had the vision, to be sure, but they also recognized it would cost money to make it a reality—that is when the Wind Capital Group and John Deere Corporation stepped up and built the $90 Million Loess Hills Wind farm on bluffs west of the town to generate five megawatts a day, which allows the 1,300 residents to "sell" and provide power back to the grid. They purposely built the ‘farm’ to produce more than double the power needed for the town, thereby being able to pay back the costs over future decades that will benefit the town’s children’s, children’s, children. And, in the construction process, more than 500 workers from 20 states came to this small ‘village’ boosting the local economy at the same time.

The lesson is, we can build eco-villages one green technology at a time, if we set out to involve a community in the planning. But, today, it’s a capitalistic venture. Farmers in the Rock Port area saw the long term benefits of giving the town a little space to build wind turbines on their properties. In return, they reduced their energy consumption from fossil-fueled power plants and allowed the local utility to ‘buy’ power from the town that they didn’t have to build power plants to provide.

Hippie communes of the ‘60’s have come of age in the new millennium and we call them eco-villages—a concept that, with proper planning and funding, will help make the future better place for our children’s, children’s, children.