[Scpg] Guidelines For Eco-Village Development

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson]

Guidelines For Eco-Village Development 
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC29/Gilman2.htm
Eight steps to creating your own sustainable community
by Robert Gilman

One of the articles in Living Together (IC#29)
Summer 1991, Page 60
Copyright (c)1991, 1996 by Context Institute | To order this issue ...



You might think that guidelines for eco-village development would mostly 
have to do with their "eco" aspect - that is, how to handle the biosystem 
and built environment. These are certainly important, but in researching 
this issue - and interviewing many people with extensive community 
experience - we have learned that the physical systems are the easiest 
part. They are also the most variable, since the details depend so strongly 
on the specifics of the community: its location, purpose, and composition.

These guidelines focus, instead, on where we perceive the need to be 
greatest - the process of eco-village development:

1. Recognize it will be a journey - and enjoy it! * If you have an 
"eco-village dream," and focus too strongly on the desired end result, you 
set yourself and others up for frustration and disappointment. The process 
of community development takes time - usually many years. Joan Halifax, 
director of the Ojai Foundation, speaks for many community founders in the 
following story: "The Dalai Lama told me in an interview that there were 
three conditions that would make it possible to accomplish my vision for 
the community here: Great love, great persistence, great patience. Patience 
is the hardest of all!"

It helps to recognize right from the start that a community is always in 
process, and it is best to honor and enjoy the process.

2. Develop a vision - and keep developing it * A clear, shared vision is 
one of the most important kinds of "glue" a group can have. For a vision to 
work as glue, however, it needs to be more than an intellectual construct. 
At its best, a vision gives voice to the full essence and deeply-felt 
purpose of the group. There are many ways of developing a vision (and a 
vision statement), but however arrived at, the vision will be most 
effective if each member of the group feels a resounding personal "Yes!" in 
response to it. Keep the vision alive by revisiting it regularly as a group 
to see whether it still feels right.

3. Build relationships and bonding * The other fundamental glue for a group 
comes from the heart. It is vital to build solid interpersonal 
relationships, mutual understanding, caring, and trust. Building such 
relationships isn't necessarily easy, but doing things together - eating, 
singing, dancing, telling life stories, traveling - facilitates the process 
much faster than meetings!

4. Make the whole-system challenge explicit * Once the group has begun to 
clarify its vision and build relationships, get the group oriented to the 
tasks that need to be accomplished. Personality style conflicts may arise 
here: some prefer to begin with planning, others would rather plunge in and 
experiment. The challenge for the group as a whole is to get these two 
tendencies into a constructive relationship, so that they contribute to 
each other. You'll need both.

5. Get help - to become more self-reliant * Knowledge about sustainable 
community development is growing so quickly that it's unlikely the founding 
group will know everything. For some specific topics, such as building 
details, it may make sense to depend entirely on outside expertise. On many 
others, however, it makes sense to develop expertise within the group. 
Include plenty of time and resources in your budget for group learning 
about how to do things, how to manage tasks, and how to build group process 
and interpersonal skills. Lack of management or process skills is the 
number one reason communities fail.

6. Develop clear procedures * Community should be an adventure among 
friends, not an exercise in bureaucracy. The painful experience of many 
groups makes it clear, however, that a little bureaucracy is both necessary 
and helpful. Specifically, it is wise to develop clear, written procedures 
for decision making, resolving disputes, handling finances, and determining 
membership. Perhaps even more important is to develop "meta-procedures" for 
making changes to these (and other) procedures. Groups change, so plan on 
changing your procedures, too - frequently at first, more slowly later as 
the group matures.

7. Maintain balance - sustainably * Once the group is formed, there will be 
many specific tasks required to develop its eco-village or sustainable 
community, and many important balances to be maintained:

(a) Between "group" and "private" * People need some of each, often in 
changing quantities.

(b) Between today and tomorrow * If not well paced, the group could either 
do too much too soon and exhaust itself, or procrastinate and become a 
debating society.

(c) Between "hardware" and "software"* Some people are drawn to images of 
solar homes and permaculture gardens, others are most interested in the 
feeling of community. One aspect or another may need to be emphasized at 
different times, but the success of the community depends on their balanced 
development and a shared appreciation for both.

(d) Among love, light, and will * Every community can benefit from 
cultivating the positive qualities of the heart (bonding, caring, trust), 
the mind (clarity of understanding, vision, integrity), and the will (the 
ability to act with courage and effectiveness). The challenge is to 
integrate them in a balanced way. Affirming the importance of this balance 
within the vision of the group can be a powerful touchstone for assessing 
and readjusting group progress.

(e) Among different learning and cognitive styles * We can hardly emphasize 
enough the importance of developing clear understandings in the group of 
the many ways that people are different. Most of the disagreements within 
groups have to do with arguments over learning and cognitive styles, not 
over matters of substance. For example, some people would rather talk and 
then act, others would rather act and then talk, still others just want to 
act, and of course there are always those who just want to talk. Such 
differences, working in right relationship, can complement each other in 
ways that will be liberating for each person. In wrong relationship, they 
lead to endless power struggles.

(f) Among current consumption, investment, and service * Sustainability is 
fundamentally about fairness and balance across time. One of the most 
concrete ways to express this is through a balance among expenditures - of 
time as well as money - on current consumption (from food to 
entertainment), investment (from building to education), and service to 
others (which may involve either current consumption or investment). 
Boundaries may blur, but if the future benefits are high, it is generally 
an investment. If the benefits are primarily here and now, it is current 
consumption. Healthy living - and avoiding burn-out - require a balance of 
both.

The spirit of sustainable service provides a healthy antidote for 
imbalances in either direction. Service focuses beyond the self and can 
thus lift one beyond self-centered current consumption. At the same time, 
sustainable service suggests that some "current consumption" is necessary 
to nurture today's server, so that he or she can serve tomorrow as well.

8. Be open and honest * Finally, the evidence is strong that for many 
community issues - including the always sensitive issues of sex, power, and 
money - what you do is less important than how openly and honestly you do 
it. For example, some successful communities are based on celibacy, while 
others are based on group marriages. These seemingly opposite approaches 
can both work. What doesn't work - what gets communities into trouble - is 
when the public story no longer fits the private behavior, especially if 
those in leadership positions are the ones breaking the rules.

The issue of power provides another good example. Many communities adopt 
the ideal of complete equality of power, but in fact such equality 
essentially never happens in human groups. There is always a "power 
gradient," with some people having more influence than others. The attempt 
to maintain the fiction of complete equality can lead to a collective 
denial of the actual dynamics in the group. The paradox (and tragedy) of 
such a situation is that it encourages "hidden" abuses of power while at 
the same time suppressing and discouraging genuinely needed visible leadership.

A healthier approach is to acknowledge what is, while also honoring one's 
ideals. The group may also find that it can reformulate its ideals in a way 
that better honors their deep meaning (for example, equal fairness for all 
may be more important than equal power) and better fits the complex truth 
of their experience.

Now take another look at Step 1. You're on your way!

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All contents copyright (c)1991, 1996 by Context Institute