Intentional communities
 

Does anybody have experience living in or starting an intentional community? ratbastid and I and a handful of our friends are thinking about buying some land and starting an intentional community based around communal living, natural building methods, and environmental sustainability. We've got a lot of ideas but no real clue about what's involved and would love to hear others' experiences.

I've never done it, but we've looked into it a little. Its very popular around here. The only issue I would have with it is that I've read they don't like to "knock". I like my privacy, but I also like living in a community. In the end I think my privacy comes first.

Here's a link to the one just up the road from me: http://www.sharingwood.org/ You can get an idea of what its like :)

Sounds like a commune or a gated community... one being a bit anarchistic in nature and the other being authoritarian to the extreme.

I have friends who grew up on communes and they didn't really have much that was good to say about them.

Charlatan, it can go to either extreme, but the way we're envisioning it (or at least the way I am envisioning it, it would be somewhere in the middle:

1. Everyone has their own house, their own job, their own money, and everyone owns their own property. NOT a commune. I'm not terribly interested in that.

2. Communal property would include:

- common house with:
a. communal kitchen
b. communal gathering space
c. guest rooms so you don't have to keep an empty useless bedroom in your house
d. hot tub and sauna!!! w00t!

- communal grounds including
a. vegetable garden
b. herb garden
c. flower garden
d. walking path

3. Maybe one or two communal cars to cut down on every couple needing two cars, maybe a central laundry, possibly a central computer lab and entertainment center.

At this point it's just us and like 5 friends who all really like each other and want to create a different lifestyle that's in line with our environmental values, more supportive, less expensive, and would enable us to kind of drop out of the 9-5 world if we felt like it. We would have a massage therapist, a stay-at-home mom who would want help with child care without having to move to L.A. to be near family, a teacher, three computer geeks, and, um, me. I guess I'm the idea person.

I don't know how big it would get, or how we'd handle expansion or someone moving out, but I'm sure there are legal issues invovled. In a way, it's not much different than belonging to a homeowner's association, I guess, except that there are particular shared values we'd be upholding that would be different from the traditional ones in most communities.

From what I've seen and heard about from the artist communities that are like this...I'm underwhelmed.

I know that Skogafoss had lots of dealings with artist communities like the one you describe just outside of Woodstock. The pictures and stories don't really evoke the same images in my mind as they did in picture.

YMMV

While I see this "project" as a desireable ideal I guess I am just a bit too much of a pessimist...

The key to it all is... "or at least the way I am envisioning it"

There always seems to be some sort of disconnect between what one person envisions and another. Therein lies the peril.

Roommates are a great idea for saving money on an apartment until they play music all hours or the night or refuse to clean their dishes... if you follow me.

Reminds me of The Village. Heheheheh.

It sounds great to me, but there needs to be repurcussions in case someone does not contribute to the community. It would be easy to slack off in such a generous community and leech off the group.

in Arizona, there is a community called Arcosanti:

http://www.arcosanti.org/expArcosanti/main.html

I haven't been up to their site, but I did have a chance to talk to the creator of Arcology, Paolo Soleri. It might be a place you'd like to check out Lurkette, either for ideas or maybe just to visit sometime in the future. :)

It all sounds like a lot of fun, until you start quarreling about whose turn it is to clean the communal hot tub and sauna, and half of the people refuse to, cos they almost never use it, so the rest should do it, while the ones that use it accuse the non-users of having used it at least once last month..... you can see where this is gonna go....

You can set up strict rules that all should adhere to, including monthly deposits into a common bank account, daily chores for each individual, cleaning rosters, etc..., but at this point, I for instance will be packing my bags already, because it is all starting to look a lot like what I (presumably) tried to escape from in the first place...

Most people usually prefer to put themselves before the rest. Which is why you don't see too many of these "communities" around.