20 ms·

230 people living communally on 175 acre eco village [video]

180 points by NoRagrets 5y ago

simonebrunozzi 5y ago
This is, in a way, a dream of mine. However, I wouldn't want to live in a "commune", but rather I'd like to convince ~1,000 people to buy a mountain on the Italian Alps, or an island somewhere, or a large plot of land, and then build some eco-friendly homes, and live there with interesting, nice people - while at the same time maintaining my privacy and my own "space" in my house.
- codingdave 5y ago
  "Cohousing" was the term for this 10-20 years ago. I haven't heard much about it since, but there was a small movement towards exactly that concept a while back. It may be worth researching it to see where it lies today.
  - simonebrunozzi 5y ago
    Oh, trust me, I have researched "co-housing" and similar concepts. The missing link seems to be that there's a clear advantage in being able to bring together hundreds of people, and "optimize" the logistics and the construction of the site. And so far, very few have succeeded in doing so.
haihaibye 5y ago
This seems really great, housing 230 people on land that cost $400k 25 years ago, but I suspect it would be illegal to do this in almost all of the Western world where people want to live. It's basically an exercise in rezoning. If you were allowed to build that many housing units originally then they would have been outbid by a developer.
- foxhop 5y ago
  The buildings look like condos to me, everything is in the building code specs and it looks like they have systems the building code should adopt like positioning the building for maximum solar photon gain and winter solar heat gain.
  - haihaibye 5y ago
    I'm not talking about the internal community village rules, but the local government/council permits to construct dozens of houses on farmland. For instance where I live farmland is cheap until it has permission to build a house on it, then it's much more expensive. If you could buy it then get permission to build 50 houses on it, you would make many millions the instant after the rezoning. Thus, the rich with connections in local politics do this crowding out the communities like these guys. I suspect their secret sauce is local government connections and lobbying / legal expertise to rezone.
test6554 5y ago
I wonder what the quality of life is like. How much manual labor is required? Does their local climate require much air conditioning and if so, how much air conditioning do their residents get? What happens if someone is too old to work or just no longer feels like working/contributing?
- whbrown 5y ago
  Probably no more labor than any other organic farm, which is to say, far more than most people expect but tolerable. And upstate New York is quite agreeable even in the height of summertime. Winter is a different story. I'm more curious about what sort of social responsibilities are required. Do you have to engage in all that `frog`, `song`, `tree` triteness or is it truly an open and accepting community?
- jcims 5y ago
  Its in Ithaca New York - https://goo.gl/maps/9QkytRGYivgZ6oQ89 https://goo.gl/maps/9QkytRGYivgZ6oQ89 This past August they were hitting highs 80's with 80%+ average humidity. https://www.wunderground.com/history/monthly/us/ny/ithaca/KITH/date/2021-7 https://www.wunderground.com/history/monthly/us/ny/ithaca/KI... Definitely could use some air conditioning.
mikewarot 5y ago
Someone has to keep the bad people out, or the sociopaths take over, which is my understanding of the main failure mechanism of communes started in the 1960s. This thought is what came to mind, and I stopped watching at about 4:30 when I realized the person being interviewed must be the owner / gatekeeper. At some point she'll pass, or get bought out, or whatever, and it'll all fall apart.
KronisLV 5y ago
I don't doubt that there are certain downsides to living like the people in the video (at least when it comes to creature comforts and their overall lifestyles), but personally i just find the surroundings very scenic and calming. As someone who got to move away from the city and work remotely from my countryside home thanks to the pandemic (silver linings), i actually find my current circumstances to be far more stress free than the city life, even if going to the store turns out to be a larger, weekly event, and washing myself involves heating water (or sauna) for a lot of the day with a furnace that consumes firewood instead of just jumping into the shower (and, you know, the house being cold in the mornings, before the centralized heating does a few cycles of water through the radiators and everything heats up). Of course, living in the countryside also involves a huge amount of things that need to be done - everything from mowing the lawns constantly throughout the summers, tending to the greenhouse (due to my dad's desires to have one), using a tractor to mow down the grass on the fields and collect it (governmental penalties for not doing that), repairing everything that breaks, from water pumps, to having to repaint wooden window frames so they don't rot, acquiring firewood for the winter, making sure that irrigation ditches are okay and don't collapse and so on... But in exchange for that, i get no nosy neighbors to invade upon my privacy, fresh air, no soot from all the cars on the frames of my windows (and the inside of my lungs, probably), no sense of urban sprawl or the need to rush anywhere and no worries about the current pandemic either (even though i'm vaccinated). Plus, growing your own tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and herbs, berries and other stuff is nice, at least as far as the end results go. And building anything or making improvements to the home doesn't take permits upon permits upon permits. My sleep is also pretty much excellent nowadays and i also have a safe environment for doing exercise with no judgement or social pressures whatsoever. In short, there are both benefits and drawbacks, but living closer to the nature just feels more right, a sensation that's utterly devoid from urban life, save from regularly visiting parks and such.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > Of course, living in the countryside also involves a huge amount of things that need to be done That's why living in a community has upsides. Of course, getting along with your "neighbors" is a prerequisite, but it fixes problems such as: - who's going to take care of X while i'm sick? - i'm familiar with water pumps, but i have no clue about repairing truck engines; who will do it? - i'm very good at farming but i'm clueless about making bread In addition, communal living enables economies of scale which urban individualized lifestyles have completely dismantled. For example, the video mentions communal cooking and laundry, which overall consumes much less resources than each household having their own fridge/stove/oven/laundromat. > but living closer to the nature just feels more right, a sensation that's utterly devoid from urban life It feels more right because it is more right. There's nothing inherently wrong with some level of population concentration, but modern cities are car-centered nightmares where everything is concrete and pollution and where life without money is utterly impossible, and where the population concentration is such that any form of self-sustaining lifestyle is impossible (if only for energy and food).
jcims 5y ago
I need to bookmark this and use it to test my progress in socializing myself a bit. I have zero problems with the idea, I live in the country and am totally on board with the independence and natural setting...but I had a nearly instant phobia-like physical reaction to the video. I tried to power through it, clicking around to see if it got better but ultimately had to stop watching after a minute or so. It was sort of like claustrophobia combined with the sense of multiple people touching me or something. Really bizarre.
- jpgvm 5y ago
  Man I identify with this feeling so much. Most of this is things I am really interested in, living off the land, renewable power, etc. 99% of the concepts are right down my alley. But the overall feeling of just.. more people than I am used to? Just found it really off putting and couldn't watch without sort of skipping through to see the bits I wanted to see. I am somewhat planning to start building my own full off-grid setup soon but I'm planning to go it alone. I'm not a hermit but I think I need space to myself more so than others.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    > I am somewhat planning to start building my own full off-grid setup soon but I'm planning to go it alone. I'm not a hermit but I think I need space to myself more so than others. You can live in a commune and have personal space. Not all communes have dormitories (it's really an anti-soviet cliché)... most have individual or small collective (consented) housing with strong collective infrastructure. Anarchist ideals have been instrumental in building free communes over the past two centuries, and they refuse a false dichotomy between individual welfare and community building. We can have the two at the same time, as long as we choose carefully who to live with, and properly define what our collective project is.
- jseban 5y ago
  Same here, and that lady gives me the heebie-jeebies, and the way she speaks gives me cult vibes. I don't get the point of this either, it's just reinventing a village, only more cramped. Seems like she just used her political connections and this eco branding to "raise money" for her own house
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
I heard recently that Vienna, who seem to have housing more under control than many other cities, tries to build new housing developments around these kind of communities as they kick-start the "community" part of a newly built area, though on a far more urban level than this. https://miesarch.com/work/1640 https://miesarch.com/work/1640
smitty1e 5y ago
I am completely, 100% on board with what these people are doing and hope they find much joy. What gives me pause is the certainty that these stylings will not scale. Once the populatione exceeds Dunbar's Number[1], a management layer must needs precipitate, and the Iron Law of Oligarchy[2] will kick in. Inevitably. The notion that cool ideas like this can apply to large, non-self-selecting populations is a bugaboo. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy
- grecy 5y ago
  > What gives me pause is the certainty that these stylings will not scale Why does that matter? That's like saying my backyard vegetable garden will not scale to feed the entire street, or that the new M1 MacBook Pro won't scale to train the Tesla AI. Just because something doesn't scale it doesn't mean it isn't a great thing worthy of perusing & learning from.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Yes, my take was a little more toward, you don't scale it, you rather replicate lots and lots of small villages. Having just typed that though, I agree with OP that even lots and lots of these could not replace a dense urban city. You know, unless some plague wiped out 90% of our population.
    - smitty1e 5y ago
      I'm more worried about the visionary that wants to set themselves over a fee dozen such challenges and then start bossing everone around. For the "common good". You understand. These sad tales always stem from the best intentions.
  - smitty1e 5y ago
    Hence my leadoff: > I am completely, 100% on board with what these people are doing and hope they find much joy. Looks like a wonderful place. But such contexts (thinking the Amish here) are sustained by the kind of cohesion that will be challenging to generalize. But watch some idealist try.
cletus 5y ago
It looks like the legal structure for cooperative housing ("coop") like this originated in Germany and first came to the United States via New York City [1]: > The first housing cooperative in the United States organized under the Rochdale Cooperative Principles was developed in Brooklyn, New York in 1918 by a group of Finnish artisans - the Finnish Home Building Association. Coops remain extraordinarily popular in New York City. The vast majority of apartment buildings in Manhattan are coops. Many from elsewhere don't really know what this means. There are broadly two popular models of property ownership: 1. Condominiums. These are titled with the city and state as a distinct lot with the owner's name on it. Nearly always these are part of an HOA that is responsible for maintenance of common areas and establishing and enforcing rules. For reference, single-family homes ("SFHs") are typically in this model but in the US, SFHs aren't called condos. That's reserved for apartments and townhouses; and 2. Coops. The building is owned by a legal entity like a corporation. As far as the city and state are concerned, that whole building is one lot and is taxed as one unit. The coop is responsible for paying that property tax bill. You don't own your apartment the same way you do in a condo. You own shares in the coop that give you the right to a particular apartment. Maintaining the coop and paying expenses like property taxes is apportioned by the number of shares to each owner as a maintenance fee. It's worth noting that in New York state these two work very differently in terms of property tax assessment, which has been a point of contention between the city and the state for decades. Basically, coops are assessed in terms of Assessed Rental Value ("ARV") and condos/SFHs are not such that a coop might have an apportioned property tax bill of two times or more of a similarly valued coop. It also means a $100m condo has a tax bill of only 10-15x that of a $1m coop, which is ridiculous. Anyway, I wonder since this community is a coop how it gets caught up in this tax treatment compared to similarly valued SFHs in the area. [1]: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1337&context=econ_wpapers https://opencommons.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=13...
- refurb 5y ago
  Condos are typically property where you own a specific part of a larger property (a legally recognized/identified “interest”) plus an agreement to maintain everything else that isnt explicitly exclusively yours (“common space”). The condos I’ve own show true ownership share - even the land (though no distinct part, just fractional ownership). Single family homes are different in the sense that it’s one legally defined property where 100% of it is for the exclusive use of the owner. HOAs can include a group of individual properties plus (or not) common space. Your description of co-ops reminds me of TICs (tenancy in common) in CA. The property is viewed as one “unit” although it may be subdivided by tenants through a separate agreeemnt. Typically in TICs you buy an entire building and have a separate agreement that lays out what is exclusive and what is common. But the city sees it as one property in its entirety with multiple owners.
Glench 5y ago
That Eco village is cool. Bit of trivia: The guy who wrote the amazing book Reinventing Organizations about actual, >100 person, successful companies that are organized non-hierarchically moved to that ecovillage with his family and seems to be really enjoying it. Here's the book in a "pay what it's worth to you after you're done reading" format: https://www.reinventingorganizations.com/pay-what-feels-right.html https://www.reinventingorganizations.com/pay-what-feels-righ...
foxhop 5y ago
People who say this won't scale don't understand history. The things that scale, fail, often spectacularly. Systems like this reboot humanity. I'm into Permaculture [0] and I build and document systems which make this type of living work for the majority. [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1eySW_9TiI5wnvTnIIw2Nw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1eySW_9TiI5wnvTnIIw2Nw We will rebuild together, stronger.
- daddylongstroke 5y ago
  Yeah it's a bit bizarre hearing people say "this could never work", and them not understanding that it has "worked" this way for most of human history.
  - kcb 5y ago
    For most of human history humanity did not exist in the form it does today. There are regions in countries with higher population than the entire planet a few hundred years ago. So I don't think we can take much lesson about scale from the past.
    - daddylongstroke 5y ago
      I think you're missing the point. The scale of today's cities IS the root cause of the problems.
rmah 5y ago
I don't really see the difference between this and a coop apartment building except that it's in a rural setting. So, many of the social structures of traditional old world villages but cooperatively owned and in the USA. I don't understand what's "eco" about it (vs any other rural community, I mean). Am I missing something critical?
- whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  > I don't understand what's "eco" about it. Seeing far too many cars in that video for any of it to be considered "eco".
  - ericd 5y ago
    The houses in the newest community are energy neutral/built to passivhaus standards. That’s quite unusual in the US. And much of their food comes from an on-site farm CSA. And they’ve left 90% of the land relatively wild, which should help preserve biodiversity. They’ve still got cars, but they’re certainly doing better than average.
    - whywhywhywhy 5y ago
      Maybe it's because I'm not American but the idea of a village which is remote but still has access to a town or city via bus or bike is very much a possibility and normal in lots of parts of the world. Cars are nowhere near as essential as American city and suburb planning unfortunately makes it seem like.
      - ericd 5y ago
        Yeah, that’s sadly not so common in the US.
- floatrock 5y ago
  Someone else posted a googlemaps view of the place: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ecovillage+At+Ithaca+Inc/@42.4422047,-76.5437611,536m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x71281aa65d9a74b3!8m2!3d42.441713!4d-76.5420994 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ecovillage+At+Ithaca+Inc/@... All the houses' roofs are south-facing, which combined with large overhangs, are a passivhaus thing (maximum heat energy in the winter when the sun is low, large overhangs block some of that in the summer when the sun is high). Some houses have solar on the roof, while the neighborhood to the north has a small centralized solar farm. If you have the land, it's a lot more cost-effective to put a centralized amount of ground-mounted solar and distribute it to a dense cluster of houses nearby. They mentioned they designed all the homes in their latest batch to shun natgas and go all electric. And then there's a bunch of "eco-mindset" things where it looks like they park their cars in communal lots and the houses are connected by pedestrian paths. Their development model is 10% developed/90% open-space (or something like that which flips the common american subdivision percentages). They said they aren't trying to be completely self-sufficient (they're 15min drive to downtown Ithica), but they do take steps like a have an onsite CSA. So I don't think they're being "eco" if you think eco means some absolutely self-sufficient car-free hippie in the woods. But that's also an impossible ideal -- even the unabomber who railed against the evils of capitalism still had walmart receipts in his shack, and Thoreau got through the Walden Pond winter with his mom bringing him soup or something like that. But as for "eco" in terms of lifestyle arrangements that give you a good mix of modern and sustainable life, yeah, seems like they're doing a good job.
0x0nyandesu 5y ago
Why are people on HN so obsessed with this concept? I've always found these communities require a lose of freedom to fully integrate and typically anything "other" in these communities is quickly expelled because the community could not function otherwise.
- nicbou 5y ago
  It's almost the complete opposite of the average programmer's lifestyle. You work on something close and concrete, without the usual social structure nor the pressure to monetise. It's definitely not for me, but I can see why it would attract the curosity of people on the opposite patch of grass.
- neogodless 5y ago
  > Why are people on HN so obsessed with this concept? ... what? 54 upvotes. I often see posts with a 1000 upvotes. I don't see a lot of stories about communal living. "Obsessed" might not be the right word here.
- dvh 5y ago
  Should leaf blowers be banned? Freedom is important but if the result is miserable living you want to escape then perhaps a some kind of rules are viable alternative. Live alone free or join community with rules. I like the idea of eco village but these projects are often ran by religious cults, I would prefer atheistic and science friendly eco village.
  - 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
    I just mean that typically these communities require you to do some form of manual labor to "take care of" the housing or making food. Nevermind that you might be able to do the same thing on your own land in your own time and come away doing less work on average then if you're forceably conscripted to do these tasks for the community. It's not at all about what type of technology you'd use to do the task but rather having to do it at all.
  - google234123 5y ago
pibechorro 5y ago
Awesome. Its crazy how much red tape, legal costs, etc they got from the town and state. We would have thousands of these up if people where free from all the regulations which are really just propping up high tax revenue, low nature designs.
nivenkos 5y ago
Looks expensive, the vast majority of us can't afford property even in standard towns and cities.
- ericd 5y ago
  There was a listing for a 3BR place for sale in the first village for ~$300k on their website a few weeks ago, unsure if it’s still there. I thought that was pretty reasonable. Also, the majority of people in the US live in homes that their family owns.
smileysteve 5y ago
As an American growing up in a suburb on a 1/2 acre, these numbers aren't making any sense to me; 175 acres should support at least 175 families and each 1/2 acre should be able to support a small business and garden plot on those resources, and eco erosion controls, streams and wetlands... If of a even slightly conservative mindset.
- brylie 5y ago
  From the video, there are four on-site organic farms. Garden plots may not produce enough food to sustain the community. Also, it looks like there are natural open spaces preserved on some of the acreage.
  - smileysteve 5y ago
    These suburb neighborhoods in America though use that extra 1/2 acre per family to support swim, tennis, playground, small football fields, community house. Anecdotally; the neighborhood of 400 houses, each on 1/2 acre,I reference was < 1 mile distance to an elementary, high school, chain grocery store, and local store fronts - and served 4 similar neighborhoods in 1 mile distance. Other "eco" features supported were 3 retention ponds and multiple streams. Was it eco? No. If everybody had a garden plot, and biked would it be more eco than this (1/2 to 1/3 the density) neighborhood selling itself as eco, probably
- ericd 5y ago
  If you watch the video, they mention that they left ~90% of it to nature, iirc, though I’m not sure if they include the farms in that. Does that clear it up?
  - smileysteve 5y ago
    No, because for each 1/2 acre plot in an American suburb there is roughly 1/4 acre in borders. So if you average 4 person households, you need 60 houses to meet that 230 population on 30 acres that's ~82%+10% from the borders. To clarify, I'm not saying American suburbs are eco, or working communally like this; I'm only saying the numbers in the title (and 90% nature) don't seem to make this eco in a standout way moreso than a green space (or large community garden) next to a neighborhood.
rib3ye 5y ago
At 37:00 she explicitly states the co-op has the authority through consensus to legally force someone off the commune (no mention of what happens to their shares, but I assume forfeiture). One has to wonder what the rest of the US would look like if we could kick someone out of their neighborhood and force them to sell or give up their home simply because we didn’t like them. The possibility for authoritarian attitudes seems high.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  I mean, that is what prisons are.
  - rib3ye 5y ago
    I can see where you are going with it but the justice system is like a delegated validator with a mandate and specifications on how to apply “fairness”. I guess I am arguing they specialized in kicking people out of the community with the mandate to rehabilitate so the rejoin the community. In no way am I making the argument that that’s what actually happens.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  If the system itself is the unit of survival, then individual members' rights aren't so important. That's the communism way. They certainly need to be selective in allowing membership or it'll degrade into a bunch of freeloaders.
- danjac 5y ago
  I mean it's not like the US has a history of segregation or anything...
- giantg2 5y ago
  I mean, the courts can do all sorts of things. I would say this sort of thing can happen indirectly in the civil side where a jury finds you less likeable than the other person and levies a large judgement against you. At the least you may be stuck with a large legal bill that could force you to downsize. There are also neighbors who may harass you or make life unbearable.
beckman466 5y ago
If anyone wants a sort of text version of this Ithaca tour: https://medium.com/@fredlaloux/we-are-wired-to-raise-children-in-community-103cd4e9e9bf https://medium.com/@fredlaloux/we-are-wired-to-raise-childre...
motohagiography 5y ago
Most intersting to me is the decision making, governance, dispute resolution, starts here (https://youtu.be/n-uH36w9xg8?t=1737 https://youtu.be/n-uH36w9xg8?t=1737) Few notes from it at 1.75 speed: Two separate methods, "consensus" and "dynamic governance," which are spread across three neighbourhoods, with all three neighbourhood boards meeting together once a month. Leans heavily on elder retired people who have the time to participate in the governance. Ownership is owning shares in whole co-op that are related to the size of the house. Coexistence is apparently easier with a larger group, (30-40), and groups that are too small get at each other (10 households) and cause harm to the relationships with everyone, where a conflict doesn't impact the cohesion of a larger group of 35-40. Dilution of relationships sounds important. This comes up again when they talk about multiple special purpose vehicles for neighbourhoods financially interacting so loss of one doesn't impact the other ones. It's kind of micro-federated, where federation isn't a response to growth, but rather, a necessary stability feature of surviving as small. They're the size of a small village, and it seems like you need that critical mass to keep it running so it can evolve organically and even a bit chaotically, and it's not close enough to each other that they will aligning all in one direction (good or bad) and causing strife. I could see how the whole thing could be vulnerable to politics, but it looks like their federated governance model mitigates lockstep. It reminds me a bit of a talk I heard about Native influence on the creation of the US constitution, via Mowhawk Chief Joseph Brant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Law_of_Peace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Law_of_Peace
- netcan 5y ago
  To those of us (most of us) from a liberal background, I think governance of these kinds can be confusing. We look for legible rulesets and interrogate them with "what happens if." At a second level, we look for legible dynamics like the influence of group size you mention. None of these are wrong but they're not necessarily key to the character of the system. "Consensus," meaning something more complex than "vote until everyone agrees," is a pretty natural way of making in tightly knit groups. We do it without realising we do it. Some people talk. Some agree. Some object. People talk some more. Usually, a consensus forms. It's voting or other formal authority systems that need to be invented. They don't tend to exist by default. Not every culture has voting. Every culture has talking until a decision is made. Consider jury systems. These are pretty formal, but they do have some consensus as part of the system. This is premised on jurors spending a lot of time together, discussing, argueing, etc. Anyway, my point is that the most important parts are probably ilegible. A functioning culture forms, or it does not. The right governance rules or group size, with the wrong group of people will not work. The reverse probably will.
axiosgunnar 5y ago
I understand these people do not trade with „impure societies“ like ours at all and would never seek medical assistance from us? Or is this basically one big NIMBY?
JPKab 5y ago
I spent time in an ecovillage in western North Carolina almost 20 years ago. Question: Who does the agricultural labor here? I watched the first 15 minutes of the video, and was very curious about this. The ecovillage I lived in was primarily younger people who did their own labor. A lot of it was backbreaking. We did our own construction as well. And YES, people got kicked out if they didn't work hard enough, and that happened several times. When I see an creepy old boomer hippy lady who sounds like a cult-leader, who doesn't look like she's capable of doing any kind of manual labor, I question if they are paying people to come in and handle the agriculture for them. These people all look like they are swimming in money. The ecovillage I lived in was not like that at all. We all ended up looking like a bunch of farmers and construction workers, because that's basically what you HAD to do to make it work. I'm sure I'm tying up the wrong things in the concept of an ecovillage. The one I lived in was probably a lot more off-the-grid than this one was intended to be.
- ericd 5y ago
  If you keep watching, they answer the question about who runs the agriculture (it’s a family that moved in that took over from the original runners of the farm).
netcan 5y ago
I know quite a few people who grew up on a kibbutz, Israeli communes that were formed mostly in the early 20th century. Most of them "privatized" in the last generation. They were quite successful. One of the bigger modern examples. A noteworthy point made by most first-handers is that "mission" was a necessary component. Kibbutzim often offered a relatively pleasant lifestyle, but lifestyle alone could not keep them alive. They needed to be fulfilling a greater purpose. For Kibbutzim the mission was zionism, socialism or other ideal. "Ideology" is an important concept to kibbutzniks. Kibbutz lifestyle and economics were good when the movement started to recede. It was the changing ideals that killed it, especially the decline of socialist beliefs in the 80s & 90s. I think it's also notable that a lot of communes exist in the world. Most are religious. Many are quirky, even cultish. This probably provides the "greater mission" old kibbutzniks insist is essential to success. A lot of the modern, secular equivalents are "eco villages." I could imagine a libertarian one or other anarchist idea set.
- robocat 5y ago
  I like this article which is mostly about one guy, but contains some of the background on the changes to Kibbutzism: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1989/07/09/farewell-to-the-kibbutz/6eac78f1-3e36-4d45-9fe8-fb2e58a26ff1/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1989/07/09/... An article from 1986 said: “About 20,000 volunteers”, “Israel’s 280 kibbutzim”, “About 3 percent of Israel’s 3.5 million Jewish population live on communal farms” implies ~5% labour from volunteers (assuming 3 month average stay and full time work). https://apnews.com/article/96bc6ecc6ae2f9ba6c4707a39babffa6 https://apnews.com/article/96bc6ecc6ae2f9ba6c4707a39babffa6 A modern equivalent in New Zealand is wwoofers.
  - deleted 5y ago
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mensetmanusman 5y ago
Reminds me of the commune in ’once upon a time in Hollywood’, but without the pregnancy.
AlbertCory 5y ago
My brother lived, for a while, in a Sun City "community." Everyone owned their own property. There was a common house for parties, billiards, etc., tennis courts, and I think a swimming pool. It was for 55-and-over people. I would bet most of these people are older, too, but I didn't watch the whole video so I could be wrong. It didn't have all the eco vibes, but that probably has more to do with the desert-ish setting. No communitarian stuff. I don't know if they had an HOA, but probably the corporation handled those functions. Not at all Black Mirror-like and no one was suspiciously happy. I don't know if you could be kicked out, but it wouldn't happen by a vote by your neighbors, for sure. I don't see how this is real different. Personally, I'd rather have a soulless corporation making the rules than a bunch of Karens off NextDoor.
- brudgers 5y ago
  Sun City ("City's"?) was/were the brainchild of Del Webb. He got out in front of the World War 2 generation of Americans as it hit retirement age. He brought a country club lifestyle to midwesterners on cheap land outside Phoenix. Not much of a hard sell of year round sunshine and warm weather to an empty nest couple from Iowa. That couple brought church social culture skills into the community clubhouses. The success of the original developments, brought the brand into Florida as well. One of Del Webb's insights was building developments large enough to accommodate multiple market segments. Large enough to balance people with three ideas of retirement: playing, saving, and finally having that dream house. Along golf course fairways, you'll find attached dwellings, small houses, and large houses. The occupants in each segment will be a mix of people who have downsized, streched to upscale, and moved laterally. It was a money making machine. At it's height, developers would build the golf courses and give them away to another business to run (under the old saw "the best way to make a small fortune is take a large fortune and build a golf course"). The profits were all taken as lot premiums. Anyway, all 55+ communities with fee simple ownership have HOA's because the age requirements are deed restrictions. Sun City's and other Del Webb communities have very active HOA's. That's why people buy into them.
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    I guess the big Sun City is NW of Phoenix, but that's not where my brother lived. I don't think it had a golf course, but maybe it did.
brudgers 5y ago
It's not a walkable community. No grocery store. No restaraunts. No doctors offices or dentists. If you look at the map and don't have the public relations material in front of you, the urban form is ordinary exurban sprawl. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ecovillage+At+Ithaca+Inc/@42.4401136,-76.5491804,14z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x71281aa65d9a74b3!8m2!3d42.441713!4d-76.5420994 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ecovillage+At+Ithaca+Inc/@... Sure there's a bus stop at the end of it's long driveway. Route 20 has six buses per weekday. Three buses a day on the weekends. https://tcatbus.com/bus-schedules https://tcatbus.com/bus-schedules If you're going anywhere in the long cold Ithaca winter, a car is the most practical option because it's still sprawl. Maybe better sprawl. But still sprawl even though there's a garden instead of a golf course.
- deleted 5y ago
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- joe_the_user 5y ago
  Well, ideally the communal kitchen and eating area would essentially substitute for both restaurants and grocery stores. The potential for socializing seems a lot like that of a small college - most people socialize during meal times and people who feel more like socializing can hang out in the communal areas between meal times. Which is to say, it's a space that has a lot more social potential than the grocery store/restaurant combo. Restaurants are for celebrating and meeting people you know. I don't think anyone socializes at all in grocery stores (though simple contact has its benefits). The "village" is divided into three neighborhood, all of which appear walkable (from a brief glance at the video). What I personally wouldn't like would be the small scale and having to buy-in and put all your eggs in the eco-village basket, so to speak.
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  - dmschulman 5y ago
    I've been to Ecovillage on a few occasions and it's a very walkable community. And not only that, it's about a 20 minute bike ride to downtown Ithaca. The town is quite walkable and bike friendly, if you don't mind the hills of course. The video doesn't take you through the entire community, but I'm not sure why people are left with the impression Ecovillage is in the middle of nowhere.
golemiprague 5y ago
So they reinvented a variation of the kibbutz? There are many communities like that in Israel with different variations of communality and with different variations of success. I would say the success rate is a bit like startups but the ones that survived and prospered can be a very nice place to live for the people who like that kind of life. It is certainly not for everyone and some places are struggling to convince the younger generations to stay.
drekipus 5y ago
I live in an eco village in Australia and I could probably share some insight I guess. (((( EDIT: in case it's not clear; I totally love the idea behind it, but I'm trying to paint the picture that it's not as glorious as it seems on paper; I personally think it needs a lot more of a structure (I lean conservatively), and I'm currently building an internal website/platform to try and unify many of the free-spirits that live here; otherwise people just do whatever they want and step all over each other. People move here because it's nice to be here, but they have their own version of ideals. ))))) My wife's family started it a number of years ago. Very green/eco-conscience values, and so made an eco-village of 5-6 acres housing 22 houses (and about 65 residents afaik). We're a little oasis in the middle of suburbia, surrounded by trees, native plants and habitats, and a growing vegetable garden; it's very lovely to live and work in. Unfortunately, people have moved in who are more fundamental than the ones who actually went through the trouble of building it, so they have totally unrealistic expectations or ideas, and that's ALL they have. -- It's entirely down to my wife's family (and me by extension) to maintain it. People love to keep saying how human societies are "naturally altuistic" and will "naturally co-operate" but it's entirely not the case. - The people who are more likely to move here are the fundamentalist types, leading to strong opinions and personalities. A lot of them like to drink and throw random parties / fire-pits. - A lot of normal people move here because they have families and full jobs. They have NO INTEREST in digging holes or putting up fences / other structures, over weekends. They are just here because it's a lovely place to be. fully supportive though, just not interested in helping out. - Some are free spirited and so won't follow rules. One recently got a dog (not allowed because it endangers the natural wildlife we try and re-habituate on the property) - Another will buy a massive air-con system (against principles because we were trying to be an "eco-village" so there's certain efficiency requirements and etc). - people will just break the rules and not really care. (The one who got a dog, just last year got a cat, but didn't like the cat anymore, so they just let the cat run wild. Guess what happened to the lovely wagtail birds and other native/rare wildlife we spent so long in making a suitable home for.) - We don't have any repercussions for breaking rules. "consensus" doesn't mean anything if random people move here. - Not everyone gets along. Currently there's explosions of arguments because of different gardening styles that leads to tears and destroyed garden beds. - One of the fundamentalists who moved here is really hung up on the idea that the original brochure for the place suggested that we could potentially grow 30% of our food usage in the community gardens - despite not helping to produce food, at all, and being one of the ones who argues the most about differing gardening styles (and potentially sabotaging). - Currently my wife is one of the few people who actually works in the garden. We've planted garlic because we get a good 2-300kg of garlic a year and it's relatively low maintenance for the number of hands in the garden we have (3-4 people spend 2 hours, once a month, wife and her family are the only ones that work every other day in the community gardens because it's part of the original vision). - instead of gratitude for the (legitimately delicious) fresh garlic, it's rather "wtf I can't eat a dinner plate full of garlic". - We also grow bananas, cherries, strawberries, zuchini, eggplant, tomato, host of other food. most of it spoils because no one eats it. (previous fundie won't eat it because it might admit she's wrong in whatever argument she's currently having with my wife). - a few don't believe in "hierarchy" so (in their mind) we're not allowed to have a maintenance team, garden team, etc. We regularly get massive repair bills to fix up pools and other things because any attempt of organising preventative maintenance is something they're fundamentally against because it implies XYZ maintenance efforts are more important than making sure everyone is the same level. - One of them keeps asking everyone to go skinny dipping in the pool. "bring your kids!" etc. I only came into the picture recently and I'm a lot more conservative leaning politically, I think my wife sees it as a bit of a fresh air; and I seem to have a knack for talking to everyone; so at the moment I'm doing a lot of refereeing and crisis management to make sure that people can get along. I'm also aiming to build a bit of an organisation platform so that there's no more "NOBODY IS ALLOWED TO LEAD" arguments; It will forever be "a great idea" and "totally going to work this time" /s
SeaSea 5y ago
At 9:41 I was reminded of this: "...nuclear power could now be around 10% of current cost, and have avoided up to 10 million deaths and 164 Gt CO2 between 1980 and 2015, if not for disruption to progress in the late 1960s and rapidly escalating costs since." https://judithcurry.com/2017/12/21/forgone-benefits-of-disruption-to-nuclear-power-since-late-1960s/ https://judithcurry.com/2017/12/21/forgone-benefits-of-disru...

180 points by NoRagrets 5y ago

This is, in a way, a dream of mine. However, I wouldn't want to live in a "commune", but rather I'd like to convince ~1,000 people to buy a mountain on the Italian Alps, or an island somewhere, or a large plot of land, and then build some eco-friendly homes, and live there with interesting, nice people - while at the same time maintaining my privacy and my own "space" in my house.

codingdave 5y ago
"Cohousing" was the term for this 10-20 years ago. I haven't heard much about it since, but there was a small movement towards exactly that concept a while back. It may be worth researching it to see where it lies today.
- simonebrunozzi 5y ago
  Oh, trust me, I have researched "co-housing" and similar concepts. The missing link seems to be that there's a clear advantage in being able to bring together hundreds of people, and "optimize" the logistics and the construction of the site. And so far, very few have succeeded in doing so.

haihaibye 5y ago

This seems really great, housing 230 people on land that cost $400k 25 years ago, but I suspect it would be illegal to do this in almost all of the Western world where people want to live. It's basically an exercise in rezoning. If you were allowed to build that many housing units originally then they would have been outbid by a developer.

foxhop 5y ago
The buildings look like condos to me, everything is in the building code specs and it looks like they have systems the building code should adopt like positioning the building for maximum solar photon gain and winter solar heat gain.
- haihaibye 5y ago
  I'm not talking about the internal community village rules, but the local government/council permits to construct dozens of houses on farmland. For instance where I live farmland is cheap until it has permission to build a house on it, then it's much more expensive. If you could buy it then get permission to build 50 houses on it, you would make many millions the instant after the rezoning. Thus, the rich with connections in local politics do this crowding out the communities like these guys. I suspect their secret sauce is local government connections and lobbying / legal expertise to rezone.

test6554 5y ago

I wonder what the quality of life is like. How much manual labor is required? Does their local climate require much air conditioning and if so, how much air conditioning do their residents get? What happens if someone is too old to work or just no longer feels like working/contributing?

whbrown 5y ago
Probably no more labor than any other organic farm, which is to say, far more than most people expect but tolerable. And upstate New York is quite agreeable even in the height of summertime. Winter is a different story. I'm more curious about what sort of social responsibilities are required. Do you have to engage in all that `frog`, `song`, `tree` triteness or is it truly an open and accepting community?
jcims 5y ago
Its in Ithaca New York - https://goo.gl/maps/9QkytRGYivgZ6oQ89 https://goo.gl/maps/9QkytRGYivgZ6oQ89 This past August they were hitting highs 80's with 80%+ average humidity. https://www.wunderground.com/history/monthly/us/ny/ithaca/KITH/date/2021-7 https://www.wunderground.com/history/monthly/us/ny/ithaca/KI... Definitely could use some air conditioning.

mikewarot 5y ago

Someone has to keep the bad people out, or the sociopaths take over, which is my understanding of the main failure mechanism of communes started in the 1960s. This thought is what came to mind, and I stopped watching at about 4:30 when I realized the person being interviewed must be the owner / gatekeeper. At some point she'll pass, or get bought out, or whatever, and it'll all fall apart.

KronisLV 5y ago

I don't doubt that there are certain downsides to living like the people in the video (at least when it comes to creature comforts and their overall lifestyles), but personally i just find the surroundings very scenic and calming. As someone who got to move away from the city and work remotely from my countryside home thanks to the pandemic (silver linings), i actually find my current circumstances to be far more stress free than the city life, even if going to the store turns out to be a larger, weekly event, and washing myself involves heating water (or sauna) for a lot of the day with a furnace that consumes firewood instead of just jumping into the shower (and, you know, the house being cold in the mornings, before the centralized heating does a few cycles of water through the radiators and everything heats up). Of course, living in the countryside also involves a huge amount of things that need to be done - everything from mowing the lawns constantly throughout the summers, tending to the greenhouse (due to my dad's desires to have one), using a tractor to mow down the grass on the fields and collect it (governmental penalties for not doing that), repairing everything that breaks, from water pumps, to having to repaint wooden window frames so they don't rot, acquiring firewood for the winter, making sure that irrigation ditches are okay and don't collapse and so on... But in exchange for that, i get no nosy neighbors to invade upon my privacy, fresh air, no soot from all the cars on the frames of my windows (and the inside of my lungs, probably), no sense of urban sprawl or the need to rush anywhere and no worries about the current pandemic either (even though i'm vaccinated). Plus, growing your own tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and herbs, berries and other stuff is nice, at least as far as the end results go. And building anything or making improvements to the home doesn't take permits upon permits upon permits. My sleep is also pretty much excellent nowadays and i also have a safe environment for doing exercise with no judgement or social pressures whatsoever. In short, there are both benefits and drawbacks, but living closer to the nature just feels more right, a sensation that's utterly devoid from urban life, save from regularly visiting parks and such.

southerntofu 5y ago
> Of course, living in the countryside also involves a huge amount of things that need to be done That's why living in a community has upsides. Of course, getting along with your "neighbors" is a prerequisite, but it fixes problems such as: - who's going to take care of X while i'm sick? - i'm familiar with water pumps, but i have no clue about repairing truck engines; who will do it? - i'm very good at farming but i'm clueless about making bread In addition, communal living enables economies of scale which urban individualized lifestyles have completely dismantled. For example, the video mentions communal cooking and laundry, which overall consumes much less resources than each household having their own fridge/stove/oven/laundromat. > but living closer to the nature just feels more right, a sensation that's utterly devoid from urban life It feels more right because it is more right. There's nothing inherently wrong with some level of population concentration, but modern cities are car-centered nightmares where everything is concrete and pollution and where life without money is utterly impossible, and where the population concentration is such that any form of self-sustaining lifestyle is impossible (if only for energy and food).

jcims 5y ago

I need to bookmark this and use it to test my progress in socializing myself a bit. I have zero problems with the idea, I live in the country and am totally on board with the independence and natural setting...but I had a nearly instant phobia-like physical reaction to the video. I tried to power through it, clicking around to see if it got better but ultimately had to stop watching after a minute or so. It was sort of like claustrophobia combined with the sense of multiple people touching me or something. Really bizarre.

jpgvm 5y ago
Man I identify with this feeling so much. Most of this is things I am really interested in, living off the land, renewable power, etc. 99% of the concepts are right down my alley. But the overall feeling of just.. more people than I am used to? Just found it really off putting and couldn't watch without sort of skipping through to see the bits I wanted to see. I am somewhat planning to start building my own full off-grid setup soon but I'm planning to go it alone. I'm not a hermit but I think I need space to myself more so than others.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > I am somewhat planning to start building my own full off-grid setup soon but I'm planning to go it alone. I'm not a hermit but I think I need space to myself more so than others. You can live in a commune and have personal space. Not all communes have dormitories (it's really an anti-soviet cliché)... most have individual or small collective (consented) housing with strong collective infrastructure. Anarchist ideals have been instrumental in building free communes over the past two centuries, and they refuse a false dichotomy between individual welfare and community building. We can have the two at the same time, as long as we choose carefully who to live with, and properly define what our collective project is.
jseban 5y ago
Same here, and that lady gives me the heebie-jeebies, and the way she speaks gives me cult vibes. I don't get the point of this either, it's just reinventing a village, only more cramped. Seems like she just used her political connections and this eco branding to "raise money" for her own house

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

I heard recently that Vienna, who seem to have housing more under control than many other cities, tries to build new housing developments around these kind of communities as they kick-start the "community" part of a newly built area, though on a far more urban level than this. https://miesarch.com/work/1640 https://miesarch.com/work/1640

smitty1e 5y ago

I am completely, 100% on board with what these people are doing and hope they find much joy. What gives me pause is the certainty that these stylings will not scale. Once the populatione exceeds Dunbar's Number[1], a management layer must needs precipitate, and the Iron Law of Oligarchy[2] will kick in. Inevitably. The notion that cool ideas like this can apply to large, non-self-selecting populations is a bugaboo. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

grecy 5y ago
> What gives me pause is the certainty that these stylings will not scale Why does that matter? That's like saying my backyard vegetable garden will not scale to feed the entire street, or that the new M1 MacBook Pro won't scale to train the Tesla AI. Just because something doesn't scale it doesn't mean it isn't a great thing worthy of perusing & learning from.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Yes, my take was a little more toward, you don't scale it, you rather replicate lots and lots of small villages. Having just typed that though, I agree with OP that even lots and lots of these could not replace a dense urban city. You know, unless some plague wiped out 90% of our population.
  - smitty1e 5y ago
    I'm more worried about the visionary that wants to set themselves over a fee dozen such challenges and then start bossing everone around. For the "common good". You understand. These sad tales always stem from the best intentions.
- smitty1e 5y ago
  Hence my leadoff: > I am completely, 100% on board with what these people are doing and hope they find much joy. Looks like a wonderful place. But such contexts (thinking the Amish here) are sustained by the kind of cohesion that will be challenging to generalize. But watch some idealist try.

cletus 5y ago

It looks like the legal structure for cooperative housing ("coop") like this originated in Germany and first came to the United States via New York City [1]: > The first housing cooperative in the United States organized under the Rochdale Cooperative Principles was developed in Brooklyn, New York in 1918 by a group of Finnish artisans - the Finnish Home Building Association. Coops remain extraordinarily popular in New York City. The vast majority of apartment buildings in Manhattan are coops. Many from elsewhere don't really know what this means. There are broadly two popular models of property ownership: 1. Condominiums. These are titled with the city and state as a distinct lot with the owner's name on it. Nearly always these are part of an HOA that is responsible for maintenance of common areas and establishing and enforcing rules. For reference, single-family homes ("SFHs") are typically in this model but in the US, SFHs aren't called condos. That's reserved for apartments and townhouses; and 2. Coops. The building is owned by a legal entity like a corporation. As far as the city and state are concerned, that whole building is one lot and is taxed as one unit. The coop is responsible for paying that property tax bill. You don't own your apartment the same way you do in a condo. You own shares in the coop that give you the right to a particular apartment. Maintaining the coop and paying expenses like property taxes is apportioned by the number of shares to each owner as a maintenance fee. It's worth noting that in New York state these two work very differently in terms of property tax assessment, which has been a point of contention between the city and the state for decades. Basically, coops are assessed in terms of Assessed Rental Value ("ARV") and condos/SFHs are not such that a coop might have an apportioned property tax bill of two times or more of a similarly valued coop. It also means a $100m condo has a tax bill of only 10-15x that of a $1m coop, which is ridiculous. Anyway, I wonder since this community is a coop how it gets caught up in this tax treatment compared to similarly valued SFHs in the area. [1]: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1337&context=econ_wpapers https://opencommons.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=13...

refurb 5y ago
Condos are typically property where you own a specific part of a larger property (a legally recognized/identified “interest”) plus an agreement to maintain everything else that isnt explicitly exclusively yours (“common space”). The condos I’ve own show true ownership share - even the land (though no distinct part, just fractional ownership). Single family homes are different in the sense that it’s one legally defined property where 100% of it is for the exclusive use of the owner. HOAs can include a group of individual properties plus (or not) common space. Your description of co-ops reminds me of TICs (tenancy in common) in CA. The property is viewed as one “unit” although it may be subdivided by tenants through a separate agreeemnt. Typically in TICs you buy an entire building and have a separate agreement that lays out what is exclusive and what is common. But the city sees it as one property in its entirety with multiple owners.

Glench 5y ago

That Eco village is cool. Bit of trivia: The guy who wrote the amazing book Reinventing Organizations about actual, >100 person, successful companies that are organized non-hierarchically moved to that ecovillage with his family and seems to be really enjoying it. Here's the book in a "pay what it's worth to you after you're done reading" format: https://www.reinventingorganizations.com/pay-what-feels-right.html https://www.reinventingorganizations.com/pay-what-feels-righ...

foxhop 5y ago

People who say this won't scale don't understand history. The things that scale, fail, often spectacularly. Systems like this reboot humanity. I'm into Permaculture [0] and I build and document systems which make this type of living work for the majority. [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1eySW_9TiI5wnvTnIIw2Nw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1eySW_9TiI5wnvTnIIw2Nw We will rebuild together, stronger.

daddylongstroke 5y ago
Yeah it's a bit bizarre hearing people say "this could never work", and them not understanding that it has "worked" this way for most of human history.
- kcb 5y ago
  For most of human history humanity did not exist in the form it does today. There are regions in countries with higher population than the entire planet a few hundred years ago. So I don't think we can take much lesson about scale from the past.
  - daddylongstroke 5y ago
    I think you're missing the point. The scale of today's cities IS the root cause of the problems.

rmah 5y ago

I don't really see the difference between this and a coop apartment building except that it's in a rural setting. So, many of the social structures of traditional old world villages but cooperatively owned and in the USA. I don't understand what's "eco" about it (vs any other rural community, I mean). Am I missing something critical?

whywhywhywhy 5y ago
> I don't understand what's "eco" about it. Seeing far too many cars in that video for any of it to be considered "eco".
- ericd 5y ago
  The houses in the newest community are energy neutral/built to passivhaus standards. That’s quite unusual in the US. And much of their food comes from an on-site farm CSA. And they’ve left 90% of the land relatively wild, which should help preserve biodiversity. They’ve still got cars, but they’re certainly doing better than average.
  - whywhywhywhy 5y ago
    Maybe it's because I'm not American but the idea of a village which is remote but still has access to a town or city via bus or bike is very much a possibility and normal in lots of parts of the world. Cars are nowhere near as essential as American city and suburb planning unfortunately makes it seem like.
    - ericd 5y ago
      Yeah, that’s sadly not so common in the US.
floatrock 5y ago
Someone else posted a googlemaps view of the place: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ecovillage+At+Ithaca+Inc/@42.4422047,-76.5437611,536m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x71281aa65d9a74b3!8m2!3d42.441713!4d-76.5420994 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ecovillage+At+Ithaca+Inc/@... All the houses' roofs are south-facing, which combined with large overhangs, are a passivhaus thing (maximum heat energy in the winter when the sun is low, large overhangs block some of that in the summer when the sun is high). Some houses have solar on the roof, while the neighborhood to the north has a small centralized solar farm. If you have the land, it's a lot more cost-effective to put a centralized amount of ground-mounted solar and distribute it to a dense cluster of houses nearby. They mentioned they designed all the homes in their latest batch to shun natgas and go all electric. And then there's a bunch of "eco-mindset" things where it looks like they park their cars in communal lots and the houses are connected by pedestrian paths. Their development model is 10% developed/90% open-space (or something like that which flips the common american subdivision percentages). They said they aren't trying to be completely self-sufficient (they're 15min drive to downtown Ithica), but they do take steps like a have an onsite CSA. So I don't think they're being "eco" if you think eco means some absolutely self-sufficient car-free hippie in the woods. But that's also an impossible ideal -- even the unabomber who railed against the evils of capitalism still had walmart receipts in his shack, and Thoreau got through the Walden Pond winter with his mom bringing him soup or something like that. But as for "eco" in terms of lifestyle arrangements that give you a good mix of modern and sustainable life, yeah, seems like they're doing a good job.

0x0nyandesu 5y ago

Why are people on HN so obsessed with this concept? I've always found these communities require a lose of freedom to fully integrate and typically anything "other" in these communities is quickly expelled because the community could not function otherwise.

nicbou 5y ago
It's almost the complete opposite of the average programmer's lifestyle. You work on something close and concrete, without the usual social structure nor the pressure to monetise. It's definitely not for me, but I can see why it would attract the curosity of people on the opposite patch of grass.
neogodless 5y ago
> Why are people on HN so obsessed with this concept? ... what? 54 upvotes. I often see posts with a 1000 upvotes. I don't see a lot of stories about communal living. "Obsessed" might not be the right word here.
dvh 5y ago
Should leaf blowers be banned? Freedom is important but if the result is miserable living you want to escape then perhaps a some kind of rules are viable alternative. Live alone free or join community with rules. I like the idea of eco village but these projects are often ran by religious cults, I would prefer atheistic and science friendly eco village.
- 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
  I just mean that typically these communities require you to do some form of manual labor to "take care of" the housing or making food. Nevermind that you might be able to do the same thing on your own land in your own time and come away doing less work on average then if you're forceably conscripted to do these tasks for the community. It's not at all about what type of technology you'd use to do the task but rather having to do it at all.
- google234123 5y ago

pibechorro 5y ago

Awesome. Its crazy how much red tape, legal costs, etc they got from the town and state. We would have thousands of these up if people where free from all the regulations which are really just propping up high tax revenue, low nature designs.

nivenkos 5y ago

Looks expensive, the vast majority of us can't afford property even in standard towns and cities.

ericd 5y ago
There was a listing for a 3BR place for sale in the first village for ~$300k on their website a few weeks ago, unsure if it’s still there. I thought that was pretty reasonable. Also, the majority of people in the US live in homes that their family owns.

smileysteve 5y ago

As an American growing up in a suburb on a 1/2 acre, these numbers aren't making any sense to me; 175 acres should support at least 175 families and each 1/2 acre should be able to support a small business and garden plot on those resources, and eco erosion controls, streams and wetlands... If of a even slightly conservative mindset.

brylie 5y ago
From the video, there are four on-site organic farms. Garden plots may not produce enough food to sustain the community. Also, it looks like there are natural open spaces preserved on some of the acreage.
- smileysteve 5y ago
  These suburb neighborhoods in America though use that extra 1/2 acre per family to support swim, tennis, playground, small football fields, community house. Anecdotally; the neighborhood of 400 houses, each on 1/2 acre,I reference was < 1 mile distance to an elementary, high school, chain grocery store, and local store fronts - and served 4 similar neighborhoods in 1 mile distance. Other "eco" features supported were 3 retention ponds and multiple streams. Was it eco? No. If everybody had a garden plot, and biked would it be more eco than this (1/2 to 1/3 the density) neighborhood selling itself as eco, probably
ericd 5y ago
If you watch the video, they mention that they left ~90% of it to nature, iirc, though I’m not sure if they include the farms in that. Does that clear it up?
- smileysteve 5y ago
  No, because for each 1/2 acre plot in an American suburb there is roughly 1/4 acre in borders. So if you average 4 person households, you need 60 houses to meet that 230 population on 30 acres that's ~82%+10% from the borders. To clarify, I'm not saying American suburbs are eco, or working communally like this; I'm only saying the numbers in the title (and 90% nature) don't seem to make this eco in a standout way moreso than a green space (or large community garden) next to a neighborhood.

rib3ye 5y ago

At 37:00 she explicitly states the co-op has the authority through consensus to legally force someone off the commune (no mention of what happens to their shares, but I assume forfeiture). One has to wonder what the rest of the US would look like if we could kick someone out of their neighborhood and force them to sell or give up their home simply because we didn’t like them. The possibility for authoritarian attitudes seems high.

UncleMeat 5y ago
I mean, that is what prisons are.
- rib3ye 5y ago
  I can see where you are going with it but the justice system is like a delegated validator with a mandate and specifications on how to apply “fairness”. I guess I am arguing they specialized in kicking people out of the community with the mandate to rehabilitate so the rejoin the community. In no way am I making the argument that that’s what actually happens.
exporectomy 5y ago
If the system itself is the unit of survival, then individual members' rights aren't so important. That's the communism way. They certainly need to be selective in allowing membership or it'll degrade into a bunch of freeloaders.
danjac 5y ago
I mean it's not like the US has a history of segregation or anything...
giantg2 5y ago
I mean, the courts can do all sorts of things. I would say this sort of thing can happen indirectly in the civil side where a jury finds you less likeable than the other person and levies a large judgement against you. At the least you may be stuck with a large legal bill that could force you to downsize. There are also neighbors who may harass you or make life unbearable.

beckman466 5y ago

If anyone wants a sort of text version of this Ithaca tour: https://medium.com/@fredlaloux/we-are-wired-to-raise-children-in-community-103cd4e9e9bf https://medium.com/@fredlaloux/we-are-wired-to-raise-childre...

motohagiography 5y ago

Most intersting to me is the decision making, governance, dispute resolution, starts here (https://youtu.be/n-uH36w9xg8?t=1737 https://youtu.be/n-uH36w9xg8?t=1737) Few notes from it at 1.75 speed: Two separate methods, "consensus" and "dynamic governance," which are spread across three neighbourhoods, with all three neighbourhood boards meeting together once a month. Leans heavily on elder retired people who have the time to participate in the governance. Ownership is owning shares in whole co-op that are related to the size of the house. Coexistence is apparently easier with a larger group, (30-40), and groups that are too small get at each other (10 households) and cause harm to the relationships with everyone, where a conflict doesn't impact the cohesion of a larger group of 35-40. Dilution of relationships sounds important. This comes up again when they talk about multiple special purpose vehicles for neighbourhoods financially interacting so loss of one doesn't impact the other ones. It's kind of micro-federated, where federation isn't a response to growth, but rather, a necessary stability feature of surviving as small. They're the size of a small village, and it seems like you need that critical mass to keep it running so it can evolve organically and even a bit chaotically, and it's not close enough to each other that they will aligning all in one direction (good or bad) and causing strife. I could see how the whole thing could be vulnerable to politics, but it looks like their federated governance model mitigates lockstep. It reminds me a bit of a talk I heard about Native influence on the creation of the US constitution, via Mowhawk Chief Joseph Brant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Law_of_Peace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Law_of_Peace

netcan 5y ago
To those of us (most of us) from a liberal background, I think governance of these kinds can be confusing. We look for legible rulesets and interrogate them with "what happens if." At a second level, we look for legible dynamics like the influence of group size you mention. None of these are wrong but they're not necessarily key to the character of the system. "Consensus," meaning something more complex than "vote until everyone agrees," is a pretty natural way of making in tightly knit groups. We do it without realising we do it. Some people talk. Some agree. Some object. People talk some more. Usually, a consensus forms. It's voting or other formal authority systems that need to be invented. They don't tend to exist by default. Not every culture has voting. Every culture has talking until a decision is made. Consider jury systems. These are pretty formal, but they do have some consensus as part of the system. This is premised on jurors spending a lot of time together, discussing, argueing, etc. Anyway, my point is that the most important parts are probably ilegible. A functioning culture forms, or it does not. The right governance rules or group size, with the wrong group of people will not work. The reverse probably will.

axiosgunnar 5y ago

I understand these people do not trade with „impure societies“ like ours at all and would never seek medical assistance from us? Or is this basically one big NIMBY?

JPKab 5y ago

I spent time in an ecovillage in western North Carolina almost 20 years ago. Question: Who does the agricultural labor here? I watched the first 15 minutes of the video, and was very curious about this. The ecovillage I lived in was primarily younger people who did their own labor. A lot of it was backbreaking. We did our own construction as well. And YES, people got kicked out if they didn't work hard enough, and that happened several times. When I see an creepy old boomer hippy lady who sounds like a cult-leader, who doesn't look like she's capable of doing any kind of manual labor, I question if they are paying people to come in and handle the agriculture for them. These people all look like they are swimming in money. The ecovillage I lived in was not like that at all. We all ended up looking like a bunch of farmers and construction workers, because that's basically what you HAD to do to make it work. I'm sure I'm tying up the wrong things in the concept of an ecovillage. The one I lived in was probably a lot more off-the-grid than this one was intended to be.

ericd 5y ago
If you keep watching, they answer the question about who runs the agriculture (it’s a family that moved in that took over from the original runners of the farm).

netcan 5y ago

I know quite a few people who grew up on a kibbutz, Israeli communes that were formed mostly in the early 20th century. Most of them "privatized" in the last generation. They were quite successful. One of the bigger modern examples. A noteworthy point made by most first-handers is that "mission" was a necessary component. Kibbutzim often offered a relatively pleasant lifestyle, but lifestyle alone could not keep them alive. They needed to be fulfilling a greater purpose. For Kibbutzim the mission was zionism, socialism or other ideal. "Ideology" is an important concept to kibbutzniks. Kibbutz lifestyle and economics were good when the movement started to recede. It was the changing ideals that killed it, especially the decline of socialist beliefs in the 80s & 90s. I think it's also notable that a lot of communes exist in the world. Most are religious. Many are quirky, even cultish. This probably provides the "greater mission" old kibbutzniks insist is essential to success. A lot of the modern, secular equivalents are "eco villages." I could imagine a libertarian one or other anarchist idea set.

robocat 5y ago
I like this article which is mostly about one guy, but contains some of the background on the changes to Kibbutzism: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1989/07/09/farewell-to-the-kibbutz/6eac78f1-3e36-4d45-9fe8-fb2e58a26ff1/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1989/07/09/... An article from 1986 said: “About 20,000 volunteers”, “Israel’s 280 kibbutzim”, “About 3 percent of Israel’s 3.5 million Jewish population live on communal farms” implies ~5% labour from volunteers (assuming 3 month average stay and full time work). https://apnews.com/article/96bc6ecc6ae2f9ba6c4707a39babffa6 https://apnews.com/article/96bc6ecc6ae2f9ba6c4707a39babffa6 A modern equivalent in New Zealand is wwoofers.
- deleted 5y ago
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mensetmanusman 5y ago

Reminds me of the commune in ’once upon a time in Hollywood’, but without the pregnancy.

AlbertCory 5y ago

My brother lived, for a while, in a Sun City "community." Everyone owned their own property. There was a common house for parties, billiards, etc., tennis courts, and I think a swimming pool. It was for 55-and-over people. I would bet most of these people are older, too, but I didn't watch the whole video so I could be wrong. It didn't have all the eco vibes, but that probably has more to do with the desert-ish setting. No communitarian stuff. I don't know if they had an HOA, but probably the corporation handled those functions. Not at all Black Mirror-like and no one was suspiciously happy. I don't know if you could be kicked out, but it wouldn't happen by a vote by your neighbors, for sure. I don't see how this is real different. Personally, I'd rather have a soulless corporation making the rules than a bunch of Karens off NextDoor.

brudgers 5y ago
Sun City ("City's"?) was/were the brainchild of Del Webb. He got out in front of the World War 2 generation of Americans as it hit retirement age. He brought a country club lifestyle to midwesterners on cheap land outside Phoenix. Not much of a hard sell of year round sunshine and warm weather to an empty nest couple from Iowa. That couple brought church social culture skills into the community clubhouses. The success of the original developments, brought the brand into Florida as well. One of Del Webb's insights was building developments large enough to accommodate multiple market segments. Large enough to balance people with three ideas of retirement: playing, saving, and finally having that dream house. Along golf course fairways, you'll find attached dwellings, small houses, and large houses. The occupants in each segment will be a mix of people who have downsized, streched to upscale, and moved laterally. It was a money making machine. At it's height, developers would build the golf courses and give them away to another business to run (under the old saw "the best way to make a small fortune is take a large fortune and build a golf course"). The profits were all taken as lot premiums. Anyway, all 55+ communities with fee simple ownership have HOA's because the age requirements are deed restrictions. Sun City's and other Del Webb communities have very active HOA's. That's why people buy into them.
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  I guess the big Sun City is NW of Phoenix, but that's not where my brother lived. I don't think it had a golf course, but maybe it did.

brudgers 5y ago

It's not a walkable community. No grocery store. No restaraunts. No doctors offices or dentists. If you look at the map and don't have the public relations material in front of you, the urban form is ordinary exurban sprawl. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ecovillage+At+Ithaca+Inc/@42.4401136,-76.5491804,14z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x71281aa65d9a74b3!8m2!3d42.441713!4d-76.5420994 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ecovillage+At+Ithaca+Inc/@... Sure there's a bus stop at the end of it's long driveway. Route 20 has six buses per weekday. Three buses a day on the weekends. https://tcatbus.com/bus-schedules https://tcatbus.com/bus-schedules If you're going anywhere in the long cold Ithaca winter, a car is the most practical option because it's still sprawl. Maybe better sprawl. But still sprawl even though there's a garden instead of a golf course.

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joe_the_user 5y ago
Well, ideally the communal kitchen and eating area would essentially substitute for both restaurants and grocery stores. The potential for socializing seems a lot like that of a small college - most people socialize during meal times and people who feel more like socializing can hang out in the communal areas between meal times. Which is to say, it's a space that has a lot more social potential than the grocery store/restaurant combo. Restaurants are for celebrating and meeting people you know. I don't think anyone socializes at all in grocery stores (though simple contact has its benefits). The "village" is divided into three neighborhood, all of which appear walkable (from a brief glance at the video). What I personally wouldn't like would be the small scale and having to buy-in and put all your eggs in the eco-village basket, so to speak.
- deleted 5y ago
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- dmschulman 5y ago
  I've been to Ecovillage on a few occasions and it's a very walkable community. And not only that, it's about a 20 minute bike ride to downtown Ithaca. The town is quite walkable and bike friendly, if you don't mind the hills of course. The video doesn't take you through the entire community, but I'm not sure why people are left with the impression Ecovillage is in the middle of nowhere.

golemiprague 5y ago

So they reinvented a variation of the kibbutz? There are many communities like that in Israel with different variations of communality and with different variations of success. I would say the success rate is a bit like startups but the ones that survived and prospered can be a very nice place to live for the people who like that kind of life. It is certainly not for everyone and some places are struggling to convince the younger generations to stay.

drekipus 5y ago

I live in an eco village in Australia and I could probably share some insight I guess. (((( EDIT: in case it's not clear; I totally love the idea behind it, but I'm trying to paint the picture that it's not as glorious as it seems on paper; I personally think it needs a lot more of a structure (I lean conservatively), and I'm currently building an internal website/platform to try and unify many of the free-spirits that live here; otherwise people just do whatever they want and step all over each other. People move here because it's nice to be here, but they have their own version of ideals. ))))) My wife's family started it a number of years ago. Very green/eco-conscience values, and so made an eco-village of 5-6 acres housing 22 houses (and about 65 residents afaik). We're a little oasis in the middle of suburbia, surrounded by trees, native plants and habitats, and a growing vegetable garden; it's very lovely to live and work in. Unfortunately, people have moved in who are more fundamental than the ones who actually went through the trouble of building it, so they have totally unrealistic expectations or ideas, and that's ALL they have. -- It's entirely down to my wife's family (and me by extension) to maintain it. People love to keep saying how human societies are "naturally altuistic" and will "naturally co-operate" but it's entirely not the case. - The people who are more likely to move here are the fundamentalist types, leading to strong opinions and personalities. A lot of them like to drink and throw random parties / fire-pits. - A lot of normal people move here because they have families and full jobs. They have NO INTEREST in digging holes or putting up fences / other structures, over weekends. They are just here because it's a lovely place to be. fully supportive though, just not interested in helping out. - Some are free spirited and so won't follow rules. One recently got a dog (not allowed because it endangers the natural wildlife we try and re-habituate on the property) - Another will buy a massive air-con system (against principles because we were trying to be an "eco-village" so there's certain efficiency requirements and etc). - people will just break the rules and not really care. (The one who got a dog, just last year got a cat, but didn't like the cat anymore, so they just let the cat run wild. Guess what happened to the lovely wagtail birds and other native/rare wildlife we spent so long in making a suitable home for.) - We don't have any repercussions for breaking rules. "consensus" doesn't mean anything if random people move here. - Not everyone gets along. Currently there's explosions of arguments because of different gardening styles that leads to tears and destroyed garden beds. - One of the fundamentalists who moved here is really hung up on the idea that the original brochure for the place suggested that we could potentially grow 30% of our food usage in the community gardens - despite not helping to produce food, at all, and being one of the ones who argues the most about differing gardening styles (and potentially sabotaging). - Currently my wife is one of the few people who actually works in the garden. We've planted garlic because we get a good 2-300kg of garlic a year and it's relatively low maintenance for the number of hands in the garden we have (3-4 people spend 2 hours, once a month, wife and her family are the only ones that work every other day in the community gardens because it's part of the original vision). - instead of gratitude for the (legitimately delicious) fresh garlic, it's rather "wtf I can't eat a dinner plate full of garlic". - We also grow bananas, cherries, strawberries, zuchini, eggplant, tomato, host of other food. most of it spoils because no one eats it. (previous fundie won't eat it because it might admit she's wrong in whatever argument she's currently having with my wife). - a few don't believe in "hierarchy" so (in their mind) we're not allowed to have a maintenance team, garden team, etc. We regularly get massive repair bills to fix up pools and other things because any attempt of organising preventative maintenance is something they're fundamentally against because it implies XYZ maintenance efforts are more important than making sure everyone is the same level. - One of them keeps asking everyone to go skinny dipping in the pool. "bring your kids!" etc. I only came into the picture recently and I'm a lot more conservative leaning politically, I think my wife sees it as a bit of a fresh air; and I seem to have a knack for talking to everyone; so at the moment I'm doing a lot of refereeing and crisis management to make sure that people can get along. I'm also aiming to build a bit of an organisation platform so that there's no more "NOBODY IS ALLOWED TO LEAD" arguments; It will forever be "a great idea" and "totally going to work this time" /s

SeaSea 5y ago

At 9:41 I was reminded of this: "...nuclear power could now be around 10% of current cost, and have avoided up to 10 million deaths and 164 Gt CO2 between 1980 and 2015, if not for disruption to progress in the late 1960s and rapidly escalating costs since." https://judithcurry.com/2017/12/21/forgone-benefits-of-disruption-to-nuclear-power-since-late-1960s/ https://judithcurry.com/2017/12/21/forgone-benefits-of-disru...