Intentional Community

[ragani]

I really want to create/participate in an intentional community. It has been one of my dreams for years, and one that I still want to see as a reality. Especially when(if) I become a parent. This would be such a great environment to be raised as a child.

My mom sent me a link to Dragonvale, an intentional community being developed in Main. We could so do something like this here is we could find the land (and in the bay area, that is a big if).

This concept of an intentional community has a lot of appeal, although it is not the reason I want to be part of one, and I am not sure that it is the kind I would want to develop myself.

What do you think, guys, can you imagine our very own sustainable community with a Renaissance Faire built in? And if so, what should we call it?

Comments

[terpsichoros.livejournal.com]

Some random, semi-connected points, since I don't have time to put them together into a coherent answer:

I may have made some worst-case assumptions about who would live in such a community; but the sorts of people who would staff a live-in RenFair and the number of people needed don't strike me as compatible with the sort of community you'd hope to create.

The New Northern Faire is a cooperative of booth owners mostly, not of Faire participants in general. Booth owners have a much larger financial stake in running things responsibly than do average participants. If the New Northern fails, most of the participants are out a place to have fun, and maybe a place to make some supplemental income. The booth owners will be out some significant cash.

At what point does "co-housing" become "intentional community"? There's a spectrum starting with condominiums, through full-equity co-ops (rare outside New York City), and ending with communes. If all the responsibilities which the residents have to each other are to keep the organization properly funded to deal with complex-wide issues, it's really easy. If people are all working for each others' living, the free-rider problem is huge. My impression of "co-housing" is that it's closer to a condominium with architectural features designed to encourage socializing with one's fellow dwellers, and some voluntary exchange of labor; which puts it closer to condominium than commune.

The sense of community that religious groups can provide can also provide motivation to do things which are not self-rewarding; the primary motivators for this are shame and/or fear, though not necessarily in a sexual context, which is where most religions really screw people up.

[ragani.livejournal.com]

Perhaps we are working on different definitions here. Let me outline quickly what the basis of what I want to be part of:

A community where a group of people intentionally live in a co-housing situation that operates with a mission to create a self-sustaining environment.

To help you better understand what I understand co-housing to mean, please check out The Cohousing Association of the United States, The CoHousing Company, and the description on the Cohousing Resources site. To quote that last site "Cohousing is NOT... There is no shared income in cohousing. Employment and business endeavors are privately organized. Common ideologies and charismatic leaders are generally not a part of cohousing. And of course, cohousing is not like a commune."

Sure, there are plenty of flakes and nuts attracted to places like Ren faire, but as satyrlovesong commented to your post:

"As to "fluffy-bunny, consequence-free neo-paganism", I haven't seen all that much of it. There are consequences within the pagan community as well. The consequences may not have a direct impact on things that motivate you, but I've seen several free loaders run out of communities (granted, generally over a period of weeks or months). One of these days, ask Ms. Prop about Duff. Or about Aaron. I don't know if she would also know about that chick that Lisa was with for a while. . . anyway, I've seen very effective policing methods within the pagan community."

[terpsichoros.livejournal.com]

Reading the descriptions over at the Co-housing site you linked to, I'd consider something like that, though I'm not sure my temperament is terribly well suited for it. It sounds like I thought it might (above), and I don't see any inherent problems with it.

The descriptions of Dragonvale make my skin crawl, though some of that is a matter of taste. I predict that if it is successful, it will remain a fairly small core group of residents - essentially a small, "intentional family"-run Faire and SCA venue. If the residential/communal group gets much larger, I suspect they'll either become much less communal, or they'll fail. There's a strong element of overplanning - they've got 14 guilds figured out even though they've only got six members? And check out the description of the "Wenches Guild".