Creating Community
(Page 5 of 8)
June/July 2003
By Dan Chiras and Diana Leafe Christian
In order to encourage walking, bicycling or riding the bus, all car-free households receive a $20 monthly discount on rent. Of 35 active neighbors, 13 moved to the community without cars, and seven more have shed their cars since moving in. They're redesigning their street to slow traffic, and the city has committed more than $250,000 to implement the plan. They also have applied for a grant from automotive company DaimlerChrysler for 10 small electric vehicles, with which they plan to organize a neighborhood car co-op.
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CITY VERSUS COUNTRY CONCERNS
With fewer restrictions on land use and building codes, rural ecovillages can experiment with green building and alternative systems.
Founders of urban ecovillage projects must usually forego any dreams of straw bale or cob structures, because building codes often are rigidly enforced. Yet urban ecovillagers have the advantage of finding abundant recycled building materials and unused warehouses, old factories and similar buildings in economically depressed neighborhoods. With enough energy, sweat equity and willingness to meet, respect and learn from existing neighbors, urban ecovillagers often can create effective demon stration models more quickly than their rural counterparts.
While urban ecovillagers focus on community renovation and rejuvenation, rural ecovillages literally start building from the ground up—frequently using cob construction and earthen plasters on their homes. Less restricted by building codes and regulations, they often can build with alternative materials, and design and employ innovative systems for water treatment and power generation.
While urban or suburban ecovillage projects often are built and finished all at once, rural ecovillages tend to build incrementally, creating perennial construction zones filled with bare patches of graded, un-landscaped soil; stacks of lumber and straw bales; heaps of clay and barrels of slaking lime; and piles of construction debris. Because recycled materials are highly valued, visitors must often pick their way around stacks of what for some are valuable reusable goods, and for others, unsightly piles of junk.
Earthaven Ecovillage, tucked in the verdant western North Carolina hills near Black Mountain, sits on 320 forested acres with abundant springs and streams. Its 40 residents live in small passive-solar dwellings with apricot-colored earth-plastered walls and green metal roofs. Most lumber for building has been felled and milled on site.
Solar panels and a stream-side micro-hydro unit power the village: wood or propane heats the homes in winter; composting toilets recycle human manure; and greywater is clarified in small constructed wetlands.
Although rural ecovillages often are established in idyllic settings, these projects are not always comfortable. Neither Dancing Rabbit nor Earthaven has enough housing. Both are frequently dusty or muddy. Both are in areas where summers are hot and humid, but air conditioning is eschewed as it taxes the renewable energy systems too completely. In winter, water lines freeze at Earthaven, and electricity can be scarce after a week of cloud cover. Members can go for days without showers, their computers inoperable, cooking dinner or reading by flashlight and candles.
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