Permaculture communities and eco-villages in the USA
Peter Bane, USA
Format: Peter showed us slides from 5 contrasting eco-villages in North America and told us about them. There was a short time left for questions.
Summary
A good definition of an eco-village is
- human scale
- Full-featured settlement
- human activities harmlessly integrated in the natural landscape
- supports healthy human development
- successfully continued into the indefinite future.
Only 10% of new eco-villages succeed, which indicates the need for training to live in community.
Features of eco-villages are
- construction with natural and/or reclaimed building materials
- food production
- sharing of meals
- celebrations and parties
- businesses or income generation
We saw picture for Earth haven, Dancing Rabbit, LA, New York State, and Tennessee.
Key Points
- Each projects had its own vision; each was very different form the others but there were themes or attitudes common to them all.
- Good handling of decision making and finances are important
- Lots of experiential and experimental learning has happened in eco-villages and this is being shared both within and outside the eco-village movement
- For further information go to the Global Eco-village Network (GEN).
[Scribe: Anita]