Starting a Community  Kara Huntermoon of Heart-Culture Farm shares her community’s affordability strategies.  A land trust with leaseholds keeps members’ costs down while allowing a combination of autonomy and connection.  Cohousing is intrinsically an affordable model; here’s why and how.  A community pioneer and activist shares her stories.  A forming cohousing group experiences its share of bumps, but comes together to move forward.  For the health of our species and the planet, we need ecovillages.  An ecovillage founder offers 10 guidelines for success, including “Start with people.”  Water supply, human waste treatment, zoning regulations, legal structure, homeownership models, and other core technical issues are essential in ecovillage planning.  The Yarrow Ecovillage uses the cohousing model to create ecological buildings that meet their occupants’ needs.  In Ithaca, New York, a pioneering project continues to break new ground in ecological design, education, and community.  Innovative ecovillagers turn challenges into opportunities.  Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage grapples with obstacles to create a visionary housing project in rural Maine.  To these communitarians, all work was holy—but overwhelmed by “the
accumulating weight of such holiness” and other disappointments, they
eventually adjust their aspirations.  At New View Cohousing, practicing consensus, navigating illness, and simply
sharing lives are continuing spiritual exercises.  After a painful period stranded in “permaculture heaven,” an Earthaven founder finds her community finally moving back towards balance with its eco-spiritual roots.  When a cohousing group's honeymoon ends, and economic stress dictates selling units to any willing buyers, can a community's core values and connections endure?  Despite widespread desire for community, structural and cultural obstacles to intentional community in the modern world loom large.  Howling, shouting, cries of despair, and The Pierced One greet a parent on her first visit to her daughter’s adopted community. Luckily, through lots of talking and listening, things improve.  The founder of Enright Ridge Urban Ecovillage describes what it’s like to be criticized, marginalized, stripped of leadership responsibilities, and given the opportunity to explore a new role.  In a healthy community, leadership and followship are equally important roles, each with vital skill sets that can assure effective teamwork.  The author identifies additional leadership skills, cautions against blind followship, and reflects on the many types of power in cooperative groups.  Geoph Kozeny’s community documentary brings forth reflections on Hearthaven, discussions among neighbors and friends, and ultimately a new intergenerational family community.  Reviews of two great books on community living, one on life in a convent with surprising insights even for the most secular, and one on the history of utopian experiments in Oregon.  After serving thousands of meals, a community of post-Katrina relief kitchen volunteers moves to the West Coast and acquires a mortgage, a baby, full-time jobs, and the challenges of the mundane.  After many years of dealing with the unique struggles inherent in starting a community, a community founder discovers her vision manifested elsewhere, and becomes a community joiner. A group of North Americans establishes a community in Costa Rica and
learns new lessons about simplicity, wealth, change, growth, balance,
and happiness. A community confronts economic adversity by remaining constant in relationship, holding financial losses in common, and working together in fundraising, educational programs, and new projects. After living in the PRAG House collective for 25 years before running for office, a Seattle City Councilor recommends that anyone entering politics consider experiencing intentional community first. Tree Bressen traces her own path of exploration from commune to collective household, discovering that community isn't always drawn in black and white. Builder and old-house renovator Alex Daniell fell in love with the charming, old-world village atmosphere of 8-year-old Arcadia Cohousing. He asks Giles Blunden, the group's architect, how he did it. Red Earth Farms cofounder Alyson Ewald loves it that her rural community wildcrafts, grows, processes, ferments, pickles, and celebrates food.
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