The movement's basic premises are that the consequences of peak oil and climate change are imminent; that governments and entrenched powers are not yet taking necessary action; and that the most practical response is for local communities to transition to resilient, localized communities that wean themselves off of fossil fuels and long-distance trade. Though every community is encouraged to find its own solutions, the dominant activities are to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, to start gardens and otherwise grow food locally, to experiment with local currencies, and so on.

Read the full article here.

Thousands of Russian professionals have lost hope for a better life in cities. They have taken to the forests to create their own utopias independent of the state. The eco movement has increased several fold in recent years. Some have found harmony, others feel disillusioned...

New communities of homesteaders have sprung up across some of the most remote sections of Russia in the past decade, including Siberia, attracting thousands of Russians in search of a simple, self-sufficient and environmentally friendly lifestyle free from state control and big city corruption.

The number of "eco-communes," as they are called in Russia, has grown dramatically in the last decade, and the movement back to the land is drawing professionals weary of the country's corruption, pollution and new consumerism.

Read the full article here.

In the two years since David Knepprath and Josh Guisinger moved into the rough-and-tumble Barberry Village complex, roughly a dozen young Christian men and women have made Barberry Village their home.

Their goal: Create a sense of community in a chaotic neighborhood overrun with drugs, prostitution and gangs.

Read the full article here.

"The groundswell of social technology today is creating unprecedented opportunities to share and collaborate," said Rachel Bosman, an author of the new book "What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption." "Farmers' markets and Facebook have a lot in common. All around us we're seeing a renewed belief in the importance of community, in both the physical and virtual worlds."

Despite the lingering hippie connotations, collectives, which might be described as self-managed groups of people with similar interests working toward a common goal, are a thoroughly modern phenomenon. And nowhere in New York is this collective mind-set as embraced as it is in Bushwick.

Read the full article here.

Los Angeles' Eco-Village from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

"Urban ecovillages work with surrounding neighborhoods and the city at large to bring a whole systems perspective to urban planning and community development activities. The L.A. Eco-Village Demonstration is part of an international network of sustainable neighborhood groups which seek to model healthier ways of living based on environmental sustainability and social and economic justice."

See the LA Ecovillage video on the Yes! website.

Cob House at Dancing Rabbit on the cover of Yes! Magazine

Yes! magazine has an article and slideshow on one of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage's cob houses.

The article is on the cover of the upcoming issue of Yes! on Resilency.

The slideshow includes an excerpt from Brian (Ziggy) Liloia's Cob House blog:

I live at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, an intentional community in Northeast Missouri devoted to sustainable living. We have a few ecological covenants that members agree to live by, but beyond those guidelines (one states that all energy must come from renewable sources, and another that says all lumber must come from reclaimed or sustainable sources), it is up to members to decide how they want to live. There is nothing stating that members must eat only local food, or that they can only drive some number of miles in a vehicle per year - members make choices based on their own ecological values, under the umbrella of the ecological covenants.

Read a bit online about the Cob House.

View the Cob House slideshow

Sixty-three-year-old Zumra Nuru, a longtime promoter of gender equality and religious freedom, founded the society in the 1980s. As a child, Nuru was skeptical of the inequality he observed on a daily basis.

...

Though Awra Amba could claim only 19 members when Nuru founded it, the thriving community has received international acclaim in recent years. It has also been the subject of several documentary films.

“I regard it as the model for the world community on how gender issues should be treated,” said EU Ambassador to Ethiopia Tim Clarke in a Christian Science Monitor report. “I have come across nothing else like it anywhere in Africa—and indeed the world. I am using it to inspire the work of my office here on gender mainstreaming and empowerment of women.”

Read the full article and watch a short film on Awra Amba, here.

If reassurance were needed that life in a commune really is a plausible alternative to more conventional ways of existence, remember that for years several of these places have been proving their viability across Europe.

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These very modern pioneers seem to be providing invaluable new possibilities for housing, employment and industry in Britain. And if that isn't incentive enough, Wimbush [of Lammas Eco-village] concludes, looking out of his window at the rolling countryside below, you might try asking yourself what's really important: "For me, living in a beautiful forest garden, surrounded by my family, is infinitely more rewarding than living in the rat-race could ever be. And that is a choice open to everybody..."

Read the full article here.

Currently housing five adults (ranging in age from mid-20s to mid-40s) and a toddler, the Collective is a model of shared-resources commitment. "We've got 2,700 square feet in the house that none of us could afford individually," says Colin Van Uchelen, who has lived in the house since 1993.

"One family would have filled this whole house rather than five adults. We don't need more than one lawnmower, one drill, one shovel, one BBQ. We each contribute 29 dollars a month in a shared fund, and that fund is used to buy things of benefit to us all, things that contribute to all our well-being and are communal property."

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The cornerstone of a shared living model is rooted in the intertwined benefits of practical savings and social enrichment. The garden at the Mackenzie house -- featuring salad greens, peas, beans, squash, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, leeks, and herbs -- doesn't just allow grocery savings, but provides an opportunity for group effort that benefits the collective.

Read the full article here.

A cooking co-op, or dinner swap, is simply an agreement by two or more individuals or households to provide prepared meals for each other, according to a schedule. The goal is to reduce the time spent in the kitchen while increasing the quality and variety of the food eaten. It’s not a new idea — dinner co-ops have been around for year.

It works like this: Once a week, you cook a dish (chicken enchiladas, for instance), making enough to provide at least one serving for each adult member of the co-op. (Children can be assigned half or full portions, depending on ages and appetites.) Around the same time, your fellow co-op members are cooking large batches of their chosen dishes.

Read the whole Cooking Co-ops article.

Harvard Magazine has a nice feature on Nubanusit Farm and Neighborhood, a cohousing community in New Hampshire.

They tore up the parking lot and put up a communal paradise. Or so Joni Mitchell could sing about what’s happened on 113 acres of idyllic farmland just outside Peterborough, New Hampshire.

In 2004, two couples bought the site of the defunct Salzburg Inn complex, right next to the Nubanusit River. They have since redeveloped about 4.5 acres of the former commercial property as the state’s first cohousing community, Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm.

Read the whole article on Nubanusit Cohousing.

Watch the video here.

Check out the video here:

Twin Oaks on CNN

Carbon footprints and tight household budgets weigh on a lot of city dwellers' minds, its champions point out. Security, safety, and building a sense of community do, too. Cohousing addresses all of these concerns, they maintain. For young adults and parents of growing families, it means a more neighborly way of living than an apartment complex normally offers. For seniors, it often allows "aging in place" with members of multiple generations.

Cheaper. Cleaner. More democratic. More congenial. More stimulating. What's not to like?

Read the full article here.

What do you share with your neighbours? A cup of sugar? A dividing wall? Despair over the way that your recycling boxes always seem to be thrown back over the hedge?

For a growing number of communities across Britain, the answer is much, much more. New communes, ranging from listed urban properties converted into self-contained flats with communal space to new-build eco-villages on rural smallholdings, are springing up, offering communal living with a contemporary twist.

Read the full article here.

http://www.transitionus.org/welcome-transition-us

The recent trend of Transition Towns, as a response to climate change and the energy crisis, highlights the importance of recognising the rural context when considering the issues of urban development. The movement...aims to reduce reliance on global sources of energy and food by sourcing needs from within a locality.

Read the full article here.

The grant is part of a UK government initiative in which 10 community projects from across the UK have been awarded up to £500,000 for pioneering carbon-reduction approaches. The Lammas project promises low-carbon lifestyles, carbon neutral housing and carbon positive livelihoods, with a projected net carbon sequestration rate of approximately 90 tonnes CO2 per year. The residents will source all their water, heating fuel and electricity from the land and will develop land-based micro-enterprises supplying food and craft to the locality.

Read the full article here.