Eight steps to creating your own
Sustainable Community
by Robert Gilman
You might think that guidelines for eco-village
development would mostly have to do with their "eco" aspect.
That is, how to handle the blosystem and built environment.
These are certainly important but in researching this issue
and interviewing many people with extensive community experience,
we have learned that the physical systems are the easiest part.
They are also the most variable. The details depend strongly
on the specifics of the community, its location, purpose, and
composition. These guidelines here, focus on where we perceive
the need to be. The social process of eco-village development.
1. Recognize It will be a journey and
enjoy it !: If you have an "eco-village dream",
and focus too strongly on the desired end result, you set yourself
and others up for frustration and disppointment. The process
of community development takes time, usually many years ! Joan
Halifx, director of the Ojai Foundation, speaks for many community
founders in the following story: "The Dalai Lama told me
in an interview that there were three conditions that would make
it possible to accomplish my vision for the community here: Great
love, great persistence, great patience. Patience is the hardest
of all!" It helps to recognize right from the start
that a community is always a process of change, and it is
best to honor and enjoy the process.
2. Develop a vision and keep developing
it: A clear, shared vision is one of the most important
kinds of glue a group can have. For a vision to work as glue,
however, it needs to be more than an intellectual construct.
At its best, a vision gives voice to the full essence and
deeply-felt purpose of the group. There are many ways of
developing a vision (and a vision statement), but however
arrived at, the vision will be most effective if each member
of the group feels a resounding personal "Yes !" in
response to it. Keep the vision alive by revisiting it regularly,
as a group, to see whether it still feels right.
3. Bulid relationships and bonding: The
other fundamental glue for a group comes from the heart. It
is vital to build solid Interpersonal relationships, mutual
understanding, caring, and trust. Building rich relationships
isn't necessarily easy, but, doing things together; eating,
singing, dancing, telling life stories, traveling, facilitates
the process much faster than meetings!
4. Make the "whole-system" challenge
explicit: Once the group has begun to clarify its
vision and build relationships, get the group oriented to
the tasks that need to be accomplished. Personality style
conflicts may arise here. Some prefer to begin with planning,
others would rather plunge in and experiment. The challenge
for the group as a whole is to get these two tendencies into
a constructive relationship, so that they contribute to each
other. You'll need both.
5. Get help to become more self-reliant: Knowledge
about sustainable community development is growing so quickly
that it is unlikely the founding group will know everything.
For some specific topics, such as building details, it may
make sense to depend entirely on outside expertise. On many
other topics, however, it makes sense to work within in your
group. Include plenty of time and resources in your budget
for group learning about how to do things, how to manage
tasks, and how to build group process and interpersonal skills.
Lack of management or process skills is the number one reason
communities fail.
6. Develop clear procedures: Community
should be an adventure among friends, not an exercise in bureaucracy.
The painful experience of many groups makes it clear, however,
that a little bureaucracy is both necessary and helpful. Specifically,
it is wise to develop clear, written procedures for decision
making, resolving disputes, handling finances, and determining
membership. Perhaps even more important is to develop "meta-procedures" for
making changes to these (and other) procedures. Groups change,
so plan on changing your procedures too! Frequently at first,
more slowly later as the group matures.
7. Maintain balance -
sustainably: Once the group is formed, there will be many specific
tasks required to develop its eco-village or sustainable community
qualities, and many important balances to be maintained:
(a)
Between "group" and "private".
People need some of each, often in changing quantities.
(b)
Between today and tomorrow. If not well paced, the group could
either do too much too soon and exhaust itself, or procrastinate
and become a debating society.
(c) Between "hardware" and "software".
Some people are drawn to images of solar homes and permaculture
gardens, others are most interested in the feeling of community.
One aspect or another may need to be emphasized at different
times, but the success of the community depends on their balanced
development and a shared appreciation for both.
(d) Among love,
light, and will. Every community can benefit from cultivating
the positive qualities of the heart (bonding, caring, trust),
the mind (clarity of understanding, vision, integrity), and
the will (the ability to act with courage and effectiveness).
The challenge is to integrate them in a balanced way. Affirming
the importance of this balance within the vision of the group
can be a powerful touchstone for assessing the readjusting
group progress.
(e) Among different learning and cognitive
styles. We can hardly emphasize enough the importance of developing
clear understandings in the group of the many ways that people
are different. Most of the disagreeents within groups have
to do with arguments over learning and cognitive styles, not
over matters of substance. For example, some people would rather
talk and then act, others would rather act and then talk, still
others just want to act, and of course there are always those
who just want to talk. Such differences, working in the right
relationship, can complement each other in ways that will be
liberating for each person. In wrong relationships, they lead
to endless power struggles.
(f) Among current consumption,
investment, and service. Sustainability is fundamentally about
fairness and balance across time. One of the most concrete
ways to express to express this is through a balance among
expenditure of time as well as money: current consumption (from
food to entertainment), investment (from building to education),
and service to others (which may involve either current consumption
or investment). Boundaries may blur, but if the future benefits
are high, it is generally an investment. If the benefits are
primarily here and now, it is current consumption. Healthy
living and avoiding burn-out require a balance of both. The
spirit of sustainable service provides a healthy antidote for
imbalances in either direction. Service focuses beyond the
self and can thus lift one beyond self-centered current consumption.
At the same time, sustainable service suggests that some current
consumption is necessary to nurture today's server, so that
he or she can serve tomorrow as well.
8. Be open and honest: Finally,
the evidence is strong that for many community issues including
the always sensitive issues of sex, power, and money, what
you do is less important than how openly and honestly you do
it. For example, some successful communities are based on celibacy,
while others are based on group marriages. These seemingly
opposite approaches can both work. What doesn't work, what
gets communities into trouble, is when the public story no
longer fits the private behavior, especially if those in leadership
positions are the ones breaking the rules. The issue of power
provides another good example. Many communities adopt the ideal
of complete equality of power. But, in fact, such equality
essentially never happens in human groups. There is always
a "power gradient", with some
people having more influence than others. The attempt to maintain
the fiction of complete equality can lead to a collective denial
of the actual dynamics in the group. The paradox (and tragedy)
of such a situation is that it encourages "hidden" abuses
of power while at the same time suppressing and discouraging
genuinely needed visible leadership. A healthier approach is
to acknowledge what is, while also honoring one's ideals. The
group may also find that it can reformulate its ideals in a way
that better honors their deep meaning (for example, equal fairness
for all may be more important than equal power) and better fits
the complex truth of their experience. Now take another look
at Step One, and you're on your way!
The preceding article by
Robert Gilman was reprinted from "IN CONTEXT", A Quarterly
of Humane Sustainable Culture, PO Box 11470, Bainbridge Island,
WA 98110. Tel 206-842-0216. Fax 206-842-5208. Subscriptions $18/yr;
$32/2 yr.
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