Communities #206
Spring 2025
Note: You can order a copy of this issue here.
The stories in Communities #206, Ecovillage Visions, explore what a viable future might look like, both for intentional communities and for the wider world. We take an in-depth look at a radically innovative, affordable integrated energy system with global applications; hear from an original inhabitant of Biosphere 2; explore intentional community as an alternative path for young adults faced by an ecocidal society; examine transformations necessary within intentional communities themselves to meet wider emerging needs; contemplate cooperative futures as explored in imaginative works; and look at tools to make cooperative living more functional, including spiral dynamics, boundary circles, emotional healing processes, and more. We also begin to pay tribute to Laird Schaub, whose influence in the contemporary communities movement (including in helping Communities navigate beyond its first two decades) cannot be overstated.
Notes from the Editor: Themes and Dreams by Chris Roth
On Ecovillage Visions, Breaking the Spell, and assuring the future of Communities.
Letters: Community Led Success, Ideological Polarization, Check Your Privilege, Bridging “What Is” and “What Could Be” by Margaret Critchlow and Ronaye Matthew, Shannon Kelly, Elika Sepulveda, Mark Reiner
Honoring Laird Schaub, 1949-2024 by Harvey Baker (FIC), Neil Planchon (Cohousing Research Network/CohoUS), and others
Laird’s teachings on group process and community living inspired many, leaving a legacy that continues to ripple through the intentional communities movement. A crowdfunded book project seeks to ensure it endures.
Remembering Laird by Chris Roth
Through community networking, cofounding Sandhill Farm, championing Communities, teaching, supporting individual groups and communitarians, and much more, Laird has touched countless lives.
The Direct Drive DC Microgrid: An Energy Future the Whole World Can Afford by Debbie Piesen
Our DC Microgrid is comfortable, joyous, and fulfilling. What makes it work is good design, prioritizing conservation, and—mostly importantly—living in community.
A Conversation with Biospherian Dr. Mark Nelson by Devin Gleeson and Dr. Mark Nelson
Earth’s natural cycles happened much more quickly in Biosphere 2. Our sensor data would show a small spike in CO2, and Linda would check her journal and tell us: “Oh, I harvested a sweet potato.”
Community Living and Initiations into Adulthood as an Alternative Path for Young Adults by Gabriela Fagundes Moreira
In this century, it is more than time that we young adults take a stand to learn the skills required to steer away from ecocide and reconnect directly with the source of life itself, with ourselves, and with each other.
Rethinking the Future of Intentional Communities by Sky Blue
If intentional communities are responses to the problems of society, the goal should be to help solve those problems, to make the world a place where intentional communities aren’t needed in the same way they are today.
The Role of Ecovillages and Transition Towns in the Revolution by Ted Trainer
We do not all have to live in ecovillages in order to save the planet. But we do have to live in settlements that have many of their basic elements.
The Future Is Cooperative: What might it look like and how do we get there? by Thomas Mengel
Sustainable community development requires participatory and cooperative leadership that maintains excitement for implementation and includes flexibility for adaptations in the future.
Cooperative Futures Imagined—From Earth to Mars and Back by Thomas Mengel
Communal values and reciprocal community building play a large role in imaginative fiction about the future by Kim Stanley Robinson and Octavia E. Butler.
The View from 2060 by Daniel Greenberg
As we shed our capitalist mindsets of scarcity, exploitation, and separation, we started to remember our oneness and follow our deeper longings. Music, art, and poetry flowed; we planted gardens, forests, regenerated entire ecosystems.
A Vision of Simplicity by Riana Good
I enjoy what machines can help us to do and make and experience. And, I envision a community where machine-use is rare, where we explore how little we can do, where we celebrate existence as it is.
Spiral Dynamics—Which Reality Do We Live in? by Diana Leafe Christian
Among other benefits, the Spiral Dynamics model can help us understand why some community members may want to directly address and resolve community conflict triggered by members exhibiting “especially challenging behaviors,” and why other members don’t.
Community as a Super-Organism: Boundary Circles in Response to Persistent Difficult Behavior by Kara Huntermoon
Our strategy is a “superorganism” communal strategy because it is not possible for an individual to employ this strategy alone. It works in a group because it allows for simultaneous engagement and disengagement.
Healing, Connection, and Escaping the Seduction of Communal “Harmony” by Daway Chou-Ren and Devin Gleeson
One of the proposals we started playing with at the Magic Cow was to remove connection as the central goal of the community, and to instead regard it as a byproduct of our co-creations and projects.
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ON THE COVER: Members and volunteers gather in the summer of 2024 at Living Energy Farm (Louisa, Virginia), where thermal collectors mounted on the roof of the strawbale-insulated main house feed into an active solar heating system integrated with a direct drive DC Microgrid (see pages 12-17). Photo courtesy of Living Energy Farm.