sustainable community forming

[TechnoHippieChic]

Hello Afterculture people!

it's been a long time since anyone has posted here (including myself)...
i have had nothing to really say because i've been living in Denver, and ThINKing a lot about sustainable living for the past couple of years, since Gaiian Mind festival 07.

I am happy to say, now, there finally is a group forming here in the area, of like minded people, who are actually ready to make the leap out of the city into living off grid in nature.

I am aware that many people also carry the vision of living in the cities and working with the pre-existing structures- and modifying and changing that all from within. These two visions support one-another.

I'm looking forward to hearing about progress in the direction of sustainable life for all of us.

we are beginning with some talking and planning. we are thinking about the layout of a village, including the five key elements:

-clean drinking water
(purifiers are good option for now- the "Berkey" filtration (free standing) unit is really good (made by British Berkefeld, New Millenium products. made right here in Colorado...)

-healthy food
(variety of dried beans, variety of rices, stored in barrels underground (if you have beans and peas, then you have sprouts, even in winter!)

-warmth

-shelter

-waste management

I'll keep everyone posted on the progress of this exciting project!

we are going to have a map marked out with community's that we know of around us, and around the world too- so that in the future, we can have resident exchange!

a friend who is sitting here now, just mentioned "tumble weed homes"- so i thought i'd mention it here as it seems relevant

looking forward to kindling this fire!

Shoshannah

[Cliff Winton]

Ah, what timing! Good to hear we haven't forgotten. I myself have just recently moved to an ecovillage to fully immerse in the building of community and sustainable infrastructure. I had a good start by first visiting established communities, introducing myself to working sustainable methods, and then practicing community spirit within the bounds of the city. Now that I'm here I can confirm it is my path of bliss, the realization of a dream that started around the time of our meeting at GM'07.I also feel it is very important, we are all in agreement, to link up communities into a solid network (locally, nationally, and worldwide) for information and resource exchange and to ultimately create an independent distribution system between all of us to move abundances where they are needed. 

Those 5 things you listed are pretty much the basics, though I will add to that list electricity (we are working on powering our community with homemade solar and wind generators) Also, Internet access provides a pretty crucial knowledge base to inspire and help solve community issues, not to mention critical for resource management and communication between communities. There are other things involved, like satisfying the emotional needs of everyone in the community, but a unified passionate vision is so critical to the accomplishing the basic needs, bliss appears naturally as a result of it all working together.

There are many ways to approach the networking of communities, starting on a national or regional scale. I would advice against places like facebook as primary connection since it is not completely open to modification and if the site goes down we have no control over it. We have servers set up on the land here, so we could link up through locally hosted site where every community would be able to post via forums/searchable databases of resources and people, skills etc.. Also, the upcoming Google Wave service looks like it would really facilitate intercommunity collaboration, but once again that would be more of a supplement to the critical network hosted on local servers.

At any rate, keep in touch- Shoshannah, how about focusing first on linking up Colorado area communities, and I can be in contact with interested communities in Arizona, and we'll go from there! 

Cliff Vostek 

[Cliff Winton]

I am curious if the community you are forming has any relation to this- http://www.coloradokindomains.com/
If not, and if you haven't heard of this, I highly recommend checking it out...I just got the word there is some serious funding available for people wanting to start up.
Also, I just met up with someone by the name Nomad Poet, real name Betsy, who is traveling around the country helping to network sustainable communities. If you haven't met her yet, she is going to be heading through CO in the next few months. She just started up a facebook group Sisnexus, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=173139609151&ref=ts. Her vision is definitely in line! Cheers,
Cliff