Ecovillages

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Provide short introduction here

General introduction to approach

Test reference[1]

Ecovillages are communities where people aim to live in harmony with each other and with nature. The Global Ecovillage Network defines an ecovillage as an “intentional, traditional or urban community that is consciously designed through locally owned, participatory processes in all four dimensions of sustainability (social, culture, ecology and economy) to regenerate its social and natural environments” (Website GEN 2017). While this definition explicitly includes traditional villages, we in this Wiki-page focus on the intentional community version of ecovillages in both (peri-)urban and rural areas. The Foundation for Intentional Community defines an intentional community as “a group of people who live together or share common facilities and who regularly associate with each other on the basis of explicit common values”, which includes ecovillages, but also cohousing, cooperative houses, communes and other shared living arrangements.

While there are many fundamental differences between all hundreds/ thousands of specific ecovillage projects across the world, there is an overall shared approach that can be characterised as living in community with several connected households, engaging in collective life-style change striving for (more) socio-ecological justice and participation, and very often the collective ownership of land and (some of the) houses. The TRANSIT research project includes a number of case-studies on ecovillages and the Global Ecovillage Network as manifestations of social innovation in the sense that they explicitly engage with changing social relations, involving new ways of doing, thinking and organising (Kunze & Avelino 2015).

The Pathways project includes a case-study of Bromarf ecovillage in Finland as an example of alternative “transition pathways as patterns of changes in socio-technical systems unfolding over time that lead to a fundamental reconfiguration of technologies, business models and production systems, as well as the preferences and behaviour of consumers”.

The Transformative Cities initiative features Cloughjordan ecovillage in its Atlas of Utopias as an example of “inspiring stories of communities challenging entrenched power and boldly developing alternatives” and “cases [that] show how public solutions, based on principles of cooperation and solidarity rather than competition and private profit, have been more successful in meeting people’s basic needs - and, perhaps just as importantly, in creating a spirit of confidence and empowerment that strengthen communities for many other challenges”.


Shapes, sizes and applications

Estimations on how many ecovillages exist in the world today highly depend on (self-appropriated) definitions and vary from 4.000 to 15.000 ecovillages (Jackson 2004, Kasper & Schyndel 2008). The Global Ecovillage Network mentions over 1.000 ecovillages across the world. The Eurotopia directory (1998-2014) indicate a high fluctuation and increase in projects who call themselves ecovillage. 90% of these new community attempts are reported to fail in the first 5 years, due to the challenges of finding affordable land and planning permissions, and to maintain self-sustaining economies (Dawson 2006, Avelino & Kunze 2009).

Ecovillages often function as ‘experimental gardens’ (Kunze 2012) to experiment with a diversity of approaches to tackle ecological sustainability and/or social justice, ranging from permaculture, ecological construction of houses (e.g. strawbale houses, earthships, and low-tech technological innovation in e.g. renewable energy), to experiments with alternative decision-making formats such as sociocracy (see e.g. TRANSIT case-study on Ecovillage Bergen) or alternative modes of (non-violent) communication and community-building.

Ecovillages come in many shapes, sizes and sorts. If we exclude traditional villages (which are often much larger), the size of intentional ecovillage communities range anywhere between 8 to 250 residents. More importantly, however, are the many visitors that temporarily visit and work in ecovillages. Most ecovillages have an explicit aim to contribute to the transferability of their approaches and “act as centres of research, demonstration and (in most cases) training” (Dawson, 2006). Many ecovillages are a member of the Global Ecovillage Network, which was founded in 1995 as a bottom up network for education, exchange of experiences and political lobby work and has branches on each continent and many national networks. Within these international, regional and national networks, ecovillages share the insights from their ecological, technological, economic and social experiments at events and through the open source Solution Library.

Examples of ecovillages:

Cloughjordan ecovillage is based in Ireland. Its first houses were built in 2009 and it currently includes “55 low-carbon homes, Ireland's lowest ecological footprint, a carbon-neutral district heating system, a community farm, green enterprise centre, and a planned reed bed treatment plant” (Transformative Cities Atlas of Utopia).

Tamera ecovillage was founded in 1995 and is now inhabited by 170 people who live and work on a site of 330 acres/ 134 located 20kms off the west coast in the Alentejo region in southern Portugal. In addition to the permanent community, there are hundreds of guests who temporarily live and work in Tamera. (TRANSIT case-study, Avelino 2015).

Ecovillage Schloss Tempelhof which was started in 2007, has located in the Jagstregion, a rural area in Southern Germany, state of Baden-Württemberg, and has grown from 20 to 140 Inhabitants in only three years with a site of 32ha (4ha Buildings, 27ha agrarian land incl. 1ha forest). The Tempelhof foundation owns the property and all residents are voting members. (TRANSIT case-study,, cf. CTP database or Kunze 2015).

Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice

Narrative of change

Transformative potential

Summary of relevant approaches

References

  1. Test reference