Earthaven is an ecovillage in Western North Carolina, about 50 minutes from Asheville.
Earthaven Ecovillage is an intentional community that was founded in 1994 on 329 forested, mountainous acres. [1] As of 2021, it has about 75 adult residents and 25 children. [2] Ecological living at Earthaven includes permaculture-based site plans, natural building, renewable energy, and organic farms and gardens. [3]
Earthaven’s common land is owned by a homeowners association [1] and its 12 residential neighborhoods are owned by separate entities, mostly housing cooperatives and LLCs. [4] Earthaven’s cultural and educational activities are carried out in collaboration with the nonprofit School of Integrated Living. [5] Earthaven’s practice of sustainable living is governed by its Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions. [6]
Earthaven's neighborhoods include undeveloped lots, single-family homes, duplexes, apartments, tiny homes, an earthship, and cohousing. Residents are responsible for their own finances, food, and housing, although several neighborhoods have shared kitchens and meals. [7] The entire community gathers at least once a week for cookouts and potlucks, and there are community-wide celebrations of seasonal holidays. There is no single spiritual practice at Earthaven. Various groups of residents gather frequently for meditation, dance, yoga, rituals, and other events. Earthaven has a local currency, known as the Leap. Residents exchange goods and services for leaps, barter, or cash. Many parents at Earthaven collaborate on home school enrichment activities for their children. [8]
Earthaven’s mission and vision is "to create a village which is a living laboratory and educational seed bank for a sustainable human future. In the midst of planetary change the Earthaven experiment helps inform and inspire a global flowering of bio-regionally appropriate cultures." Earthaven carries out its mission by offering in-person and online tours, workshops, and customized educational programs. [2]
Earthaven was covered in a 2020 New York Times Magazine article on intentional communities [9] and in a 2017 episode of the Theory of Everything Podcast. [10] It has also been featured in the Washington Post Magazine, [11] Off The Grid News, [12] and the Invention Nation TV series on the Science Channel [13]
An ecovillage is a traditional or intentional community with the goal of becoming more socially, culturally, economically, and/or ecologically sustainable. An ecovillage strives to produce the least possible negative impact on the natural environment through intentional physical design and resident behavior choices. It is consciously designed through locally owned, participatory processes to regenerate and restore its social and natural environments. Most range from a population of 50 to 250 individuals, although some are smaller, and traditional ecovillages are often much larger. Larger ecovillages often exist as networks of smaller sub-communities. Some ecovillages have grown through like-minded individuals, families, or other small groups—who are not members, at least at the outset—settling on the ecovillage's periphery and participating de facto in the community.
Cohousing is an intentional community of private homes clustered around shared space. The term originated in Denmark in late 1960s. Each attached or single family home has traditional amenities, including a private kitchen. Shared spaces typically feature a common house, which may include a large kitchen and dining area, laundry, and recreational spaces. Shared outdoor space may include parking, walkways, open space, and gardens. Neighbors also share resources like tools and lawnmowers.
Twin Oaks Community is an ecovillage and intentional community of about one hundred people living on 450 acres (1.8 km2) in Louisa County, Virginia. It is a member of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities. Founded in 1967, it is one of the longest-enduring and largest secular intentional communities in North America. The community's basic values are cooperation, egalitarianism, nonviolence, sustainability, and income sharing. About 100 adults and 17 children live in the community.
Dancing Rabbit is an ecovillage near Rutledge, Missouri, USA.
An intentional community is a voluntary residential community designed from the start to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, or spiritual vision, often follow an alternative lifestyle and typically share responsibilities and property. Intentional communities can be seen as social experiments or communal experiments. The multitude of intentional communities includes collective households, cohousing communities, coliving, ecovillages, monasteries, survivalist retreats, kibbutzim, hutterites, ashrams, and housing cooperatives.
The Craik Sustainable Living Project (CSLP) is a nonprofit organization for sustainable development that aims to advance the local use of more ecologically sound technologies and ways of living in rural Saskatchewan, Canada. The four key components of the project are the eco-centre, outreach and education programs, community action, and the ecovillage.
Communities: Life in Cooperative Culture is a quarterly magazine published by the Global Ecovillage Network - United States. It is a primary resource for information, issues, and ideas about intentional communities in North America. Articles and columns cover practical "how-to" issues of community living as well as personal stories about forming new communities, decision-making, conflict resolution, raising children in community, and sustainability.
The term "sustainable communities" has various definitions, but in essence refers to communities planned, built, or modified to promote sustainable living. Sustainable communities tend to focus on environmental and economic sustainability, urban infrastructure, social equity, and municipal government. The term is sometimes used synonymously with "green cities," "eco-communities," "livable cities" and "sustainable cities."
The following outline is provided as an overview of topics relating to community.
Lost Valley Educational Center is an intentional community and ecovillage located on 87 acres (350,000 m2) acres of mostly forested land in Dexter, Oregon, United States, approximately 18 miles (29 km) southeast of Eugene. The center was founded in 1989 and is located on the grounds of the old headquarters of the Shiloh Youth Revival Centers.
Findhorn Ecovillage is an experimental architectural community project based at The Park, in Moray, Scotland, near the village of Findhorn. The project's main aim is to demonstrate a sustainable development in environmental, social, and economic terms. Work began in the early 1980s under the auspices of the Findhorn Foundation but now includes a wide diversity of organisations and activities. Numerous different ecological techniques are in use, and the project has won a variety of awards, including the UN-Habitat Best Practice Designation in 1998.
Diana Leafe Christian is an author, former editor of Communities magazine, and nationwide speaker and workshop presenter on starting new ecovillages, on sustainability, on building communities, and on governance by sociocracy. She lives in an off-grid homestead at Earthaven Ecovillage in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, U.S. She has said that living in an intentional community "is the longest, most expensive, personal growth workshop you will ever take."
The Communities Directory, A Comprehensive Guide to Intentional Community provides listing of intentional communities primarily from North America but also from around the world. The Communities Directory has both an and a print edition, which is published based on data from the website.
The Ecovillage at Currumbin is an innovative residential community at 639 Currumbin Creek Road, Currumbin Valley, Queensland, Australia. It showcases best practices in residential ecologically sustainable development. The ecovillage project has been developed on degraded farmland on the exurban fringe of City of Gold Coast, a major resort city on Queensland’s South East Queensland coast. The developer, Land Matters Currumbin Valley, has rehabilitated the site and is protecting its environmental integrity and biodiversity by preserving 50 percent of the site as an environmental reserve.
The Miccosukee Land Cooperative (MLC) is a cohousing community. It is located near Tallahassee, in northeastern Leon County, Florida.
A conservation community is a real estate and conservation hybrid model of land development, consisting of both protected areas and human settlements, with the primary goal of saving large parcels of land from ecological degradation. This land can be forested land, agricultural land, ranch land, or any other type of land that needs protecting from high-impact development. This model is contrasted from other protected area models by integrating human communities within nature, rather than relocating them outside, and as such falls under the IUCN's Category V protected area designation.
Living Energy Farm, or "LEF," is a zero fossil fuel intentional community of seven adult members plus two children on 127 acres in rural Louisa County, Virginia, United States. The farm is an Ally Community with the Federation of Egalitarian Communities. It is 9 miles from Twin Oaks Community which helped support LEF when it was being founded.
Low-impact development (LID) has been defined as "development which through its low negative environmental impact either enhances or does not significantly diminish environmental quality".
Ecovillages in China are typically rural communities designed to promote ecological, cultural, economic and social sustainability in concert with the natural environment of a particular area. These are small human settlements with a community-based approach designed by the community themselves. Ecovillages are not completely isolated from other settlements, although they aspire to increased self-sufficiency.