Growing Green Communities: Eco-villages & Co-housing

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Posted by sdgreenlife • November 16, 2009 • Printer-friendly

by Laura Silver

Photo Courtesy Heartwood Cohousing

One of the things I like best about the green-building movement is that it looks at more than carbon footprints, energy use, healthy and renewable construction materials, (all of which are both necessary and laudable). It also rethinks the basic tenets of why and how we build.

Green construction has taken the concept of “planned communities” and extended it to planning a building project from the ground-up as sustainable, energy efficient, and one that also fosters a sense of community. Some of the results are termed eco-communities, eco-villages, green-based co-housing and elder co-housing. Many provide community meeting areas, classes, and social events, and some are managed and maintained cooperatively, (don’t panic boomers, it’s really not a commune).

In an urban setting eco-communities reduce reliance on car culture by combining residential, business, and shopping spaces within a ten-minute walk. Access to public transportation provides for longer trips; local parks and open spaces encourage community interaction. Usually the residences are individually rented/owned and there is less organized community building than in the other options.

Eco-villages centralize the living and parking areas, maintaining large tracts of undisturbed land. Some include a community B&B for guests so that surrounding homes can be built smaller with less wasted space. Residents own their homes but the land may be held in common or as part of a land conservancy, so owners pay taxes only on the home itself.

Villages have the option of utilizing technologies that might be prohibitive for a single homeowner. Tryon Farm in Michigan uses a septic system that routes tank outflow through beds of tuberous plants. The plants feed on the waste and their roots oxygenate and clean the water. In seven days it is clean enough to meet state irrigation standards, and is used to water community fields. (I so wanted one of these instead of a septic system when I built my house.)

Co-housing developments encourage even more community involvement. Cobb Hill in Hartland, Vermont has a waiting list to buy one of the 22 houses, though it is only five years old. Residents volunteer up to 10 hours of work a week cooking for shared meals in the common room, stoking a wood-burning furnace that heats all the homes, or working in the community gardens. One day a month is spent maintaining community land and buildings.

While San Diego has made attempts to recreate urban "villages" with combined shopping, business, and residential building, (the changes in parts of Hillcrest are a good example), they aren't necessarily green from the ground up, and don't have the built-in community aspects found in eco-villages and co-housing developments.

The Del Sur development 20 miles north of downtown San Diego features many green-building and sustainable facets. It was planned as a green community with stringent guidelines for participating builders, extensive use of solar power, water-saving features, permanent open space with 18 miles of bike and hiking trails, and the Ranch House Welcome Center which is San Diego's first LEED Platinum building.

Del Sur would qualify as an eco-community as the homes and their properties are individually owned and community building activities, if any, are left to the residents.

The closest attempts at co-housing in Southern California are in Santa Monica, just north of Los Angeles, and so far it's just a group of people with an interest in creating a community with no actual location or development attached. At this time, there are no planned co-housing communities in the San Diego area, though perhaps when economic restraints on construction ease, we may see some movement in this direction.

In the meantime, perhaps we can all find ways to strengthen the community ties where we already live. Though I intentionally live in rural Jamul, with lots of space between me an my neighbors, I find myself more and more interested in some kind of regular, positive, voluntary community building.

I'm not sure what form it would take yet, but I'd like to see something that didn't revolve around fear of wildfires and Indian Casinos. Maybe a community garden project or other excuse to create something, rather than simply fear one form of literal or perceived destruction. I'll be thinking about it. What about you, and your neighborhood?

For an overview of the Top 10 Green Co-housing Developments, visit:

Natural Home Magazine

Learn More About Eco-Communities at:

Green Eco Communities — a sustainable living resource

VillageHomesDavis.org — 220 houses and 40 apartment units designed with solar power, walking-distance offices, stores, parks and playgrounds, and more.

NewUrbanism.org — designed like walkable European towns, New Urbanist developments surround central business and shopping areas with housing and access to public transportation, virtually eliminating the need for cars on a day-to-day basis.

NewUrbanNews.com (684 New Urbanist Projects exist, are under construction, or are in the planning stages