We don't need a greenfield site to build a sustainable community

There are nearly seven billion of us on the planet. In percentage terms, nearly all of those people are housed. People often think that to have a sustainable community means going "off-grid", i.e. buying up land in splendid isolation and building houses of straw bales, cob and having compost toilets.

But we can't all leave our current housing solutions and head off to the mountains to do this. First off there wouldn't be enough land and secondly it is not practical. So if we are to have sustainable communities we have to RETROFIT our current localities. While it is a noble concept to build a sustainable community from scratch it really can only ever be a showcase for what the rest of us should be doing.

Millions of people live in horribly unsustainable places, e.g. large tracts of suburbia surrounding Western World cities. This is the last place that one would think of as being sustainable. But these are the very places that sustainability can and will work.

These housing solutions are sprawled out to give everyone they own "plot of the earth". The car is King, as generally basic services like shops are at least one mile away. So we end up with people living lives of isolation in their homes, followed by commutes into and out of their developments in their cars. Life becomes a prison of the box, i.e. the house, car, office, factory, recreation buildings etc..

There are so many tools at our disposal to counteract the mess the developers presented us with.

Form community - 150 people or less, research shows that above this number people lose intimate contact and responsibility for each other.
Set up a local economy - barter. Have an honest appraisal of everyone's skills and talents, whatever they may be, from hanging pictures, through counselling others ,childcare, growing food to accountancy services. Agree a ranking system for each task and begin trading with each other. Preferably via online accounts (note this will be covered in detail in subsequent blogs).
Utilise individual and common land - One person or people from community can barter time and services to growing fruit/vegetables for community. Perhaps more people can barter for the preparation of these products into tasty meals for the tables of the community.
Investigate possibility of building shared building - try to decouple from maintenance fees for the housing development and perform this task among community on barter economy. Possibility then of using the money saved to get a collective fund to purchase materials to build community building.
People could work from this building - telecommuting, selling produce from community, having small shops for craft sales etc...
Integrate elderly into community - promote elderly integration rather than allowing people go on to scrapheap at age 65. They could be active members of barter economy, especially for child welfare as they are retired.
Bring pre-school childcare back into the community - childcare groups residing in individual houses or indeed in community building. Childcare bartered by community members. Retired people ideal here.
Alternative education of children - possibility of running Steiner type education models.
Breaking free of 9-5 working model in wider economy - community members to try and break free form clock driven work week. Negotiate for services rendered rather than time on the job. Then with the extra time saved (as one becomes more efficient if getting re-numerated for tasks rather than time) then suddenly much more time is freed up for the community and for the barter economy.

All of the above (and MANY more solutions) will be covered in greater detail in subsequent blogs and downloads. These are some of the very easy to implement (community building obviously is a longer project) and fast ways to start being sustainable in our local community.

The one thing we can do today is to start. Obviously we won't get 150 people in one day. Start with one other person and build from there. It takes just one other person to BEGIN your community. Then over time you can turn your dysfunctional isolating housing solutions into a truly vibrant community of people.