For social fostering of self-reliant communities
Here’s a treatise by someone who, like me, has a social-change-oriented perspective in regard to the ecovillage movement. More than just congenial places to live, he holds them up as models for (a) how to address social issues and (b) how to transition toward a more communitarian society.
He advocates that affordable housing public policy shift from building isolated structures toward creating the infrastructure for self-reliant communities:
In 1942, the Austrian economist, Joseph Schumpeter, coined the term creative destruction. He describes it as the “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”
From the perspective of any family in America or across the world that is dependent on the marketplace for their well-being, it is the ruinous, not the inventive aspect of “creative destruction” that will capture their attention and stoke their fears for the future of their kith and kin. They may sense a gradual process of decline in the prospects of their children and grandchildren, compared with their own life experience. They may notice new pockets of family destabilization, dislocation and, in some locations, yes, even destruction.
A public policy to mass-produce affordable, maximally self-reliant communities across America as an alternative to current affordable housing projects and unemployment payments could absorb the shock of these displacements permanently. Cash unemployment benefits are transient, whereas the tenure of a resident’s employment in his community’s self-reliance would be permanent. Once an employment-challenged individual or family chose to make a home in a maximally autonomous community, they need never again experience the nagging fear and shame of being dependent on others [or the state] for the well-being of their loved ones.
