Community Design Considerations: Primary Dimensions

A. Allen Butcher

 As many intentional communities are created in response to problems perceived in the larger culture, these may be seen as small-scale, experimental societies, developing innovations in architecture and land use, governmental structures, family and relationships, and other aspects of culture that may provide viable alternatives to our global, monolithic, consumerist society. As crucibles-of-culture, intentional communities tend to attract many of the new and hopeful ideas of the day, develop them in living, small-scale societies into useful innovations, and then model successful adaptations of these ideas to the outside world.

Although some intentional communities become very doctrinaire, closed societies, frozen in time like many Catholic monasteries and Hutterite colonies, others are open, encouraging an ongoing exchange with the larger culture. Open communities like cohousing, ecovillages, and egalitarian socities provide insights into the direction of the larger society through their successful cultural innovations. In this way, intetional community serves to anticipate, relfect, and quicken social change.

Two Methods of Describing Intentional Communities

Descriptive terms focus upon the primary shared concern, value, or characteristic held by a particular community. Examples: "Christian community," "Yoga society," "activist," "back-to-the-land," etc. Those that are part of networks use a categorical name, such as "land trust," "cohousing," "ecovillage," or a network name such as "Carmalite nunnery" and "Emissary community."

Classifications compare socio-cultural factors in different communities. A relative measure, such as a continuum, presents a range of different approaches to particular issues. Example: governmental forms may range from authoritarian to participatory decision-mnaking processes. Continua can be arranged in two-dimensional matrices, such as for political-economic structures.

Sharing-to-Privacy Continuum

When considering what kind of community to build or to join, the issueof sharing versus privacy can be the most helpful. In communities which share private property (collective) as in cohousing, one begins with the assumption of privacy and asks, "How much am I willng to share?" In communities which share commonly owned property (communal) one begins with the assumption of sharing and asks "How much privacy do I need?"

The difference is in the often expressed conflict between individuality and collectivity, and each community design finds an appropriate balance between these levels of consciousness, such that neither the individual nor the group is submerged by the other.

Pluralist-to-Unified Beliefs Continuum

Beliefs include spirituality, religion, and philosophy, but not economic processes. Thus, very different economic systems can have the same belief structure. Complications: cross-overs exist between "Pluralism" and "Few Comon Beliefs," and these may use either consensus or democratic decision-making processes. Communities with uniform beliefs often have authoritarian governments. 

Pluralist Belief Structure: Secular; Open society; Inclusive; Integrationist; Expressed individuality; Participatory. Examples: cohousing, land trust, egalitarian community.

Few Common Beliefs: Group has a shared belief but is tolerant of differences. Examples: ecovillages (ecology), Kibbutz Artzi (Zionism).

Unified Belief Structure: Dogmatic; Closed/Class society; Exclusive; Isolationist; Suppressed individuality; Authoritarian. Examples: monasteries, Hutterites, Kibbutz Dati (Zionism/Judaism).  

Ownership-Control Matrix

The two aspects of society and culture that combine to create distinctively different patterns are: decision-making structures and methods of property ownership. Together these are called a "political-economy," and they can be explained by placing the two continua, government (beliefs or control) and economics (sharing/privacy or ownership), at right angles to each other, forming a matrix.

The political-economic matrix can be used to model the entire range of human organization, from community, to city, to nation-state, to global civilization. It can also be used to track the changes in a given culture over time, since when a group or a country changes its economy or fomr of government, it would move from one cell in the matrix to another.

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