RE: Communities of Communities
From: Rob Sandelin (robsanmicrosoft.com)
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 95 11:58:24 PDT
When groups start looking at sites there is often tension and 
disagreement over site location.  Many groups finds themselves split 
and abandon pursuing a site because not everyone could agree on it. I 
have heard of five different groups where a small minority caused a 
group to abandon a site.   I am beginning to think this is a mistake.  
It might be better for a group to split up, and have one segment of the 
group follow through on acquiring a site, then have the others continue 
to form as a connected, but separate group around a different site.  
This way two groups form from one and can still share ideas, contacts 
and the like.

As the groups develop in separate sites exchanges could occur, based on 
their common history.  I am not sure that a single group could acquire 
and develop two sites unless it had huge financial resources or some 
superhuman organization.  From what I have seen in my area, 7 of the 21 
groups that have formed over the last 3 years disbanded eventually from 
their inability to acquire a site they could afford to develop.

 I have been working for the last two years to encourage cohousing 
groups to share what they know with each other, and also to get local 
intentional communities to meet together and share common interests.  
The difficulty I see is that most groups seem to barely be able to deal 
with their own lives and situation, and have little energy for 
networking endeavors unless there is some direct and pretty substantial 
benefit to themselves.

It would be interesting to create a "community exchange" sort of 
program, where communities worked together on various inter-community 
endeavors but I have not been able to set this sort of idea into 
reality thus far in my area.  Maybe others will have better luck.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood







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