The Difference Between an Ecovillage and a Regenerative Village

It's time we understood.

Two weeks ago,

David Vranicar

asked me on the Climate Levers podcast this question, and I was annoyed that I hadn’t thought about it enough yet to articulate the differences properly. Well, I’ve thought about it.

It’s time we understood the difference, because “ecovillage” and “regenerative village” each represent different iterations of the same concept.

On the surface, ecovillages and regenerative villages look very similar.

Both are ecologically-designed communities organizing around common values and holistic lifestyles. The distinction is more a 'difference in degree' than a 'difference in kind'.

So why is it important to understand the differences?

• The terms represent different generation’s response to environmental destruction and a dissociative way of life

• The connotations will be different for each word, and we should be aware of the associations and expectations that come with each

• They loosely represent different methodologies and features

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I find it helpful to think of the differences in layers.

Looking to hire an illustration/diagram artist who can visually represent my thoughts and do better than me at creating graphics

Disclaimer: These are gross categorizations. What is mentioned is not universally true for either, and many communities will fall somewhere in the middle of the axis.

Land

For me, everything starts with the relationship to and treatment of the land.

Ecovillage

Most ecovillages stem from a dream of living “closer to the land”. The approach I’ve noticed with a good handful of them involves buying virgin land, clearing space, and building eco-friendly infrastructure.

Ecovillages are almost always rural, because being immersed in nature is a priority. Ecovillagers tend to have a strong spiritual connection with the natural world.

Regenerative Village

To be considered a regenerative village, the land in question must be ecologically degraded, have experienced biodiversity loss, or in other ways is not rich and fertile already.

Land is acquired with the intent to restore it using regenerative practices and to first and foremost understand the complexity of the ecosystem.

This also applies for urban/neighborhood scale projects.

Last Friday someone said to me, “A truly regenerative village you don’t build, you rebuild” in reference to Italy’s ‘village for 1 euro’ concept that sold abandoned villages to projects with positive social impact plans

Physical Infrastructure

At

Regen Tribe

we always go back to these pillars of self-sufficiency: food, water, energy, and waste.

Ecovillage

An ecovillage may or may not prioritize self-sufficiency. Often due to the constraints of more bootstrapped budgets, there will be some ecological infrastructure — gardens, solar panels, onsite recycling practices — but I don’t typically see ambitious projects.

Obviously there are exceptions. Take Tamera’s water retention and electricity system for example.

Regenerative Village

I would generally say that the base focus of regenerative villages is on the circularity of the infrastructure and innovating to completely minimize waste and optimize systems.

For the reason that it’s much more difficult to retrofit systems that are not circular than to start with that level of resilience.

You can visualize the difference in these graphics

For example, an ecovillage might cover some of the resilient systems possible, but not be a fully integrated, regenerative village or “smart hood”.

Since I met

Florijn de Graaf

from Smart Hoods at Regen Week and understood better the thought leadership they have in the field, I’ve been vibing with their resilient engineering solutions so hard. With permission, these graphics come from their website

Built Environment

Standards of designing and building architecture in each community can be equated to sustainability vs regeneration. Sustainable architecture limits use of resources, while regeneration replenishes them.

Ecovillage

Most ecovillages I’ve seen have a low-tech building approach. Historically, houses and buildings are constructed by the founders or the owners themselves, resulting in unique places.

You might see more artisan earthships and cob houses, custom organic architecture, and DIY building.

Ecovillage founders typically act as the land developer, architect, project manager, and gardener all-in-one to meet their grassroots needs.

Regenerative Village

Regenerative architecture involves designing, sourcing, treating, and building materials to be fully circular. Then the task is also to replenish the resources used, including the human resources that make the building possible.

As stated in this article on regenerative architecture by

Daniela Luján

in

The Machuca Elements

, the design is for “evolution, not obsolescence”.

In my experience, [architectural] expertise is often outsourced in a regenerative village. The desire is to innovate and push the boundaries beyond our default methods, which calls on the talents of specialists in the built environment.

Graphic from the research paper titled “Sustainability to Regeneration: Towards a New Architectural Design Paradigm”

Social Systems

These systems are the ways that the community members relate to and meet each member’s needs. While this would also normally cover everything from governance, justice, medicine, and so on, that would be too involved to cover here. I focus on the main difference— diversity.

Ecovillage

Ecovillages are intentional communities that highly favor like-mindedness. They will form around a particular diet, spiritual practice, occupation, or worldview.

To preserve the integrity of the intention, these communities have a strong membrane for who and what comes into their community, and this keeps their community healthy and functioning according to its original values.

Regenerative Village

Regenerative villages reflect more the reality of society and its diversity. The real magic trick we want to perfect is not just living with people you like and agree with (neotribalism), but learning to coexist with everyone.

Diversity is a challenge for both types of communities, but I think regenerative village projects are much more aware of holistic approaches to positive social impact, and take active steps to address topics of gentrification and neocolonialism.

The Terrenity culture canvas

Digital Infrastructure (Technology)

Lastly, the cloud layer of technology.

Ecovillage

For the most part, ecovillages I have observed prefer the natural world over the digital one. This translates to minimizing the use of technology.

In this mindset, it’s okay to sacrifice comfort or convenience to uphold ecologically upright standards, which is actually quite noble. After all, low-tech solutions can be extremely elegant.

Regenerative Village

Regen villages are definitely tech-friendly, if not tech-driven.

They choose to incorporate more tech in order to create solutions that reach circularity while preserving modern comfort. Although, some would argue this may be impossible, such as certain advocates of #degrowth.

The emphasis is on building technology that mimics nature, or that is seamlessly integrated without disturbance or over-reliance.

So Which One Do I Use?

I don’t consider these hard and fast rules. A good chunk of people feel that the difference isn’t clear enough to merit distinguishing them. I do.

Even still, I sometimes use the words interchangeably, or modify ‘ecovillage’ to ‘modern ecovillage’.

Words are words. This is how I use them.

I am (not) the rebellious youth

Throughout this article, you might notice a slight bias towards regenerative villages.

Daniel Christian Wahl, after reading one of my articles, cautioned that I shouldn’t forget all of the wisdom that has been accrued by early pioneers of the ecovillage movement.

All of the work they have done to pave the way and create tools now supports us to create the next wave of intentional communities.

I would hope that this article, and all of my work, doesn’t come across as throwing the elders in the trashcan.

On my own journey, I hope to respect and honor the work done prior, and I aim to build on top of it — because let’s be honest, there are still a lot of gaps to fill.

One of my affiliated partners, Community Finders, run by Cynthia Tina, offers services for people seeking ecovillages or building ecovillages. I highly recommend you join one of her courses to uplevel your ecovillage journey.

Use the code TERRENITY for $100 off your ecovillage tour.