This is a helpful overview, Nicole. I appreciate the breadth of your knowledge and experience.
I also appreciate that you don't strongly advocate one approach over the other. Collectively, we have so much to learn about what can work and which approaches or elements are less likely to succeed.
As someone who followed discussions about new community structures in the '60s and '70s, I'm happy to see this topic being revived and taken seriously after what seemed like a very long hiatus.
We urgently need this kind of experimentation. Regenerative communities may become the lifeboats for a status quo that's quickly taking on water.
Thank you for you reflections David! I try to walk the middle path, and see how we can learn from these approaches. It's being revived and modernized! Thrilled to do this with you
great article. i guess it depends very much on the people involved, their backgrounds and how they like to work. for our project it was clear that we would go with the developer approach and it has worked very well so far...
Precisely! The developer approach works for a lot of the initial physical building, but usually breaks down when it's time to actually live there. What differences do you see between the approaches and how has the developer approach benefit you?
I’m sorta kinda thinkin ‘...Neither...” is the answer. May B a lill like your “3rd approach” @ essay end. If each of us becomes or are expert in divergent but needed skills/topics, if our group decision making process (like facilitated consensus v dynamic governance) has us labour together, we can have a mix of the two bi-polar models. Trust develops, a new model is created for meeting aspects of living together, values are clarified, everyone is motivated as more is received than contributed. But... there is still capacity for varying levels of individual ownership of how our community (or one for others) is built and managed long term. Otherwise we have too much turn over and must place a huge investment on continuous on-boarding, recruitment, etc. Thnx 4 ur worthy article ! - -In Community, Chad
Thank you for the illumination and research you are doing, Nicole. I know the New Earth collective will benefit. The project my mate and I are bringing to the world involves a balanced and integrated Divine Masculine/Divine Feminine approach. Wen is ultimately responsible for the physical infrastructure as I am for the social infrastructure.
Thanks for this enlightening article reflecting some of our conversations! Just to clarify, I'm a believer in a mixed approach :)
I do think that the physical infrastructure and establishing of the project should be done by a smaller, driven team that can make decisions faster and lead the project in the beginning. Community takes time. decentralized forms of governance is not something we were raised with so it takes even more time to learn and practice.
The model we designed for la tierra has a core team in the development company, leading the project until this part is complete. At the same time, there is an operational company established, in charge of operations and that is in full service to the villagers. And from the early days a DHO structure is established so governance can be taught and practiced among all involved stakeholders, with a token-voting system that prioritizes those who are most involved, and in which through an extended period of time parts of the decisions making can be outsourced to this DHO while the community learns how to use, how to related to each other, how to feel and be part of their village.
In the meantime, the core team who is leading the development incorporates relevant stakeholders in the board, helping them make decisions and not leaving all the voting power just in the visionary team or the investors. Players like Nature, indigenous and local people or bioregional partners end up having a vote into the main core team structure to make decisions that take all those affected by the development into account.
Over time, more and more decisions are outsourced into the DHO until at some point the board / visionary team gets dissolved and the village remains operated and governed by its members.
In parallel to this, from the beginning of the project there are proposals for establishing a Culture, an ethos, a series of principles, rituals and ways in which the community can develop and craft their own unique culture.
Anyway, just wanted to throw some more light around what a potential mixed model can entail :)
This is a helpful overview, Nicole. I appreciate the breadth of your knowledge and experience.
I also appreciate that you don't strongly advocate one approach over the other. Collectively, we have so much to learn about what can work and which approaches or elements are less likely to succeed.
As someone who followed discussions about new community structures in the '60s and '70s, I'm happy to see this topic being revived and taken seriously after what seemed like a very long hiatus.
We urgently need this kind of experimentation. Regenerative communities may become the lifeboats for a status quo that's quickly taking on water.
Thank you for you reflections David! I try to walk the middle path, and see how we can learn from these approaches. It's being revived and modernized! Thrilled to do this with you
great article. i guess it depends very much on the people involved, their backgrounds and how they like to work. for our project it was clear that we would go with the developer approach and it has worked very well so far...
Precisely! The developer approach works for a lot of the initial physical building, but usually breaks down when it's time to actually live there. What differences do you see between the approaches and how has the developer approach benefit you?
I’m sorta kinda thinkin ‘...Neither...” is the answer. May B a lill like your “3rd approach” @ essay end. If each of us becomes or are expert in divergent but needed skills/topics, if our group decision making process (like facilitated consensus v dynamic governance) has us labour together, we can have a mix of the two bi-polar models. Trust develops, a new model is created for meeting aspects of living together, values are clarified, everyone is motivated as more is received than contributed. But... there is still capacity for varying levels of individual ownership of how our community (or one for others) is built and managed long term. Otherwise we have too much turn over and must place a huge investment on continuous on-boarding, recruitment, etc. Thnx 4 ur worthy article ! - -In Community, Chad
Thank you for the illumination and research you are doing, Nicole. I know the New Earth collective will benefit. The project my mate and I are bringing to the world involves a balanced and integrated Divine Masculine/Divine Feminine approach. Wen is ultimately responsible for the physical infrastructure as I am for the social infrastructure.
Thanks for this enlightening article reflecting some of our conversations! Just to clarify, I'm a believer in a mixed approach :)
I do think that the physical infrastructure and establishing of the project should be done by a smaller, driven team that can make decisions faster and lead the project in the beginning. Community takes time. decentralized forms of governance is not something we were raised with so it takes even more time to learn and practice.
The model we designed for la tierra has a core team in the development company, leading the project until this part is complete. At the same time, there is an operational company established, in charge of operations and that is in full service to the villagers. And from the early days a DHO structure is established so governance can be taught and practiced among all involved stakeholders, with a token-voting system that prioritizes those who are most involved, and in which through an extended period of time parts of the decisions making can be outsourced to this DHO while the community learns how to use, how to related to each other, how to feel and be part of their village.
In the meantime, the core team who is leading the development incorporates relevant stakeholders in the board, helping them make decisions and not leaving all the voting power just in the visionary team or the investors. Players like Nature, indigenous and local people or bioregional partners end up having a vote into the main core team structure to make decisions that take all those affected by the development into account.
Over time, more and more decisions are outsourced into the DHO until at some point the board / visionary team gets dissolved and the village remains operated and governed by its members.
In parallel to this, from the beginning of the project there are proposals for establishing a Culture, an ethos, a series of principles, rituals and ways in which the community can develop and craft their own unique culture.
Anyway, just wanted to throw some more light around what a potential mixed model can entail :)
If you are curious, you can learn more about all these I described in http://long.latierra.life