Los Angeles Eco-Village

LAEV  - reinventing how we live in cities

Los Angeles Eco-Village and Cooperative Resources & Services Project is an example of an approach to community that would raise the organizational bar to getting SODO Moscow going, but provides answers to some of @Joseph's questions in the last post.


The Los Angeles Eco-Village
Intentional Community (LAEV-IC),  in the built-out Wilshire Center/Koreatown area is "working toward becoming a demonstration of healthy urban community. Our whole-systems approach to community development tries to integrate the social, economic and physical aspects of neighborhood life to be sustainable over the long term. Eco-villagers intend to achieve and demonstrate high-fulfillment, low-impact living patterns, to reduce the burden of government, and to increase neighborhood self-reliance in a variety of areas such as livelihood, food production, energy and water use, affordable housing, transit, recreation, waste reduction and education.

"We also plan to convert the housing in the neighborhood from rental to permanently affordable cooperative ownership. Our two block multi-ethnic working class neighborhood is home to about 500 persons. Located three miles west of downtown L.A., the area is close to public transit, the Metro Redline, schools, churches, stores, commercial services and light industry. A rich neighborhood history and architecturally significant buildings provide a sense of place to build on."

To live there, you need to become a member, which involves committing participate in the community.

Cooperative Resources & Services Project (CRSP) is an education, training and resource center for small ecological cooperative communities, located in L.A.Eco-Village, CRSP and its emerging Institute for Urban Ecovillages collaborates with the LAEV-IC and other organizations to present workshops and special events to expand public awareness for living more cooperatively and more ecologically.

More info and history here.

Intentional Community

In response to this vision for creekside rowhouses, @Joseph wrote the thoughtful questions below. The Smart Growth Manual (see Bibliography) 5.3 Housing Diversity suggests "for many reasons, a health neighborhood includes a wide range of dwelling types... community social networks depend on a diversity of ages and incomes... affordable housing provides a healthier environment when it is distributed... life cycle housing allows residents to move up economically without moving out." @Gerri also pointed in this direction, with a reference to "intentional community."

The Federal Hill and Otterbien districts of inner Baltimore where neighborhoods where "merchants and bankers lived along the main street, artisans and clerks on the side streets, and servants and laborers along the alleys." (from the historic interpretive sign in the neighborhood)

Joseph wrote in FB:

"I like the vision, and can imagine wanting to live there. Three broad and interrelated questions come to mind.

1) Who would really end up living there?

I can imagine a number of types of folks who might be attracted. Off the top of my head:
...- grad students
- sensible and steady undergrads
- young parents with small children
- empty-nesters who are sizing down
- DINKs (double income no kids)

I would like to see it become a neighborhood with a broad range of income levels and lifestyles. Our town, like most, tends to reflect our socially segregated society, with distinct sorting of people by neighborhood. Students live in neighborhood A (rather run down), blue collar in neighborhood B, landed gentry in C.... We don't see a lot of mixing of rentals and owner-occupied; upper- middle- and lower-income; short-term and long-term; town and gown. Could this be a model for a more integrated community?

If that is the goal, there is one trait all residents must all have in common: a willingness and intention to live with a different notion of privacy and relations to one's neighbors than is prevalent in US and in the rural west in particular. How do we make this the defining characteristic of the neighborhood, rather than having it devolve into just another island of one soc-econ segment or another?

2) Ownership?

Owner-only excludes some people but attracts people willing to make a long-term investment (not only monetary but in the idea of living there). Rentals could make it turn into just another off-campus private dorm, but would open it to people of more limited means who nevertheless want to live in a different (and in my mind) better way in relation to their community.

3) Governance?

As I stated above, it will take a different way of relating to neighbors to make this vision work. How is that achieved and maintained? Carrots? Sticks? Covenants? Owner association? Organic growth without explicit ongoing governance?

Would thoughtful architecture, land design, and ownership structure be sufficient to induce this sort of community?"