Int. Communities/Ecovillages
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“Communes”, “communities”, “ecovillages”, three words for the same existential need: to live a different life, or, citing the title of an old text: "living otherwise." Thinking to the communes is easy to remember the colorful '60s and the innocent rhetoric of peace and love. Are less immediate the associations talking about communities. The word is, frankly, more generic term and for this reason, for the cases presented in this web site, we use also the adjective "intentional." For the Fellowship for Intentional Communities -FIC- “an intentional community is a group of people who have chosen to work together with the goal of a common ideal or vision”. Finally: ecovillages; certainly the most recent word (used with an increasing frequency, probably because of the urgency of a strong ecological conversion), created by Robert and Diane Gilman in the book “Eco-villages and Susteinable Communities” (The Gaia Trust, 1991). Offering a formal definition, ecovillages are “human settlements which integrate various activities, do not produce damages to the natural environment, are based on holistic and spiritual development of man and can continue indefinitely in time." Many intentional communities and almost all ecovillages are confederated in GEN (Global Ecovillage Network). In Italy there is the RIVE (Italian Ecolovillages Network) which is included in GEN. |
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