RRC - Part 2: Living La Vita Local

Continuing this series on Renewable Residential Communities, the present article focuses on the benefits derived from living a local life. Not to worry, this is not a contradiction to the prior article’s comments on challenges associated with boundaries. It is, however, a recommendation for the community development professionals and potential inhabitants of communities to integrate essential elements of living within a community. Connectedness with other communities of interest is also essential. Let’s consider qualities that embody some of these essential elements.

Engagement

People derive an enhanced sense of place when they experience beneficial engagement there. Some feeling of connection and belonging to a place may be brief, such as a rewarding visit to a natural or cultural place of wonder and awe, perhaps a mountain retreat or a museum of note. In the longer view, engagement occurs through knowledge of a place, participation in its offerings – be they passive or active, or involvement in its initial concept and policy development. Shifting an old adage, you might say that staying there is half the fun.

Belonging

The sense of belonging stems from the connection of one’s personal values with those values being embodied within the culture of a community. For example, the culture of a place may embrace and express healthful perspectives and practices, thereby reinforcing inhabitants’ feelings of safety and vitality. Such a culture may further create a community in which people are more likely to experience empowered living, independence, and perhaps inter-dependent relationships.

Other qualities of belonging may include shared ownership of, commitment to, and accountability for purposeful success. Creating a Cultural Covenant is a way of integrating one’s sense of belonging with one’s sense of response-ability. A covenant is more than a set of by-laws imposed by a Homeowners Association to control against “deviant” behavior. It is a shared characterization of values the expression of which will be experienced everyday. A covenant is a tool that increases the likelihood that individual choices will express agreed upon community principles and values.

Relocalization

It is meaningful to begin a discussion of relocalization as one integrated solution that begins to respond to several substantial challenges facing us. Peak Oil describes the ensuing crisis indicating that our petroleum-based lifestyles are unsustainable and will need to shift dramatically, as the availability of oil continues to decrease. The accompanying emergencies of and Climate Change and Ecological Contamination are results of our dependence on fossil fuels, the resulting environmental toxins, and the use of additional oil derivatives and other chemicals all combining to create an increasingly unhealthy and unsustainable biosphere.

Relocalization calls for various strategies of conservation, efficiency increases, and renewable energy technologies that will enable us, as a society, to reduce or eliminate waste of all sorts and provide essential resources locally, including healthful food, water, energy, and more. Renewing local economies in which customers, products, and services flow between mutually beneficial businesses is clearly a powerful part of the solution.

There are additional benefits to shifting our transportation philosophy and practice. Healthful, convenient movement within communities, as well as healthful, reliable public transit between communities will improve life quality experiences from the personal scale to the public scale. Returning us to the original adage, getting there is half the fun.

Integrative Thought

Whether re-designing existing communities or developing new communities, a renewable model consists of an holistic physical and cultural environment that facilitates the purposes of the inhabitants, enhances their vitality and personal effectiveness, and contributes healthfully to a shared experience that manifests successful lifestyles in terms of community, ecology, and economy.

Pardon me for offering this particular quote so frequently... In the words of ecological educator, Sim Van der Ryn, “As we work together to heal our places, we also heal ourselves.” The reciprocal statement is also true: As we work together to heal ourselves, we also heal our places.

Perhaps some of you will choose to live in a prototypical holistically healthful community and serve as a model to others around the country and the world. Now that’s a legacy.