Dear members of Ecovillage at Ithaca,
During the last year of joining the Second Neighborhood and building our Ecovillage House, I have been gathering ideas for projects that I would like to explore now that we have moved here. I have written them up in the following document, which I will make available in the common house and also on-line at
www.virtualithaca.com/francis/evi_concepts.html
Briefly, here is a description of each idea –
1. Research center at Ecovillage: a research and consultancy outfit
based at ecovillage that researches energy efficiency, sustainable communities,
and related topics
2. Financial services for energy-efficient housing: a mortgage and
loan business specializing in the support of green building and intentional
communities
3. Development of bicycle-oriented commuting from Ecovillage: improving
bicycling facilities and helping ecovillagers to train for biking to/from
Ecovillage, so as to make bicycling a more viable option
4. Continuing care community at Ecovillage: creating a continuing care
neighborhood within the EVI property to demonstrate the possibility of
combining continuing care and sustainable building
5. Commercial development of rt.79 road frontage: Generating income
from the land and employment for ecovillagers on a site that is close to
the main traffic stream on Rt.79.
6. Private secondary school at ecovillage: A small quasi-homeschool
boarding school for high school age students that would provide tutoring
by various members of EVI, self-administered education using the land as
a “living classroom”, and activities in the Ithaca community.
Part of my purpose is to further the evolution of the EVI project. It is my impression that most ecovillagers spend much of their day attending to the tasks of their family or household, the ongoing running of the community, and of course the enjoyment of the neighborhood and land right in the present moment, and so there are limits on the time available for these sorts of “big” projects. So I am not expecting any of these ideas to materialize over night. Also, I have taken my best guess at how to undertake some of these projects, but some of you may have expertise specific to some area that may help me to refine/correct some of the approach. I hope that some of you will have time to read through this document at some point, and to email me your feedback. I will keep a running list of comments so that I can refer back to them in the future.
Research Center at Ecovillage
The objective of this concept is to create a center for
environmental research at EVI, that provides paid employment to ecovillagers
whose interests and talents are in this area, while at the same time supporting
our mission of fostering sustainable communities beyond the boundaries
of our own property.
The function of this center is modeled along the lines
of the Rocky Mountain Institute: a non-profit institution not directly
part of any college or university (though it would probably find connections
with Cornell and IC). In the same way that Amory Lovins capitalized
on the fame of his work on Demand-Side Management with the big utilities
in order to create RMI, so we might use the fame and prestige of EVI as
one of the premier (if not the premier) cohousing communities in the USA
to launch the work of this center. Also, it is my impression that
Greg Thomas’s work as director of Performance Systems Development has come
to resemble a sort of research/consultancy outfit housed within Ecovillage,
so we can draw on this experience as well.
The scope of this center’s work includes research and
also R&D, consultancy, and advocacy work (thus the name I have given
it is only preliminary and might be changed to better reflect what this
center does). Research within the center involves the study
of how “green practices” in EVI or other communities reduce environmental
impact; here we might win grants for funded research from the state or
federal government, or else carry out research speculatively where we anticipate
the results can lead to revenues for the center in the future. “R&D”
focuses specifically on the development of new technologies (for example
energy saving devices or alternative energy uses) that can be patented
or marketed. Consultancy work involves paid work for other ecovillages,
communities, or businesses that wish to draw on our experience. Advocacy
involves the support of legislation that favors the development of green
technology and sustainable communities, as well as outreach to individuals
and communities in the form of, for example, educational and publication
free-of-charge of some of our findings that are in the public interest.
We would need to be careful about how to combine these functions: for example,
it is important to keep separate the functions of objective research and
advocacy, which can be perceived by others as tending to slant one’s perspective
on research in one direction or another. However, I do not think
these two are mutually exclusive per se, there are many examples of skilled
researchers who are also powerful advocates for change and progress.
The fields within which the center would do work would
likely be a reflection of who was involved and where their interests lay,
given that the field of “environmental research” in general is so broad
that we could not possibly cover all areas. I anticipate that some
of the following might emerge:
· energy efficient building and green building materials
· sustainable communities (including land use patterns, alternative
transportation modes in communities, and social factors)
· greening of industry (creation of green technologies, promotion
of corporate environmental management, green services, green lifestyle
products, and the like)
· sustainable agriculture and food supply (including organic
farming, community supported agriculture, and so on)
We could think about how we want to mix support for the local community
and region with catering to the national market. It is my experience
that as a person with an engineering background who lives at ecovillage
and knows many people in Ithaca, I am a magnet for inquiries of the sort
“can you build X / install X / carry out X project for us?”, which so far
I have not been in the position to provide. Time will tell whether
such individuals are really willing to put their money where their mouth
is, but the local market seems promising, at least.
The goal of the Center would be to get up and running
using existing office space or home offices, without the construction of
a purpose-built office. During this time, ecovillagers who wish to
participate might continue their current work while gradually phasing in
work on contracts for the Center, or else bring over research/consultancy
work they currently have so that it is carried out under the auspices of
the Center. A longer term goal is to build a moderately-sized showcase
office so that we could demonstrate the technologies we advocate, in the
same way that Rocky Mountain Institute demonstrates superefficient building
design in Snowmass, Colorado, at their headquarters. There have been
some other interesting examples of this recently, including the headquarters
of ABN Amro Bank in the Netherlands which has won awards for green building
design, as well as a proposed environmental education center in England
which is being built as a showcase of green technology (appeared in a back
issue of Positive News, I will add this later when I find the website).
ABN-Amro: http://www.abnamro.com/environmentreport/
Positive News: http://www.positivenews.org.uk
Financial services for energy-efficient housing
The idea behind this concept is to meet a growing environmental
need consistent with the goals of EVI itself, while at the same time creating
employment opportunities right here in the community.
As a starting point, many residents of Ecovillage, myself
included, will have experienced the skepticism of mainstream US financial
institutions in regard to novel, ecologically-minded housing developments
such as ecovillage. They prefer to deal with what they know best,
namely the single-house on single lot, which considers only strict financial
aspects (likely cost to build, expected value of sale), and not the broader
social and environmental context within which we build our homes.
So the ecovillage (and other low-pollution-but-high-upfront-cost housing
types) must compete for money in the same market, and are put at a disadvantage:
either rejected outright by many lenders, or restricted in the type of
mortgage available, or required to meet very high down payment requirements
(20 to 25%).
To get around this obstacle, people who want to build
these types of buildings can create their own financial institution whose
stated purpose is either entirely, or for the most part, to finance all
types of green building projects, including ecovillages. Thus it
takes funds from investors and lends them to individual households or entire
communities who are building residential units (and possibly commercial
buildings as well). The intention is that return on investment would
be competitive with other types of socially responsible investment opportunities
that pay a steady return with no risk to the lender. In the interim,
I will call this institution the “Ecobank.”
This idea is inspired by the Mondragon Cooperative group
in the Basque region of Spain, a collection of industrial and retail cooperatives
(i.e. worker-owned firms) founded about 50 years ago that produce a wide
range of manufactured products (for example, Fagor appliances and kitchenware).
(You can learn more about them at
http://www.sfworlds.com/linkworld/mondragon.html.) During its
initial growth, the Mondragon group faced a similar problem of lack of
access to capital, and responded by opening their own cooperative bank
to receive deposits that could then be lent to the firms. Not only
did this move create the necessary financial vehicle for growing the business,
but it also became the prototype for a range of “secondary cooperatives”,
or firms whose primary purpose is to provide the services that the primary
industrial cooperatives typically requiring, including an insurance business,
health care network, and technical institute.
Just as the range of eligible depositors in the Mondragon
bank is not limited to the working members of the cooperative, so too the
investors in the Ecobank need not be members of this or any other ecovillage
or cohousing community. Rather, the Ecobank is open to any member
of the public that wishes to invest in green building. This broadening
of the investment pool should greatly increase the total pool of funds
available to the Ecobank, especially since the cohousing members have often
invested heavily in their own community and therefore are not in a position
to make other investments. It also provides an outlet for the many
inviduals who wish to support the cohousing/ecovillage movement, but due
to their circumstances are not able to join such a neighborhood.
Again in the interest of creating a broad enough economic
base for the business to be viable, the scope of investment would not be
limited to cohousing communities, but might also include new urbanist housing
developments, energy efficient subdivisions (for example, a subdivision
in which all houses are Energy-Star compliant), energy efficient single
dwellings, or energy efficiency retrofits onto existing buildings.
In addition, if the management of the Ecobank judged that the pool of eligible
investments was not sufficiently diverse and therefore too risky for the
investors, some portion of the fund might be put instead into other types
of socially responsible investment. However, the intention of the
Ecobank should be to invest primarily in green building, so as not to dilute
the focus of its work.
Lastly, the Ecobank can provide an ideal cottage industry
for Ecovillage at Ithaca. The work is portable by nature, involving
data management and use of the internet that can be carried out from a
common house office or home computer. It would build on our previous
experience in building the two neighborhoods, since the viability of loans
would need to be validated by considering the building technology, costs,
climactic conditions, etc. Also, I believe that, far from being a
stale exercise in “counting beans”, work in the bank would be quite creative
and rewarding, involving both working with loan recipients to make their
projects viable, and making the case to the general public in order to
win the necessary investment funds.
Development of bicycle-oriented commuting from Ecovillage
This concept is part of the broader work on alternative
transportation at Ecovillage. I have already circulated some ideas
over email about another major component, increased use of transit, so
I am not including those here.
The core of this concept is to decrease car use and increase
bike use at ecovillage by increasing the amount of bike use. The
main difficulty involved is obviously the steep hill between EVI and downtown
Ithaca, and so the challenge is one of physical fitness, not only to be
able to ride up the hill one time, but to be able to do so on a continuing
basis, from whatever age one is able to first do so, through middle age
and possibly even retirement age. The discussion of this idea is
thus inherently anecdotal and personal in nature. There is also an
underlying premise: if we as a neighborhood figure out how to teach and
train ecovillagers to become bike commuters, then we can make bicycling
more viable as an alternative transportation strategy.
Starting at the beginning of the bicycle commuting lifespan,
if we can encourage young adults from their early teens onward to develop
the stamina to bike up steep hills, I believe that this will tend to favor
ongoing bicycling fitness. Growing up in Ithaca in the 1970s and
early 80s, my peers and I had two such physical challenges that we did
to prove our toughness (!). One was biking around Cayuga Lake (and
keeping track of how long it took). The other was biking up steep
hills without getting off our bikes: Buffalo St, Aurora St, and so
on. This helped me to be able to bike up steep hills around Ithaca
as an adult. While I think it is possible for someone to start as
a non-hillclimber as an adult and gradually work up to the ability to climb
up West Hill, I think it is easier to start as a teenager and maintain
that capability into adulthood.
Next we come to middle age, and I can use my own experience
as an example. I see my “bike commuting career” as consisting of
starting around age 20 and lasting until the age of 65, or 45 years.
At the age of 35, I feel like I have already bike-commuted a great deal
(both in Ithaca and elsewhere), but I am only one third of the way to the
goal, so I need to ride carefully, especially when riding up the hill from
Ithaca. The goal is not to maximize the cardiovascular system (i.e.
ride as hard as possible), but to protect the musculoskeletal system (i.e.
ride gently in a low gear, so that I can ride year after year without wearing
out joints, ligaments, etc).
Lastly comes the end of career stage, and here I draw
the lesson from the great range of ages at which people give up bicycling.
At the upper end, as an undergraduate at Cornell in the late 80s, I used
to tune up a bike for a retired math professor named Morris Tanenbaum,
who at the age of 85 could still ride from his home on Honness Lane to
the Cornell campus, a distance of about a mile. The lesson to me
is that while some of this longevity may be innate, there may also be things
that can be done to allow people to keep riding longer.
To summarize, the components of this strategy are 1) to
introduce teenagers to bike commuting, if possible, 2) to help adults to
learn how to bike commute, and 3) to look for ways to keep people riding
later into life. I am especially interested in “coaching” other ecovillagers
on riding up from town on a trial basis, to see whether it is useful to
have a coach in order to overcome initial difficulties with biking up from
town. My hypothesis is that one doesn’t need to have superhuman fitness
for this, you need to gain some threshold level of fitness and also get
used to riding up the hill. There is also some interesting research
going on at the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University in
Indiana (http://www.bsu.edu/hpl/) on long-life physical endurance, which
we may be able to tap in to. I am also considering contacting them
in the future to see if they would be interested in studying lifelong bike
commuting in a situation like ours.
Continuing Care Community at Ecovillage
This concept is to contribute to the continuing care movement
by prototyping a small-sized continuing care community that uses sustainable
building practices here on the EVI property (or possibly retrofitting part
of one of the existing neighborhoods). By continuing care community
I mean a housing development designed for the elderly which allows for
varying levels of assistance, ranging from independently living to assisted
living. You can see an example of this at the website for the Kendal
Corporation (www.kendal.org) which has built several such communities in
the northeastern US.
This idea is still in a very embryonic form, but one of
the main purposes would be to demonstrate that a continuing care community
can be built which is energy efficient, sustainable, and functional, and
for which any additional costs from use of green technology (better insulation,
low-e windows, etc), are paid back in a reasonable payback period due to
reduced utility costs. To some extent, the existing neighborhoods
may already provide good accessibility for senior residents – it would
be interesting to gather opinions on this question – but if some members
were in a situation where they could no longer live in an existing ecovillage
house, the continuing care neighborhood might allow them to continue living
at ecovillage.
Commercial development of rt.79 road frontage
This idea is based on a discussion I had with the Webbers
about the Civano community in Tucson. Apparently Civano has a dedicated
commercial hub in the center of its land area with shop fronts and so on,
which has had limited success because non-residents cannot find it from
the main arterial highway that passes along the edge of the community.
In retrospect, the Civano residents feel they could have been more successful
by having the commercial development on the edge of the community: non-residents
can find it easily and will come in greater numbers since they drive right
past it, non-resident traffic into the neighborhood is reduced, and residents
can still easily patronize these businesses.
Why not try something similar at EVI? We could set
up a few small shops or other cottage industries at the entrance to Rachel
Carson Way. This would make use of the part of the property that
is the least desirable for residences because it is so close to the highway.
It would also contribute a positive cash flow to the community as a whole,
which could be used to offset the burden created by the high cost of the
land parcel. Also, the commute would be ideal (creating a separation
between home and work that some people prefer, though short enough for
biking or walking), and it might also enable businesses to be opened on
ecovillage land that we might not otherwise want in the heart of the residential
neighborhood (for example retail businesses that may generate excessive
car traffic).
Private secondary school at ecovillage
The concept here is to created a boarding school on ecovillage
land with a small number of students (perhaps 15 or 20), ages 14-18, whose
education will draw on the expertise of community members (and possibly
some additional paid professional teachers), the natural setting of the
land, and the resources of the Ithaca community. I see this as a
money-maker, in which the school is able to charge a fairly high tuition
in return for accreditation by some appropriate body as well as an educational
experience that can compete with that provided by other boarding schools.
However, we could also emphasize accessibility regardless of ability to
pay so that the school would cover its costs but not necessarily provide
income to EVI.
Students in the school would either live in a purpose-built
dormitory with educational facilities (computers, meeting rooms, library,
etc) or board with other ecovillage residents. They would meet with
teachers/mentors on a regular basis during the course of the week, but
the majority of the time would be spent engaged in study, work on the land,
field trips into the community, or service projects. Periodically
their progress would be evaluated by the teachers/mentors, though this
might or might not entail the awarding of formal “grades.” Since
the students are likely to pursue higher education at a university or college,
they would need to develop the ability to do well on exams and the writing
of essays, but the hope is that these skills can be developed in the context
of the living laboratory environment that the school seeks to provide,
rather than in time-consuming, rote-learning of information divorced from
practical experience.