strategy

Forming intentional communities

Synonyms:

Creating social change communes
Promoting intentional community identity

Description:

Forming community in which the inhabitants have close relationships of friendship and interest. One definition of an intentional community is that it is basically any group of two or more adults that choose to call itself a community.

"Intentional Community" has become an inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives and other related projects and dreams. One variant is that the group practises economic communalism with limited or no personal property.

Implementation:

Maharishi Vedic City, was incorporated as Vedic City, Iowa, USA on July 25, 2001. The name of the City comes from the Sanskrit word "Veda" meaning knowledge. The community applies Vedic knowledge to promote health, happiness and high quality of life. For example, every building is designed according to Vedic Architecture (Maharishi Sthapatya Veda design) to promote health, happiness and good fortune. Each building faces east and has a central silent space called a Brahmasthan and a golden roof ornament called a kalash. Planned as a "City of the Sun," all energy needs will be met from sun and other renewable sources. Every building is designed to be energy efficient and use natural building materials. Wastewater processing will use a wide range of plants and animals in a garden and greenhouse environment. Native grasses and ponds will retain storm water for reuse including in a secondary water system.

There is also practical application of holistic health care, organic agriculture, education that focuses on developing the full potential of the student and administration based on the Constitution of the Universe-total Natural Law. The community uses its own currency - Raam Mudra (with fixed rate to the US dollar) and by preference the Sanskrit language, the language of Nature. 21 citizen action committees, called Parliament for World Peace Committees, represent every area of life.

Claim:

Sharing a common vision is deeply satisfying because people work towards meeting their own needs for value-based living. It leads to an integrated social fabric, with increased self-respect and less social alienation, an increase in self-generated cultural activities (music, dance, theatre) that offer people a sense of joy in collaborating with others on creative projects.

Broader:

Managing change
Partnering for change
Animating social paradigms
Developing inclusive social forms
Designing model communities
Creating community
Promoting futuric community life style
Internationalizing intentional society
Providing context for communal lifestyles
Forming world-wide social change coalitions

Narrower:

Cohousing
Forming secret societies
Creating community land trust
Building spiritual communities
Building ecological communities
Building therapeutic communities
Using alternative economic systems
Establishing New Age communities

Facilitates:

Sustaining community morale
Creating alternative society
Disseminating alternative futures
Promoting community self-confidence
Providing sufficient social identity

Facilitated by:

Improving skill base of women
Formulating intentional society

Problems:

Declining community confidence in its ability to change

Values:

Change
Community
Unsociable
Unintentional
Anticommunity
Habit-forming
Changeableness