This is the first part of an article written for Communities Magazine. Additional parts of this article will be added every week for the next month so please check back for the next part, visits to other eco villages in Portland.
Note, you can see fotos of the eco villages and more, here.
In late September, I had the much anticipated opportunity to visit several eco villages in 100 mile
distant Portland, Oregon. Always on the short lists of greenest cities in the country, Portland is located
where the Willamette River meets the Columbia. Ten thousand years ago, this location was periodically
submerged under four hundred feet of water, thanks to the glacial Missoula Floods.
These days, people are flooding into Portland and I was on my way to stay the night at Columbia
ecovillage and next day, visit Cully Grove Village and Kailash Ecovillage. I was to discover eco
villages come in all sorts of flavors.
A friend connected me with a fellow at Columbia. Denny and his wife Anne had lived at Columbia
Ecovillage [CEV] from the beginning, about eight years. As it turned out, Denny was a highly
informative and enjoyable host. Our interests were the same - how to green our homes, but also, reach
further into the neighborhood and community. We had a great time.
Arriving at CEV, and veering right past a sign advising watch for children, I entered a mostly shaded
parking lot. It was surrounded on all sides by 1970's era two story apartment buildings that contain 37
condominiums. There is ample and thoughtful landscaping, much of it edible, a number of large trees, a
covered and secure bike shed with dozens of bikes and trailers inside. I saw an extensive recycling
area, chipped wood paths that connected the parking area with attractive two story buildings where
residents live.
This all looked well cared for. First residents I talked with in the parking lot were friendly and pointed
me to where Denny lived. Stepping past a kid's trike on the chip path under a chestnut tree and up the
stairway, I came to Denny and Anne's comfortably arranged 3 bedroom apartment. Within minutes, I
had made friends with Denny, Anne, their two resident cats and we were soon back out the door to see Columbia Ecovillage.
Columbia occupies almost four acres in an older neighborhood. It has a condominium ownership
model. The founders bought an old farm house behind the apartment complex in 2004 and were later
able to buy the apartment complex with the intention of creating a co housing community. They took
on the liability of a sizable upfront investment. Once the word was out about the new project, it did not
take long to attract interested persons to buy in.
Eight years later, Columbia looks to be thriving. Denny showed me around. The place has many
attributes common to co housing such as shared laundry, arts and crafts space, kid space, common
house. We ran into several other members out near the entrance. A comment was, it takes 15 minutes
to walk across the parking lot. Not because its such a big parking lot, rather, you always run into people
you need to talk with.
The outback open space was maybe half the land area of CEV, which included extensive bamboo
plantings and huge black walnut trees. The veggie gardens were personal plots and the cooperative fig
grove featured seven different kinds of figs. The chickens looked happy. A cluster of multi thousand
gallon rain water storage tanks clearly showed the group was serious about water storage.
A number of well maintained older out buildings date back to the farm days. One they call the speak
easy where members and friends gather to play music, make noise and have fun. The most distant
ecovillage boundary provided views of neighboring properties. I saw gardens and creative looking out
buildings on the large lots where others seemed to have similar ideas to Columbia. Denny affirmed,
many of the neighbors were on good terms with CEV.
Participation is a core value at Columbia. There are frequent shared meals, informal get togethers, work
parties and committees. Members are required to participate at least nine hours a month in community
projects, while some people take on many extra tasks as their time and interests allow. There are pod
work groups for chickens, rain water system, book keeping, yoga, public relations, maintenance,
special events, hosting visitors, managing the Common Hall and more.
Columbia is governed as a self managed condominium. Work and decision making takes place in four
self organizing domains - administration, facilities/maintenance, land use, and social life.
Overall, Columbia looked great. Most of the members I met were Baby Boomers. Their collective
values were all good; protect nature, conserve resources, respect each other, egalitarian management,
and balance group needs with self.
Denny was a wonderful host to show and tell about the eco village. He also knew a great deal about
what was happening in the nearby neighborhood. That was next on the agenda.
We passed by front yard gardens here and there on the leafy streets of Cully Neighborhood. We visited
a half acre property that included an eco minded pre school, a Gypsy looking tiny house and quarter
acre flower farm. Denny keeps up a running commentary of anecdotal greening the neighborhood
stories the whole time.
I was already impressed with everything when we came upon a cluster of five homes with both
practical and amusing features. There were front yard gardens, a co-op house that hosted community
happenings, a Bathtub Museum, vernacular public art and a street side reclamation spot for neighbors
to repatriate small items stolen by a four footed cat burglar.
I asked Denny if Columbia Ecovillage may have had a hand in greening the neighborhood. Modest as
he was, he told me the neighborhood already had a history of eco friendly culture that predates
Columbia, but he also said Columbia has certainly had some positive influence and adds significantly
to that culture.
Like my suburban property, an eco village is great but, again, the scale needs to go far beyond several
dozen exceptional households in a neighborhood with thousands that are not so forward thinking.
Denny told me about a small non profit helping to green the neighborhood.
I was about to see a very small but very significant tool and projects it is facilitating that has enormous
potential for transforming economy and culture.
42nd Avenue in Cully Neighborhood is ground zero for small scale eco minded economic renewal. Its
a several block commercial area, four or five blocks from CEV, with several empty or underused
commercial buildings although the zone already can boast of several vibrant stores and cafes.
In their own words, “Our 42nd Avenue is economic development by the community, for the
community, a collection of residents, business owners, local employees, commercial property owners,
community institutions and others.”
From their website, their vision, “42nd Avenue will be a welcoming, safe, walkable and eco-friendly
commercial district that nurtures a diverse population with affordable goods and services. The district
will be distinct for its vibrancy, with attractive storefronts, an interesting streetscape, and destinations
where people can gather and meet their everyday needs. The environment will foster stronger
connections amongst community members and stimulate local economic development and employment
opportunities.”
Economics is the dominant force that has shaped empires, started wars, fabricated culture, determined
haves and have nots all through history; from the Phoenicians, to Marxism to the Chicago School right
up to the present. Just about all the escalating social, political, environmental misadventures of our time
are a product of global market capitalism.
From this writer’s perspective, creating green, uplifted and healthy alternatives to market capitalism is
the most urgent task of our time. What would a society look like where the economic system’s task was
to serve the public good rather than monetize, exploit and degrade it? Our 42nd Av is the
choreographer of a set of modest actions that are a model that could upsized as much as people
involved want to take it.
Denny took me to the last farmer’s market of the season in the midst of the 42nd Av redevelopment
zone. There were farmers and crafts people from the nearby neighborhood. A person from Our 42nd Avenue was tabling to explain Our 42nd Av.
I saw lots of mix and mingling, buying and selling. The market was eco friendly, festive, neighborhood
scale coming together. I met several of the farmers, had a beer and chatted with a lot of people.
Afterwards, Denny showed me some of the small farms in the nearby neighborhood and they were
beautiful. People were building businesses with specialty crops and value added food related activities.
One property was owned by supportive neighbors, another made available by a community minded
church.
One fellow at the market had a start up across the street, incubated by Our 42nd Avenue. His budding
new business, still very small, is an urban farm and garden store, to sell products and provide services
to both home gardeners and larger urban farms as well. Perfect!
Up the street was a sizable empty commercial space. Our 42nd Avenue was in discussions with the
property owners, local businesses and interested community members to make creative new use of that
space that would be true to the ideals of Our 42nd Av and the neighborhood.
This brief exposure to a small urban area caused me to imagine. I had seen small but important
elements of a more green and local economy. Certainly this part of the neighborhood is not going off
the mainstream grid but if there was to be a greening of the neighborhood culture and economy that is
moving in a mindful direction, this could be what it might look like in the early going.
All that I saw can grow, inspire nearby commercial zones to do likewise, form clusters and expand
much more widely into the community.
My own awareness of eco villages and intentional communities started 45 years ago in north central
Texas of all places. Whitehawk was an intentional community north of Denton, Texas, where I went to
college. Several friends lived there, out north of town past the shuttered and bunkered Nike missile
base.
In the mid 70’s, it was off the grid, the twelve or fifteen homes were all earth sheltered ferro cement
burrowed into the south facing slopes of the prairie landscape. Most had exposed glass walls facing the
south. Except for the wind mills, the place looked a bit like a moon base.
About the same time in the late 70’s, I became involved with a back to the land community in the
Arkansas Ozarks named Sassafras. We were off the grid and three miles from a paved road. Steep
Cave Mountain Road up to our place blew out more than one radiator.
Our neighbor’s kids would nail dead birds on the gate we had to open to cross his property to access
ours. We grew a considerable amount of our own food in this gorgeous and rugged Ozark valley that
ranged in elevation from 1200 feet above sea level down at Beech Creek to over 2300 feet at the cliff
above, only a quarter mile away. You could drink the water in the creek. You could get lost in the caves
on the property.
A favorite pastime was working things out with each other. We were all OK. We had community
projects, frequent sweat lodges, work days and an outdoor kitchen, complete with resident rattle snake
under the woodbox. The place was on the commune circuit with many visitors in the summer. The
community’s unique coming to an end is a favorite counter culture story in Northwest Arkansas Ozarks.
In the mid 80’s, I spent a month as a volunteer on a non religious Kibbutz in Israel. My final few miles of travel
arriving to the kibbutz was in an armored personnel carrier. The place was near Nazareth and was home
to about 500 people.
On a rocky hill top, Kfar Hahoresh was a planned community with a large central recreation space
surrounded by nice landscaping, residential and service buildings, all very modern. Kids grew up
together, not with their parents. Most of the older ones couldn’t wait to leave. There was a primary
school and basic health care on site.
Almost everyone worked at the Kibbutz. An important community business was a large automated
kosher bread factory. When I had a choice of jobs, I always went to the avocado orchards down in the
valley.
A majority of the residents were from eastern Europe, emigrating in the mid 1930’s when Fascism was
on the rise. There were few if any private cars. I can appreciate the site design, social and economic
aspects far more now than when I was there, 35 years ago.
I spent two weeks on a foggy and rocky hill top in south Italy with a group of radical Catholics. They
were into extreme voluntary simplicity. It was cold, no electricity, no machines. Core to their beliefs
was that any involvement with the mainstream economy was to be complicit in damage that economy
did to people and planet.
The common denominator of all these places was some kind of dis affection for the mainstream
culture and economy and what it did to people and the environment. These visits and the passage of
time give me more of an appreciation for the ideals of living more green, modest and cooperatively.
After leaving Columbia Eco Village, I shifted only a quarter mile, still in Cully Neighborhood, to
another ecovillage called Cully Grove. While Columbia and Kailash, which we will have a look at
shortly, made use of existing built infrastructure, Cully Grove is an infill project on an undeveloped two
acres.
Instead of a conventional subdivision of sixteen detached homes, the plan for for Cully Grove was to
build relatively modest eco friendly homes, to preserve open space with heritage trees and design for
social interaction and cooperation among the residents. The results are beautiful.
There is a shared garden area, shared bike shed, community house and shared workshop space.
Interestingly, if you don’t have a car, you don’t pay for parking. The homes are insulated above code,
appliances are more energy efficient than they have to be.
Which brings us to cost. These are full size, 1500 square foot homes and nicely appointed. Cully Grove is a more upscale project than Columbia and even more so, compared to Kailash.
Cully Grove is a beautiful place and quite possibly, some home owners could afford more than this. It
makes me wonder, how do people with both money and concerns about eco and social footprints
reconcile the two?
I left Cully Grove and drove five miles south to Kailash Ecovillage with a high level of anticipation.
I already knew a good deal about Kailash thanks to its very informative website and was not
disappointed.
Ole and Maitri Ersson bought a run down apartment complex in SE Portland in 2007 with a loan from a
progressive local bank. At the time, the complex was notorious in the neighborhood. It was like the
Wild West for drug dealing with occasional shoot outs in the parking lot. Many of the 32 one bedroom
apartments were not fit to live in. That all changed with the new sheriff and deputy.
Today, Kailash [KEV] strikes me as a grand slam home run of socially and eco logically thoughtful
urban renewal. Perhaps the most impressive features of Kailash are how the down and out
infrastructure has been repaired and repurposed, also the long list of social and outdoor amenities for
the sixty or so residents and finally, living at KEV is accessible to people of modest means.
A lot has been accomplished since 2007. Kailash is surrounded on three sides by newer two story
apartments. To the east, one finds brick, forties era suburban bungalow type houses on sloping streets
with many trees. Its a nice looking neighborhood.
KEV is a great example of the benefits of open space as a function of residential density. In land use
planning, greater residential density can also translate into more open space. About half the Kailash is
residential and parking, the other half is garden, orchard and open space.
Early on, sixteen parking places and several smaller concrete areas were depaved and turned into
garden, a great example of reclaiming automobile space in favor of productive use. In 2010, the acre
next door, covered with blackberry jungle was purchased to complete the current two acre size of KEV.
The outdoor part of Kailash includes 46 individual garden plots and shared garden projects. There are
53 fruit trees, a small vineyard, blueberries, cane fruit and a large bamboo patch that screens the
perimeter making for a nice green enclosure. There is also a cooperative tool shed and small intimate
contemplative area with a wet weather brook, hammock and sitting area.
Also out side is a large compost area and shared covered bike area. There is a green house and space
for small individual and creative outdoor projects. The KEV website has extensive documentation of all
these features.
The apartment building has seen upgrades since its wild west days. In addition to the one bedroom
apartments are many amenities such as an 1100 square foot community room, community kitchen for
events, games collection, big screen TV with surround sound, internet station and more.
Kailash has hosted meetings from outside the ecovillage along with in house parties, discussions and
gatherings.
There is also a laundry room and the mail room has member bios at each mail box so people can
become better acquainted. This may sound like an infomercial but it serves to show the detail of
planning for making life a Kailash a positive experience for all involved.
Participation is essential for keeping all this going. There are teams to take care of the bike area,
library, compost and recycling, fruit trees, garden and indoor amenities. A car share project is in the
works. Members are asked to commit a minimum of time to the community.
KEV also reaches out to the wider neighborhood. There are several garden plots used by people in the
neighborhood. Wood chips delivered are made available to anyone in the neighborhood. There is a
community bulletin board down by the street. Kailash actively networks with other eco village and
cooperative living groups in Portland.
Kailash has a ham radio for disaster use while several members are active in the neighborhood
association and city emergency response program. The scale of Kailash gives it the capacity to reach
out like this in so many different ways.
Members’ rent is similar to the surrounding neighborhood. That means people of average means can afford this very unusual ecovillage lifestyle. I can see resident heres as students in a sort of school
for eco logical and cooperative lifestyles where they can experience alternatives to mainstream
economy and culture. The “graduates” are likely to apply their “degrees” at KEV to positive effect in the wider world.
A grand slam. That’s a good way to describe Kailash Ecovillage. I honestly could not imagine a more complete repurposing of a 2 acre patch of urban infrastructure and space.
You can find much more detail and photos at the Kailash website,
http://www.kailashecovillage.org/
The three eco villages I visited all have a keen interest in reducing their members’ eco footprints while
building social cohesion. They all make use of existing urban land use opportunities. Each one started
with an ambitious idea that resonated enough that others wanted to be involved.
There has never been a time in human history where reducing our eco footprints and building social
cohesion have been more important. These qualities are vital requisites of perhaps modern humanity’s
greatest adventure, fitting into the natural world.
One can find allies, assets and opportunities for this historic adventure just about anywhere. All over
the country, a growing number of people are not only concluding the current mainstream economy and
culture are not appropriate, but they are taking initiative to pioneer alternatives.
Initiative comes in many ways such as changes to one’s own home and property as in Cully
Neighborhood. One property making mindful changes often leads to a nearby neighbor or two, or three
to do something similar, like the five front yard garden cluster near the Bath Tub Museum.
Cully’s emerging clusters, eco villages, neighborhood farms and Our 42nd Avenue support each other
and all help move these ideas further into the neighborhood and beyond. And they have company.
Progress is a single front yard garden in Beaumont, Texas, the only one locals have ever seen, that
starts to cause a buzz in the neighborhood.
Someone might buy the property next door taking the fences down and that sets off a chain reaction
and a few years later, all the back yard fences are down and a shared identity emerges between a dozen
houses. That’s what happened at N Street Coop in Davis, California.
A group of neighbors might start to coalesce because of a shared geographic characteristic like Enright
Ridge in Cincinnati. East Blair in Eugene, Oregon is a legal non profit that owns eleven residential
properties and they are managed in a mindful way that benefits the members, the environment and the
neighborhood.
These and other examples of organic transformation towards economic and cultural transformation are
the previews of a more green and peaceful future.
River Road Neighborhood, three miles northwest of downtown Eugene, Oregon has a small but
significant and growing identity as a place with an appreciable number of people interested in
permaculture and paradigm shift.
There have been dozens of permaculture site tours over the past ten years to show and tell the growing
number of properties in the neighborhood that are trading grass for garden, creating edible landscapes,
catching rain water, depaving, building with natural materials, making use of passive solar design and
building small accessory dwellings.
River Road hosted the 2015 Northwest Permaculture Convergence at the neighborhood
recreation center, in the middle of this suburban neighborhood. Many of the event coordinator positions
were taken by residents in the neighborhood. The neighborhood association played a big part in putting
on the convergence. Part of the event was free and open to the community. Over 700 people from the
neighborhood, Eugene and beyond attended the event.
We have had permaculture events, classes and work parties. A 65 tree filbert grove on public property
along the Willamette River has been restored in cooperation with the city. Several like minded
property owners have taken down back yard fences. A small but growing number of people are buying
properties in the neighborhood because they know there is a small but growing momentum for creating
a more green and resilient neighborhood.
A new opportunity has presented itself that can be an important catalyst for greening our neighborhood.
The city of Eugene is putting a substantial amount of staff time and resources into a high profile
neighborhood visioning process that is intended to help guide our neighborhood into the future.
The entire series of meetings, discussions and input will take over a year. Public participation is an
essential part of the effort with the city sending out lots of mail to neighborhood residents explaining
the importance of the visioning process and urging them to participate.
To insure alternative perspectives in the neighborhood are part of the process, the River Road Green
and Resilient Caucus has formed. The Caucus asserts the mainstream economic system and the
consumer culture it has created is the cause of a wide range of well documented social and
environmental problems such as climate change, social, economic and political disequity, public health
issues, resource issues and much more.
Further, the Caucus states that to envision a future for the neighborhood based on the same land use,
transportation and development policies that have caused so much damage to public health and the
environment is living in a highly flawed past, not a vision for a green and resilient future.
Three members of the caucus are also board members of the neighborhood association while overall,
the neighborhood association board is sympathetic.
The caucus will help facilitate “green and resilient” input into the visioning process and will also write
a “green” paper explaining why and how to make our neighborhood more green, resilient and prepared
for these changing times. The caucus will contribute in other ways as well.
We are using this rare opportunity of public process to put green, resilient and permaculture ideas out to
the wider community. The goal is to help make our neighborhood a greener and more resilient place to
live.
There are tens of thousands of neighborhoods all over the country with green and resilient potential.
They all have assets, allies and opportunities already there to work with. They just need to be called on.
Small projects can inspire larger projects which can lead to clusters. Clusters can grow into eco
villages, eco neighborhoods and eco communities. The more, the sooner, the better.
Note, you can see fotos of the eco villages and more, here.
In late September, I had the much anticipated opportunity to visit several eco villages in 100 mile
distant Portland, Oregon. Always on the short lists of greenest cities in the country, Portland is located
where the Willamette River meets the Columbia. Ten thousand years ago, this location was periodically
submerged under four hundred feet of water, thanks to the glacial Missoula Floods.
These days, people are flooding into Portland and I was on my way to stay the night at Columbia
ecovillage and next day, visit Cully Grove Village and Kailash Ecovillage. I was to discover eco
villages come in all sorts of flavors.
A friend connected me with a fellow at Columbia. Denny and his wife Anne had lived at Columbia
Ecovillage [CEV] from the beginning, about eight years. As it turned out, Denny was a highly
informative and enjoyable host. Our interests were the same - how to green our homes, but also, reach
further into the neighborhood and community. We had a great time.
Arriving at CEV, and veering right past a sign advising watch for children, I entered a mostly shaded
parking lot. It was surrounded on all sides by 1970's era two story apartment buildings that contain 37
condominiums. There is ample and thoughtful landscaping, much of it edible, a number of large trees, a
covered and secure bike shed with dozens of bikes and trailers inside. I saw an extensive recycling
area, chipped wood paths that connected the parking area with attractive two story buildings where
residents live.
This all looked well cared for. First residents I talked with in the parking lot were friendly and pointed
me to where Denny lived. Stepping past a kid's trike on the chip path under a chestnut tree and up the
stairway, I came to Denny and Anne's comfortably arranged 3 bedroom apartment. Within minutes, I
had made friends with Denny, Anne, their two resident cats and we were soon back out the door to see Columbia Ecovillage.
Columbia occupies almost four acres in an older neighborhood. It has a condominium ownership
model. The founders bought an old farm house behind the apartment complex in 2004 and were later
able to buy the apartment complex with the intention of creating a co housing community. They took
on the liability of a sizable upfront investment. Once the word was out about the new project, it did not
take long to attract interested persons to buy in.
Eight years later, Columbia looks to be thriving. Denny showed me around. The place has many
attributes common to co housing such as shared laundry, arts and crafts space, kid space, common
house. We ran into several other members out near the entrance. A comment was, it takes 15 minutes
to walk across the parking lot. Not because its such a big parking lot, rather, you always run into people
you need to talk with.
The outback open space was maybe half the land area of CEV, which included extensive bamboo
plantings and huge black walnut trees. The veggie gardens were personal plots and the cooperative fig
grove featured seven different kinds of figs. The chickens looked happy. A cluster of multi thousand
gallon rain water storage tanks clearly showed the group was serious about water storage.
A number of well maintained older out buildings date back to the farm days. One they call the speak
easy where members and friends gather to play music, make noise and have fun. The most distant
ecovillage boundary provided views of neighboring properties. I saw gardens and creative looking out
buildings on the large lots where others seemed to have similar ideas to Columbia. Denny affirmed,
many of the neighbors were on good terms with CEV.
Participation is a core value at Columbia. There are frequent shared meals, informal get togethers, work
parties and committees. Members are required to participate at least nine hours a month in community
projects, while some people take on many extra tasks as their time and interests allow. There are pod
work groups for chickens, rain water system, book keeping, yoga, public relations, maintenance,
special events, hosting visitors, managing the Common Hall and more.
Columbia is governed as a self managed condominium. Work and decision making takes place in four
self organizing domains - administration, facilities/maintenance, land use, and social life.
Overall, Columbia looked great. Most of the members I met were Baby Boomers. Their collective
values were all good; protect nature, conserve resources, respect each other, egalitarian management,
and balance group needs with self.
Denny was a wonderful host to show and tell about the eco village. He also knew a great deal about
what was happening in the nearby neighborhood. That was next on the agenda.
We passed by front yard gardens here and there on the leafy streets of Cully Neighborhood. We visited
a half acre property that included an eco minded pre school, a Gypsy looking tiny house and quarter
acre flower farm. Denny keeps up a running commentary of anecdotal greening the neighborhood
stories the whole time.
I was already impressed with everything when we came upon a cluster of five homes with both
practical and amusing features. There were front yard gardens, a co-op house that hosted community
happenings, a Bathtub Museum, vernacular public art and a street side reclamation spot for neighbors
to repatriate small items stolen by a four footed cat burglar.
I asked Denny if Columbia Ecovillage may have had a hand in greening the neighborhood. Modest as
he was, he told me the neighborhood already had a history of eco friendly culture that predates
Columbia, but he also said Columbia has certainly had some positive influence and adds significantly
to that culture.
Like my suburban property, an eco village is great but, again, the scale needs to go far beyond several
dozen exceptional households in a neighborhood with thousands that are not so forward thinking.
Denny told me about a small non profit helping to green the neighborhood.
I was about to see a very small but very significant tool and projects it is facilitating that has enormous
potential for transforming economy and culture.
42nd Avenue in Cully Neighborhood is ground zero for small scale eco minded economic renewal. Its
a several block commercial area, four or five blocks from CEV, with several empty or underused
commercial buildings although the zone already can boast of several vibrant stores and cafes.
In their own words, “Our 42nd Avenue is economic development by the community, for the
community, a collection of residents, business owners, local employees, commercial property owners,
community institutions and others.”
From their website, their vision, “42nd Avenue will be a welcoming, safe, walkable and eco-friendly
commercial district that nurtures a diverse population with affordable goods and services. The district
will be distinct for its vibrancy, with attractive storefronts, an interesting streetscape, and destinations
where people can gather and meet their everyday needs. The environment will foster stronger
connections amongst community members and stimulate local economic development and employment
opportunities.”
Economics is the dominant force that has shaped empires, started wars, fabricated culture, determined
haves and have nots all through history; from the Phoenicians, to Marxism to the Chicago School right
up to the present. Just about all the escalating social, political, environmental misadventures of our time
are a product of global market capitalism.
From this writer’s perspective, creating green, uplifted and healthy alternatives to market capitalism is
the most urgent task of our time. What would a society look like where the economic system’s task was
to serve the public good rather than monetize, exploit and degrade it? Our 42nd Av is the
choreographer of a set of modest actions that are a model that could upsized as much as people
involved want to take it.
Denny took me to the last farmer’s market of the season in the midst of the 42nd Av redevelopment
zone. There were farmers and crafts people from the nearby neighborhood. A person from Our 42nd Avenue was tabling to explain Our 42nd Av.
I saw lots of mix and mingling, buying and selling. The market was eco friendly, festive, neighborhood
scale coming together. I met several of the farmers, had a beer and chatted with a lot of people.
Afterwards, Denny showed me some of the small farms in the nearby neighborhood and they were
beautiful. People were building businesses with specialty crops and value added food related activities.
One property was owned by supportive neighbors, another made available by a community minded
church.
One fellow at the market had a start up across the street, incubated by Our 42nd Avenue. His budding
new business, still very small, is an urban farm and garden store, to sell products and provide services
to both home gardeners and larger urban farms as well. Perfect!
Up the street was a sizable empty commercial space. Our 42nd Avenue was in discussions with the
property owners, local businesses and interested community members to make creative new use of that
space that would be true to the ideals of Our 42nd Av and the neighborhood.
This brief exposure to a small urban area caused me to imagine. I had seen small but important
elements of a more green and local economy. Certainly this part of the neighborhood is not going off
the mainstream grid but if there was to be a greening of the neighborhood culture and economy that is
moving in a mindful direction, this could be what it might look like in the early going.
All that I saw can grow, inspire nearby commercial zones to do likewise, form clusters and expand
much more widely into the community.
My own awareness of eco villages and intentional communities started 45 years ago in north central
Texas of all places. Whitehawk was an intentional community north of Denton, Texas, where I went to
college. Several friends lived there, out north of town past the shuttered and bunkered Nike missile
base.
In the mid 70’s, it was off the grid, the twelve or fifteen homes were all earth sheltered ferro cement
burrowed into the south facing slopes of the prairie landscape. Most had exposed glass walls facing the
south. Except for the wind mills, the place looked a bit like a moon base.
About the same time in the late 70’s, I became involved with a back to the land community in the
Arkansas Ozarks named Sassafras. We were off the grid and three miles from a paved road. Steep
Cave Mountain Road up to our place blew out more than one radiator.
Our neighbor’s kids would nail dead birds on the gate we had to open to cross his property to access
ours. We grew a considerable amount of our own food in this gorgeous and rugged Ozark valley that
ranged in elevation from 1200 feet above sea level down at Beech Creek to over 2300 feet at the cliff
above, only a quarter mile away. You could drink the water in the creek. You could get lost in the caves
on the property.
A favorite pastime was working things out with each other. We were all OK. We had community
projects, frequent sweat lodges, work days and an outdoor kitchen, complete with resident rattle snake
under the woodbox. The place was on the commune circuit with many visitors in the summer. The
community’s unique coming to an end is a favorite counter culture story in Northwest Arkansas Ozarks.
In the mid 80’s, I spent a month as a volunteer on a non religious Kibbutz in Israel. My final few miles of travel
arriving to the kibbutz was in an armored personnel carrier. The place was near Nazareth and was home
to about 500 people.
On a rocky hill top, Kfar Hahoresh was a planned community with a large central recreation space
surrounded by nice landscaping, residential and service buildings, all very modern. Kids grew up
together, not with their parents. Most of the older ones couldn’t wait to leave. There was a primary
school and basic health care on site.
Almost everyone worked at the Kibbutz. An important community business was a large automated
kosher bread factory. When I had a choice of jobs, I always went to the avocado orchards down in the
valley.
A majority of the residents were from eastern Europe, emigrating in the mid 1930’s when Fascism was
on the rise. There were few if any private cars. I can appreciate the site design, social and economic
aspects far more now than when I was there, 35 years ago.
I spent two weeks on a foggy and rocky hill top in south Italy with a group of radical Catholics. They
were into extreme voluntary simplicity. It was cold, no electricity, no machines. Core to their beliefs
was that any involvement with the mainstream economy was to be complicit in damage that economy
did to people and planet.
The common denominator of all these places was some kind of dis affection for the mainstream
culture and economy and what it did to people and the environment. These visits and the passage of
time give me more of an appreciation for the ideals of living more green, modest and cooperatively.
After leaving Columbia Eco Village, I shifted only a quarter mile, still in Cully Neighborhood, to
another ecovillage called Cully Grove. While Columbia and Kailash, which we will have a look at
shortly, made use of existing built infrastructure, Cully Grove is an infill project on an undeveloped two
acres.
Instead of a conventional subdivision of sixteen detached homes, the plan for for Cully Grove was to
build relatively modest eco friendly homes, to preserve open space with heritage trees and design for
social interaction and cooperation among the residents. The results are beautiful.
There is a shared garden area, shared bike shed, community house and shared workshop space.
Interestingly, if you don’t have a car, you don’t pay for parking. The homes are insulated above code,
appliances are more energy efficient than they have to be.
Which brings us to cost. These are full size, 1500 square foot homes and nicely appointed. Cully Grove is a more upscale project than Columbia and even more so, compared to Kailash.
Cully Grove is a beautiful place and quite possibly, some home owners could afford more than this. It
makes me wonder, how do people with both money and concerns about eco and social footprints
reconcile the two?
I left Cully Grove and drove five miles south to Kailash Ecovillage with a high level of anticipation.
I already knew a good deal about Kailash thanks to its very informative website and was not
disappointed.
Ole and Maitri Ersson bought a run down apartment complex in SE Portland in 2007 with a loan from a
progressive local bank. At the time, the complex was notorious in the neighborhood. It was like the
Wild West for drug dealing with occasional shoot outs in the parking lot. Many of the 32 one bedroom
apartments were not fit to live in. That all changed with the new sheriff and deputy.
Today, Kailash [KEV] strikes me as a grand slam home run of socially and eco logically thoughtful
urban renewal. Perhaps the most impressive features of Kailash are how the down and out
infrastructure has been repaired and repurposed, also the long list of social and outdoor amenities for
the sixty or so residents and finally, living at KEV is accessible to people of modest means.
A lot has been accomplished since 2007. Kailash is surrounded on three sides by newer two story
apartments. To the east, one finds brick, forties era suburban bungalow type houses on sloping streets
with many trees. Its a nice looking neighborhood.
KEV is a great example of the benefits of open space as a function of residential density. In land use
planning, greater residential density can also translate into more open space. About half the Kailash is
residential and parking, the other half is garden, orchard and open space.
Early on, sixteen parking places and several smaller concrete areas were depaved and turned into
garden, a great example of reclaiming automobile space in favor of productive use. In 2010, the acre
next door, covered with blackberry jungle was purchased to complete the current two acre size of KEV.
The outdoor part of Kailash includes 46 individual garden plots and shared garden projects. There are
53 fruit trees, a small vineyard, blueberries, cane fruit and a large bamboo patch that screens the
perimeter making for a nice green enclosure. There is also a cooperative tool shed and small intimate
contemplative area with a wet weather brook, hammock and sitting area.
Also out side is a large compost area and shared covered bike area. There is a green house and space
for small individual and creative outdoor projects. The KEV website has extensive documentation of all
these features.
The apartment building has seen upgrades since its wild west days. In addition to the one bedroom
apartments are many amenities such as an 1100 square foot community room, community kitchen for
events, games collection, big screen TV with surround sound, internet station and more.
Kailash has hosted meetings from outside the ecovillage along with in house parties, discussions and
gatherings.
There is also a laundry room and the mail room has member bios at each mail box so people can
become better acquainted. This may sound like an infomercial but it serves to show the detail of
planning for making life a Kailash a positive experience for all involved.
Participation is essential for keeping all this going. There are teams to take care of the bike area,
library, compost and recycling, fruit trees, garden and indoor amenities. A car share project is in the
works. Members are asked to commit a minimum of time to the community.
KEV also reaches out to the wider neighborhood. There are several garden plots used by people in the
neighborhood. Wood chips delivered are made available to anyone in the neighborhood. There is a
community bulletin board down by the street. Kailash actively networks with other eco village and
cooperative living groups in Portland.
Kailash has a ham radio for disaster use while several members are active in the neighborhood
association and city emergency response program. The scale of Kailash gives it the capacity to reach
out like this in so many different ways.
Members’ rent is similar to the surrounding neighborhood. That means people of average means can afford this very unusual ecovillage lifestyle. I can see resident heres as students in a sort of school
for eco logical and cooperative lifestyles where they can experience alternatives to mainstream
economy and culture. The “graduates” are likely to apply their “degrees” at KEV to positive effect in the wider world.
A grand slam. That’s a good way to describe Kailash Ecovillage. I honestly could not imagine a more complete repurposing of a 2 acre patch of urban infrastructure and space.
You can find much more detail and photos at the Kailash website,
http://www.kailashecovillage.org/
The three eco villages I visited all have a keen interest in reducing their members’ eco footprints while
building social cohesion. They all make use of existing urban land use opportunities. Each one started
with an ambitious idea that resonated enough that others wanted to be involved.
There has never been a time in human history where reducing our eco footprints and building social
cohesion have been more important. These qualities are vital requisites of perhaps modern humanity’s
greatest adventure, fitting into the natural world.
One can find allies, assets and opportunities for this historic adventure just about anywhere. All over
the country, a growing number of people are not only concluding the current mainstream economy and
culture are not appropriate, but they are taking initiative to pioneer alternatives.
Initiative comes in many ways such as changes to one’s own home and property as in Cully
Neighborhood. One property making mindful changes often leads to a nearby neighbor or two, or three
to do something similar, like the five front yard garden cluster near the Bath Tub Museum.
Cully’s emerging clusters, eco villages, neighborhood farms and Our 42nd Avenue support each other
and all help move these ideas further into the neighborhood and beyond. And they have company.
Progress is a single front yard garden in Beaumont, Texas, the only one locals have ever seen, that
starts to cause a buzz in the neighborhood.
Someone might buy the property next door taking the fences down and that sets off a chain reaction
and a few years later, all the back yard fences are down and a shared identity emerges between a dozen
houses. That’s what happened at N Street Coop in Davis, California.
A group of neighbors might start to coalesce because of a shared geographic characteristic like Enright
Ridge in Cincinnati. East Blair in Eugene, Oregon is a legal non profit that owns eleven residential
properties and they are managed in a mindful way that benefits the members, the environment and the
neighborhood.
These and other examples of organic transformation towards economic and cultural transformation are
the previews of a more green and peaceful future.
River Road Neighborhood, three miles northwest of downtown Eugene, Oregon has a small but
significant and growing identity as a place with an appreciable number of people interested in
permaculture and paradigm shift.
There have been dozens of permaculture site tours over the past ten years to show and tell the growing
number of properties in the neighborhood that are trading grass for garden, creating edible landscapes,
catching rain water, depaving, building with natural materials, making use of passive solar design and
building small accessory dwellings.
River Road hosted the 2015 Northwest Permaculture Convergence at the neighborhood
recreation center, in the middle of this suburban neighborhood. Many of the event coordinator positions
were taken by residents in the neighborhood. The neighborhood association played a big part in putting
on the convergence. Part of the event was free and open to the community. Over 700 people from the
neighborhood, Eugene and beyond attended the event.
We have had permaculture events, classes and work parties. A 65 tree filbert grove on public property
along the Willamette River has been restored in cooperation with the city. Several like minded
property owners have taken down back yard fences. A small but growing number of people are buying
properties in the neighborhood because they know there is a small but growing momentum for creating
a more green and resilient neighborhood.
A new opportunity has presented itself that can be an important catalyst for greening our neighborhood.
The city of Eugene is putting a substantial amount of staff time and resources into a high profile
neighborhood visioning process that is intended to help guide our neighborhood into the future.
The entire series of meetings, discussions and input will take over a year. Public participation is an
essential part of the effort with the city sending out lots of mail to neighborhood residents explaining
the importance of the visioning process and urging them to participate.
To insure alternative perspectives in the neighborhood are part of the process, the River Road Green
and Resilient Caucus has formed. The Caucus asserts the mainstream economic system and the
consumer culture it has created is the cause of a wide range of well documented social and
environmental problems such as climate change, social, economic and political disequity, public health
issues, resource issues and much more.
Further, the Caucus states that to envision a future for the neighborhood based on the same land use,
transportation and development policies that have caused so much damage to public health and the
environment is living in a highly flawed past, not a vision for a green and resilient future.
Three members of the caucus are also board members of the neighborhood association while overall,
the neighborhood association board is sympathetic.
The caucus will help facilitate “green and resilient” input into the visioning process and will also write
a “green” paper explaining why and how to make our neighborhood more green, resilient and prepared
for these changing times. The caucus will contribute in other ways as well.
We are using this rare opportunity of public process to put green, resilient and permaculture ideas out to
the wider community. The goal is to help make our neighborhood a greener and more resilient place to
live.
There are tens of thousands of neighborhoods all over the country with green and resilient potential.
They all have assets, allies and opportunities already there to work with. They just need to be called on.
Small projects can inspire larger projects which can lead to clusters. Clusters can grow into eco
villages, eco neighborhoods and eco communities. The more, the sooner, the better.