There are several initiatives on environmental
friendly housing. Most of these are initiated by private parties and not by
governments, corporations or institutions. Examples of the latter include the Solarsiedlungen of North-Rhine
Westphalia, Stad van de Zon (Sun
City) in Heerhugowaard and the Westerpark Estate in Breda. The non-institutional initiatives can range from
experimental architecture (the Housing Expo in Almere), to individuals building
their dream home or even earthship and groups of people that join up to realise
their ideals for a better (living) environment. A famous bottom-up project is EVA-Lanxmeer in Culemborg the Netherlands.
An example of a mixed project is In Goede Aarde in Boxtel, where several environmental organisations and groups of
concerned citizens worked with the local authority to create a normative
sustainable housing estate.
Both projects were a great inspiration for other
groups wanting to recreate this. Few such estates were actually realised, and
non at the scale of EVA-Lanxmeer. So these initiatives are rather an eco neighbourhood
of a cluster of houses than an entire housing estate. The small housing project
De Buitenkans again in Almere with 55
wood frame buildings is a good example. Many of the new initiatives are part of
the GEN-Europe network. Most have been started, but still remain unrealised.
The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) was set up in 1995
to: "support the experimental creation and preservation of human
settlements that not only sustain, but regenerate their social and natural
environments." The aim is to create: "communities with vibrant social
structures, vastly diverse, yet united in common ecological, economic, social
and cultural values and goals." The GEN-website formulates many goals and
seems to be a pick and mix for potential participants. This is, to my mind, a
positive thing to ensure not only a very narrow demographic participates. Eco
housing must go beyond the communes of
sandal-wearing vegan activists intent on sustaining themselves if it is
ever to become truly successful!
A map of the GEN-Europe project (based on the map on
their website). There are some clear clusters of initiatives with Luxemburg, Poland,
the Balkans and much of the Baltic, France, Britain and Ireland without any.
A myriad of projects is part of the GEN-Europe
network. These include both urban and rural initiatives, permaculture,
ecotourism, education centres and transition projects including greening
existing villages. Most of the realised project comprise of community groups or
even communal living. GEN-Europe is actively promoting "social resilience,
environmental protection and restoration of nature through the concept of
ecovillages as models for sustainable human settlements." Changing
lifestyles, reducing the carbon footprint per capita and local ownership of a
sustainable future within a holistic approach are at the core of what GEN tries
to realise with a European network of ecovillages. A bottom-up approach is also
emphasised by stressing co-development and co-design.
The so-called Global Ecovillage Movement started in
the early 1990s. Ross and Hildur Jackson, the founders of Gaia Trust (an
ecologically focused charitable entity based in Denmark), concluded that to
further the “movement towards sustainability” as they felt the world needed
“good examples of what it means to live in harmony with nature in a sustainable
and spiritually-satisfying way in a technologically-advanced society”. It was decided
that GEN would have three regional networks to cover the globe geographically
with administrative centres at The Farm (Americas), Lebensgarten (Europe) and
Crystal Waters (Oceania). The movement is strongly rooted within permaculture.
As such GEN promotes projects that enforce the distinction between a regular
way of living and their proposed eco-friendly community model making the
ecovillage only obtainable for a small section of society outside of the
mainstream.
This makes many of these eco-projects elitists and
geared towards educated, like-minded individuals who can afford to live their
chosen lifestyle. It would be much more productive to lobby for the improvement
of building standards, influence planning regimes that often favour less
sustainable developments or come up with ideas usable in industrial processes
to reduce waste, explore the possibilities of biobased materials and energy
efficiency. Personally I'm all in favour of always choosing the most
environmental-friendly material and making clear choices especially in
urbanisation and (agricultural) production. No-one can change the world for the
better by merely being smug about their own choices as this makes these
idea(l)s easy to dismiss!
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