Rebuilding Community in America: Housing for Ecological Living, Personal Empowerment, & the New Extended Family

Rebuilding Community in America is a thick, well-illustrated, thoroughly comprehensive guide on intentional living communities. Authors Norwood and Smith detail ideas for specific housing situations, from the Urban Cluster reclaimed from suburban blocks to a whole new interpretation of the classic Rural Village. House plans and design ideas, multiple ecovillage layouts and design maps, techniques for responsible consensus in a Shared Living Community and much more are included! This book was published in 1995, but it was at least a decade ahead of its time-- Rebuilding Community in America is a gem that deserves rediscovery. Whether you're seriously looking into shedding the isolating 'modern life' or forced to pool your limited resources with others in today's economy, this book is full of ideas covering many different angles. Highly recommended.

There is no definitive book on community. This may be because each author sees something unique, but it may be that community defies narrow definition, indeed, encompasses all of life's values and activities. What some call community is simply a neighborhood of people with little in common but geography. At the other extreme are cyber groups of individuals with only a common interest and the equipment to communicate with each other, yet they perceive themselves as a community. Co-author Ken Norwood was born in 1924, enjoyed a large family living throughout Southern California when each town was separate and distinct, served in WWII as part of a B-24 crew flying missions out of Britain, spent one year as a Nazi POW, became an architect-planner, worked in several intentional communities as carpenter-architect, founded the Shared Living Resource Center in Berkeley, California. So he has seen community from many perspectives. Co-author Kathleen Smith also chose the field of architecture, has traveled widely, has pursued a career in community design. Therefore this book focuses on the role of habitation in community. Most designs presented are for cities. The one chapter about rural community design is titled Rural Communities, the Romance and the Reality, which shows urban bias. But--country living advocate that I am--their material is inclusive and their arguments are sound. Country life is not for everybody--in truth, most Americans prefer to live in cities and suburbs and the current social and political climate favors and facilitates urban and suburban living. The anguish over loss of community has been expressed in a plethora of public polls. When community ceases, bureaucracy increases. Can citizens rebuild community and take back those parts of their lives that are now controlled by government ? The authors of this work go a long way in showing how that can be accomplished.