The living together, building community and self-sustainability trend is on the rise with many examples and many experiments happening around the world some pushed by necessity, others with the hope and vision of a better lifestyle with many challenges along the way, including the difficulty to adapt to ways of life that are so different to modern individualistic societies, and lack of tools and training in the areas of communication, decision-making, conflict resolution, and all the complexities related to production of goods and services under "commons" in pursue of attaining higher levels of self-sufficiency not to mention all the legal and financial aspects that come on the way. There are several reasons why people decide to build community settlements, like a shared philosophical or religious beliefs, values and practices or in the search of community lifestyle as extended family, others for the search of self-sufficiency and to minimize the dependency on money for exchange, and/or ecological lifestyles. From a T.E. point of view the most important factors are to explore how well-designed human settlements can provide a healthier lifestyle while helping on the decentralization process, with a bio/regional focus by providing ways to reduce dependency on central bank fiat and soon digital currencies, facilitate the organization needed to generate abundance of healthy organic food through the creation of edible forest gardens and permaculture systems, reduce toxic waste and maximize the discovery and exchange of personal talents, provide security and strength to the individual, among other aspects, while maintaining connection and relation to the general society and helping re-generate the environment.

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Several fields of knowledge and expertise need to be taken into account for this type of endeavors:

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1-Conflict resolution, communication and decision-making tools, training and methodologies.

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The majority of well intended projects fail due to the inability to communicate effectively  and solve conflict between members. It is very important to use and learn the adequate tools and techniques for decision-making, problem-solving and time management.

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2- Legal aspects in relation to the local governments.

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Many places in the world have very limited freedoms in relation to the use of land, there is a growing trend of unfriendliness from governments through regulations towards self-sufficiency and small organic farming. 

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3- Legal aspects in relation to internal organization and property.

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We may all come with the best intentions and open to trust in a community project, and these might reduce the attention we give to the process of clarifying and formalizing our relationships between the members and the properties or capital. To formalize correctly since the beginning the legal frame and community frame describing our rights and responsibilities could save a lot of future trouble and help to the success of the project.

One of the functions of the legal system is to provide a service for conflict resolution around contracts using government means, that can be useful in some cases, but one of the goals of self-sufficiency and community making is to keep the government as far away as possible, so it is important to define what kind of contracts or agreements could be mediated and solved within the community and try to maximize them. 

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4- Financial expertise for the development and sustainability of the project. 

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The idea of self-sufficiency sounds very attractive to many of us, but the reality is that this concept is extremely ambiguous, and there is no way to survive isolated from the whole, these means that we can achieve levels or degrees of self sustainability in certain areas, but in a way or another we will be requiring products and services from the general market functioning with money, so the project needs to be able to attract money in exchange for products and services, and this money needs to at least be enough to cover for all the supplies that are not generated within the resources of the project. So it is important to have an economic dimension of the project that works as a business with its proper financial planing. 

 

 

5- Water management

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Without water nothing is possible, and we are facing a very dangerous global water crisis, so it is fundamental to plan around this resource. Fortunately, there are several ways to collect and manage this precious resource, and we must design and choose land in relation to water. 

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6- Bio-construction/ healthy and affordable housing.

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Bio-construction will allow us to build housing and structures that are energy efficient, help collect and save water, and provide a non-toxic environment for us and the land. This kind of constructions can be cost-effective and can be built with local materials from the land or region.

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7- Food production and management

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Permaculture design offers the best approach for food production and management for community projects. The most productive and regenerative systems are called food forests, forest gardens, or syntropic agroforestry. The goal is to maximize production with minimum inputs, mimicking natural forest and jungles.

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8- Energy production and management

 

Everything runs with some form or other of energy. Energy can be the backbone element to achieve all other aspects of the project. With enough energy it is possible to extract water from air moist, dig wells, transport biomass etc. While we find how to access unlimited energy, we have to design around energy efficiency, we have to think in terms of energy for every action in relation to the project, this includes the energy we use to move around in our daily activities inside and outside the project's territory. How much energy we get from the sun on the land during the year? How much can we harvest and how? This has little to do with solar panels, and more with plants and building techniques. 

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9- Waste management

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"Waste is just a human concept" In a perfect design nothing is waste, we just need to find its place and role, preferably before producing it.

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10- Transportation and communication

 

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11- Education

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"Not about filling the mind with stuff, but to bring out what is there in each of us" Education holds a very sacred position in the community and should help each member discover and develop their talents and roles and help them to develop the confidence to share them with others for the common wellbeing. Education should help to keep the fire of curiosity and wonder for this world, education should be about sharing with love, and discovering the principles that make life possible.