Intentional communities

Lead author: Fabian Wildner

The context of the terminologies

Many people get engaged in associations or invest their time in movements in order to represent the values they stand for and believe in. People who want to live their values full time are often keen to join a so-called intentional community. But when talking about intentional communities the term needs to be defined as well as compared with other similar designations that are used in literature or also in everyday language in the same context. Lymann T. Sargent, who is researching the field of ‘Utopian Studies’, noticed nineteen different terms that are used for communal living arrangements in literature (see wordcloud in Figure 10).

Today, the range of terminologies used has reduced, whereas the term “intentional community” appears to get the most attention (Strongin, 2010). If we follow the definition of Geoph Kozeny, then an intentional community is defined as:

“A group of people who have chosen to live together with a common purpose, working cooperatively to create a lifestyle that reflects their shared core values. The people may live together on a piece of rural land, in a suburban home, or in an urban neighbourhood, and they may share a single residence or live in a cluster of dwellings.” (Kozeny, 1995, p.19).

Other common terms have a rather narrow approach and focus on more specific aspects. An ecovillage, for example, focuses achieving a sustainable and circular lifestyle and is a response to trends of exploitation of nature (Sager, 2018). The terms collaborative housing or co-living, on the other hand, are focused mainly on aspects of living in a community but don’t clarify the diversity of members or organisational structures in place.

Intentional communities and activism

Going one step further, the aspects of resistance as well as of activism (that is often associated with resistance) should be elaborated more detailed since they are closely related to the aims of many intentional communities. Tore Sager extends Kozeny’s definition, describing an intentional community as a community that upholds a lifestyle that is reflecting on ideas about the meaning of ‘good society’ and seeks to underline the difference to the mainstream (Sager, 2018). This mentioned difference in the way of living and the need for those communities to live differently from mainstream society is the aspect that mainly differentiates them from an ‘average’ cohousing project. Whilst collaborative housing communities might tend to live a lifestyle similar to their neighbourhoods, Sanderock defines intentional communities as “communities of resistance” that are often activist in nature and sees an urgent need to integrate them into cities in order to make neighbourhoods more diverse (“from metropolis to cosmopolis”) (Sandercock, 1997). The means of activism of intentional communities are often related to arts and culture, social change, ecological living, peace work, religion or experimental family relations (Sager, 2018). Often, the goals are related to current problems or tendencies. For example criticizing the housing market or raising public awareness of vacant buildings and questioning whether it is ‘sustainable’ that those ones get abandoned whereas new ones get built – a practice that can also be described as “greenwashing” (Robb, 2016). Resistance carried out by activists can also include house occupation or squatting. Such activities form the origins of some intentional communities, first and foremost Christiania in Copenhagen but also Svartlamon in Trondheim. However, these are exceptions, as most squats originate from a counter-cultural attitude that may not aim to achieve a longterm change in planning (Prujit, 2013).

Many ‘activist’ intentional communities aim to plan the land use and the development of their desired rural or urban area, and therefore also aim for cooperation with the local government. Hereby it often comes to an agonist planning approach (differently to the ontological, consensus-oriented approach, the ‘agonistic’ allows conflicts (Yamamoto, 2017)) since intentional communities can insist on using their non-conforming ways of planning that often challenge the “mainstream” planning approaches by local governments

Figure 10: The variety of different expressions for living in community.

(Sager, 2018). Therefore, municipalities often cannot apply standard procedures for those kinds of projects but “have to look for unorthodox ways to deal with recalcitrant neighbourhoods” (ibid, p.455). Activist planning theory deals with these interrelations between activists and governmental structures. Tore Sager underlines that intentional communities’ ‘activist planning’ criticises existing systems as opposed to policy: “They suggest alternative approaches concerning methods, content of plans or processes for planning and decision making” (ibid, p.453).

Intentional communities together with other spatial and social structures can be part of a so-called “autonomous space” as it can be found in Christiania in Copenhagen (Pickerill and Chatterton, 2006). The concept of “autonomy” is defined by Pickerill and Chatterton as the search for freedom and the deep desire to expand collective capacity for self-government but also other elements of the autonomy conceptualisation like localism, self-management, cooperation, solidarity and sustainability can be transmitted to core values of many intentional communities as well.

Discussion

Following the definition of intentional communities by Kozeny (1995) Fargemarka Boligprosjekt could be defined as an intentional community - even if the members do not live together yet, there is a common intention to do so in the future. The planned way of living by using the cluster of the currently vacant houses corresponds to a sustainable but also communal lifestyle that meets the mindsets of the current members in the Fargemarka Boligprosjekt association. Interestingly, the term ‘intentional community’ is not so established in common discourse as other ones, as shown in the results of the questionnaire. Only two out of 17 members would describe Fargemarka this way whereas eight members would name it a “Collaborative Housing Project” (Source: Questionnaire).

Intentional communities can be a space to exemplify strivedfor ideologies. In the case of Fargemarka Boligprosjekt, members are critiquing broader social concepts like capitalism, and are promoting self-governance and a circular economic approach. Like Christiania or Svartlamon, the association of Fargemarka Boligprosjekt originated from housing occupations. The 10-day squatting activity from one of the members could be considered as the start of the project. However, the focus has since shifted towards pursuing cooperation with the municipality by, for example aligning with policies on housing and sustainable development in their Urban Development Strategy in Trondheim (Trondheim Municipality, 2019), for a sustainable long-term development of the community. Therefore, the vision statement was sent to the municipality with the goal to achieve a contract that would allow Fargemarka Boligprosjekt to legally use the empty buildings for a certain amount of time. Nevertheless, some members are still emphasising processes of direct (sometimes illegal) action.

“Yes, when I was younger I imagined I would live in a house, that it would be a reality. But the more I got into activism, a kind-of alternative lifestyle, the more I realised ‘oh, yeah’ I’ll never be able to have my own place if I go the traditional way of trying to buy something, and the rents are super high and it would mean I have to have a life where I work all the time to maintain that and I was also so tired of renting” - A Fargemarka Member

One aim of Fargemarka Boligprosjekt is to develop an economic model that lists the amount of money the municipality spends on maintenance and security of the buildings today. It would then examine how these services could be taken over by Fargemarka if it could establish a community on the site - an innovative way of funding services based on value to society. In addition, as a contribution to societal values, Fargemarka is aiming to encourage the immediate neighbourhood, as well as other people in Trondheim to take part in the project by providing space for practical and theoretical knowledge sharing and arranging workshops and activities for everybody, such as the art workshop (see Figure 15, p.27).

There is no doubt that Fargemarka intentionally employs aspects of activism in an attempt to challenge current planning techniques and seek more autonomy in decisionmaking, in common with other intentional communities. Following the definition of Pickerill and Chatterton about autonomous spaces, Fargemarka Boligprosjekt’s core values align with a need of searching for freedom and a desire for self-government.