Many ecovillage advocates, especially from academic and grey literature, emphasise that intentional communities like ecovillage (EV) are usually assumed as environmentally sustainable ways of living in response to the widely... [ view full abstract ]
Many ecovillage advocates, especially from academic and grey literature, emphasise that intentional communities like ecovillage (EV) are usually assumed as environmentally sustainable ways of living in response to the widely discussed unsustainability of modern lifestyles. According to Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), ecovillage aims to holistically integrate ecological, economic, social and cultural dimensions of sustainability in whole system view in order to regenerate social and natural environments at community level in participatory processes. From the authors point of view, theoretically, this leads to two issues: First, it is not addressing the broad spectrum of sustainable development (SD) that goes beyond local scale. It bypasses existing planning policies, and development processes, which include stakeholders such as government, experts, and other authorities. Second, the integration of the cultural dimension in ecovillage approaches considers cultural practices as per seappropriate. This perspective is void of a critical reflection on how e.g. the commodification of culture as an ecovillage entrepreneurship can become an impediment for (local-level) sustainability that may even lead to degradation of cultural and natural assets. Practically, ecovillage distances itself from surrounding social, economic and ecological aspects, and focuses on short term local projects. These projects are often developed separately in each dimension that avoid integration in spatial and temporal aspects. Also, it seems that cultural perspective is mainly focusing on traditional sustainable culture as a commodity than on culture as a driving and innovation aspect in having sustainable lifestyle for future. Hence, it appears that EV lacks broader spatial and temporal aspect. Hence, the aim of this article is to analyze ecovillage within a broader system perspective comprising of local ecological, economic and social factors and influenced by dynamic regional structures as well as external stimuli and relationships. This article analyses ecovillage literature within categories of: resource management, community organization and knowledge sharing, which have been elaborated from former ecovillage research by the authors. The research appraises how the categories are represented spatially, in relation to landscape and temporally, in relation to networks and overarching systems. The research sees system theory as a strong methodological framework for understanding natural and human constructed worlds in integrative manner. The article uses literature review of various secondary sources, journals, narratives, conference papers on sustainability, ecovillage and system perspective. Findings indicate that in order to broaden the spectrum of EV and SD, spatially, the components of EV have to be represented in terms of sustainable interconnectedness and relationship and can be scaled up to regional landscape (spatial aspect). Moreover, they relationships have to be represented in cultural values, that could be handed over to future generations as well (temporal aspect). Conclusively, the article emphasises the need to represent the categories spatially, in relation to landscape and temporally, in relation to cultural values and discusses challenges and further research with the goal to illustrate how strategies in ecovillage approach could align to sustainable system of interconnectedness and vice versa.
6b. Urban and rural development
