VillageForum.com

If you are a journalist doing a story on the Village Forum

The short synopsis (400 words)

In the 20th century, humanity experimented with new forms of habitat to stimulate an economy based on selling cars and oil. The economy boomed, but people became secondary in a machine-scaled society. In the 21st century, as the experiment's unanticipated negative side effects are beginning to bite back, an idea for human-scaled development is gaining momentum. Called the VillageTown - a town made of villages, cars are kept outside the village gate in a motorpool; day-to-day need for them is drastically reduced: in a 10,000 person community, it permanently removes the need for about 6,000 cars on the road. It works by creating an 80-20 local/global economy, meaning 20% of the workers sell local to global, bringing in the cash that is then circulated locally by providing most of the things people need day-to-day. It's not an eco-village or some other form of intentional community, but direct competition to suburban sprawl. Socially and culturally enriched, it uses proven patterns of design merged with 21st century technology to enable a critical mass of people to create a wonderful place to live. Unlike 20th century developments that relied on massive credit lines, hoping the homes and workplaces will sell, in the VillageTown, the future villagers participate in the design of their clustered village. They come first. It provides for all ages and stages of life. With no cars within, it is safe for children and elders who do not drive lose none of their mobility.

Statistics: 5000 - 10,000 persons with each village made up of about 500 people in 200 homes, 50 workplaces, one central plaza and an Artist Guild Hall and elder nursing bed facility on each village plaza (paid for by the development). 50 hectares (125 acres), surrounded by a village wall and a greenbelt 3 times that size (150 hectares / 375 acres) that also includes an industrial park, motorpool and freight depot... all within a 10-minute walk. Housing prices to be comparable to the region with 20-30% in affordable housing called parallel real estate market. To project valuation for a 10,000 population VillageTown take the regional housing times 4,000 homes plus 1,000 workplaces plus the regional value of 15 hectares (40 acres) of covered industrial park. To project annual economic impact of the new earnings brought into the region, multiply the valuation by 20% (A billion dollar valued project should bring annual income of $250 million - at least - into the region with no adverse social or environmental effects).

The long backgrounder

This is a background document. While much of this information is available throughout the web site, and in the book How to Build a Village, this provides a single reference point for the purposes of doing a general story on proposed VillageTowns. To arrange interviews, please use the contact page.

When the book was written, the author had not settled on the best "adjective" that journalists seem to need. It now has been named: VillageTown - a Town made of Villages.

Context

It is helpful to first understand the context of VillageTowns in order to understand the subject.

Rarely do people start from scratch, as if no one had ever asked the question before. When this happens, journalists sometimes have difficulty getting their head around the story because it may seem both familiar and yet not, at the same time. It's much easier to report on an idea that evolves - a tweak here, a variation there. The VillageTown concept did not evolve, it started from scratch.

The VillageTown emerged out of an intentional process that began by presuming no one had every asked the question, no one had every conducted research, no one had any expertise in the area. As a result, the findings emerged from non-derivative experience and only afterwards were those findings measured against other models, ideas, and concepts. This resulted not in earth-shattering new ideas, but it brought a different perspective that will produce better outcomes.

For this reason, one must first understand what a VillageTown is not.

• It is not an eco-village, although ecologists like the idea.
• It is not a social experiment, a commune, kibbutz, co-housing or other intentional housing
• It is not a gated community with guards for an elite, although it is walled for different reasons
• It is not a reaction to global warming, although it will make Kyoto signatories happy
• It is not a reaction to peak oil, although it allows no cars within the village walls
• It is not a reaction to economic collapse, although it does protect its people from bad times.

Different people have different ideas about what engenders quality of life, and it became apparent than master planning out of the heads of a few professionals, no matter how brilliant, was not going to achieve the results. In New Zealand, the law talks about enabling people and communities to provide for social, economic, cultural and environmental wellbeing. So, how does one enable people and communities?

Parameters and Patterns

People need structure in order to move forward to provide for their wellbeing. An example of such structure is the jury system where ordinary people make a collective judgement on the case before them. Without structure, one gets mob rule and chaos, but with the formal support of professionals and experts, studies show that ordinary people make better decisions than professional judges. James Surowiecki calls it The Wisdom of Crowds. A similar process is used in creating the VillageTowns. The people and communities (including the neighbours) who will have to live with the effects are paramount, which means they need to be involved in the planning phase. However, this needs to be within the context of a formal process supported by professionals and experts... architects, planners, designers, engineers, etc.

The typical planning process is long and vague, with considerable uncertainty as to what will be built until long after the rules are actually changed. Not so with the VillageTown process. In the dynamic engagement process the objective is to come up with a locked design that will become the actual village... what goes where, what size and what function. To get there, certain elements are fixed:

• Size: The land determines the size, but an ideal is 200 hectares consisting of a 50 hectare walled VillageTown in the centre, surrounded by a 150 hectare greenbelt that has a 15 hectare industrial park by the village gate. The 50 hectares will be a walled village, not to provide a gated community with security guards, but to clearly delineate the permanent boundary between urban and rural, to keep cats & dogs within and cars without, to keep young children and confused elders from wandering off and to provide an archetypal sense of boundary and place. The greenbelt provides a buffer to prevent cross-boundary conflicts as well as the benefits of an undeveloped space. Note that this refers to a "Country-town" VillageTown; an urban VillageTown built on recovered brownfield in a city would be unlikely to have a greenbelt of such magnitude.
• Population: Not less than 5,000 people, not more than 10,000. Once built, it shall not expand - no sprawl... ever. If expansion is needed, build another VillageTown 15 kms away. With less than 5,000 people (or 3,500 at the very minimum), it gets too familiar; with over 10,000 management becomes bureaucratic.
• Car free: Non-negotiable. No cars within the village walls. Everything within a 10-minute walk, with bicycles and electric NEV's that are restricted to a pedestrian speed. Privately owned cars may be kept at the motorpool, just outside the village gate, but most villagers will probably prefer to rent cars from the motorpool when they need them. The VillageTown is designed with a local economy, so no one should need to commute on a daily basis to somewhere else by car. The average suburb needs to provide for 6,000 cars for every 10,000 people. Not so with these VillageTowns. Car-free means a human-scaled layout, safe streets for children to play and elders to walk, no on-street or off-street parking needed, quieter, especially at night, cleaner streets and cleaner air, and a lower cost of living.
• Scale and layout: Except around the central VillageTown plaza, with some 4 story buildings, all buildings will be 2 or 3 stories and most will be attached. The VillageTown will have about 20 neighbourhood plazas around which approximately 200 homes and 50 workplaces will be built... half the workplaces around the plaza, half along the primary pedestrian streets. The streets will be narrower (human-scaled) because there are no carsfireproof materials to avoid "design by firetruck". permitted within the village walls and because the VillageTown will be constructed of
• Economy: 80% local, 20% global. It is said that during the great Depression, Australia suffered deeply while France was barely affected because the things the French needed were produced locally (and certainly its food and wine was better at the time). A local economy does not mean isolation; it means not putting all of ones eggs in one basket. It means assuring one has more certainty in terms of local access to essential goods and services. For those participating in the global economy, high speed broadband will provide for telepresence, and the village will be located within 2 hours of a major airport to assure access to travel and overnight mail.
• Culturally enriched: The development will pay for construction of artist guild halls on each plaza, where the term artist is broadly defined to include inventors, scientists and other members of the creative class. The artists will determine how they cluster and what they need. Culture will also include a slow food ethos.
• Affordable housing: Insofar as legally permitted, parallel markets for housing will be created for target sectors of the community, based on age (youth & elderly) and certain occupations that could otherwise not afford to live in the VillageTown. The VillageTown will be designed to support all ages and stages of life, and will have a cemetery in the greenbelt (as well as houses of worship for believers and for rites of passage such as birth, marriage and funerals).

Once these parameters are fixed, and the land identified, the people who will live there participate in the design of their plaza neighbourhood. Home are priced by size, scale and detail, and each villager specifies their personal requirements. A 100:1 scale model of their home is then made, and they join their future neighbours around a 100:1 scale model of their plaza neighbourhood to work out the look & feel of their plaza, and then to set out the secondary pedestrian streets upon which they place their home & (optional) workplace. They are supported in this design process by what are called "Pattern Cards", that have timeless patterns of what works in urban design. The villagers are further supported by professionals who are present during this process, there to guide and give support. Villagers unable to attend in person will engage on-line, as a simulation will be updated in real time. When the scale model is finished, it will be locked and reduced to conventional plan documents.

Sustainability a given, not a bragging point

These VillageTowns are not ecovillages. They will not have composting toilets, consensus governance or like-minded inhabitants with shared value systems, and its critical mass of 5,000 to 10,000 persons in 21 plaza neighbourhoods of 200 homes each is far bigger than ecovillages or most other types of intentional communities. These VillageTowns will however build homes and workplaces that are as sustainable as reasonably possible, and villagers who want an allotment to grow their own food in the greenbelt may do so. Eliminating 6,000 cars per 10,000 people assures it will be listed high in the Kyoto credit column, and using thick-walled variable density concrete will assure very high insulation values. They will encourage timeless design, so that once built, buildings remain standing.

Mainstream

The VillageTown has no political, ideological or religious affiliations. It is not right wing, left wing or green.

It looks in a pragmatic way to what has proven to work best in the past and to implement this benefiting from new technology and knowledge in a way that gets the job done best.

These VillageTowns are not an experimental exercise in utopia, as are many intentional communities. It is not socialistic, communistic or new-age-istic, to coin a word for some of the more contemporary experiments of ways to get people to live peacefully in close proximity to each other as good neighbours. People will own private property. The VillageTown accepts the utility of market forces, especially those of a strongly-defended local economy, and the VillageTown takes no position on how much wealth a person may amass. It seeks to avoid having poor people by lowering the cost of living and focusing on the fundamentals of wealth creation, so all can afford to live comfortably. It does this through smart development of markets, as in using collective purchasing power, and by eliminating the need to drive a car or use as much energy to heat and cool buildings.

The VillageTown seeks to be a normal place of habitat in which the demographic spectrum of people presently living in that country will feel comfortable calling the village home.