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[sundubuman]

Ideas & Trends
Extreme Makeover, Commune Edition

By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: June 11, 2006

"DIPPY Hippie Bang Bang." That was the front-page headline in The Daily News, gleefully reporting the shooting of a commune leader on Staten Island by a disgruntled former member. Other newspapers described the recent incident with a mix of curiosity and condescension, likening it to the 1978 mass suicides in Jonestown, Guyana, or reminding readers that Charles Manson's mayhem was born on a free-love commune in California.

John Russell/Associated Press

Down Home The Farm in Tennessee has changed since 1976, below. One commune business makes radiation detectors.
Related
Free Love, Hate and an Ambush at a Commune on Staten Island (June 1, 2006)

The Farm

Twin Oaks Intentional Community

Ganas
Associated Press

The message was clear: Communal living is a dangerous petri dish of sex, rampant drug use and occasional spurts of violence.

For the tens of thousands of Americans who make their homes in shared living arrangements, the lurid coverage obscured the recent surge in what promoters of cooperative housing call "intentional living." After decades of contraction, the American commune movement has been expanding since the mid-1990's, spurred by the growth of settlements that seek to marry the utopian-minded commune of the 1960's with the American predilection for privacy and capital appreciation.

More than 1,100 such settlements, known as eco-villages and co-housing communities, have been built or are in the planning stages, according to the Communities Directory. That is more than double the number a decade ago, and Tony Sirna, a resident of the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in northeast Missouri who helps maintain the directory, said he received about 15 to 20 listings a month for new communities. Many of them, he said, are started by disaffected baby boomers who have grown weary of car-dependent, McMansion-filled sprawl.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/weekinreview/11jacobs.html?ex=1307678400&en=edba3a1d8a2178c6&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Mod Edit: Cut article down and posted link.

[Tiger Beer]

For some reason.. I have a feeling this 'way of living' is going to be with a hefty price tag.

Whenever I heard the words 'disaffected baby boomers'.. I always think of them trying to find a new way to make a lot of money marketing something thats suppose to be anti-capitalistic.

[sundubuman]

I have some friends that have gone down this path....breifly.

It'll only work if people can maintain the option of leaving without being totally broke.

I'd have no problem living in a situation sharing cars, toys, machines, even clothing....

but sharing money is quite another proposition.

if the members can maintain separate financial lives while pooling material resources, seems doable.