{"id":2101,"date":"2008-05-16T08:01:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-16T07:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/avbp.net\/?p=2101"},"modified":"2008-05-16T08:01:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-16T07:01:00","slug":"swedish-eco-village-veteran-shares-valuable-advice-for-ics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/?p=2101","title":{"rendered":"Swedish Eco-village veteran shares valuable advice for ICs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interview with Mia Torpe<\/p>\n

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Back in the 70s Mia and a few others decided to create an eco-village in a suburb of <\/span>Stockholm<\/span><\/place><\/city>. She still lives there, and is today environmental manger for a large housing organization. Her experience is invaluable for all would-be Intentional Community residents.<\/p>\n

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Here are some highlights of the advice she gave in a recent interview I did with her.<\/p>\n

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1) <\/span><\/span><\/span>Get a queue and raise the stakes as you go along. Just by asking for USD 10 as a membership fee meant they lost a few people. Then they raised the fee to a monthly one and lost a few more. They required that queue members worked in the association a minimum number of hours, and they lost a few more. From gathering around 4000 names they still had difficulty selling 45 apartments.<\/p>\n

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2) <\/span><\/span><\/span>Start with subject working groups from the beginning. For eco-building so much knowledge is needed if you are to be able to give good input to the building contractor. They had 4-5 groups. These later on organized study circles in which attendance was mandatory.<\/p>\n

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3) <\/span><\/span><\/span>Three levels of purchase. They offered apartments as turn-key, finished shell requiring kitchen, plastering, finishing and simple empty shell.<\/p>\n

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4) <\/span><\/span><\/span>The apartments were slightly smaller than average, focus being on creating more common areas.<\/p>\n

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5) <\/span><\/span><\/span>You all need a common vision that needs formulating clearly.<\/p>\n

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6) <\/span><\/span><\/span>Every project is unique.<\/p>\n

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7) <\/span><\/span><\/span>There was a lot of \u201clike to have\u201d talk from members. In the end, because everything costs, they made a list and voted on the five most important factors to include in the project. This system was very effective for coming to agreement.<\/p>\n

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8) <\/span><\/span><\/span>Mandatory working days are still in effect.<\/p>\n

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9) <\/span><\/span><\/span>Decisions were made by consensus as far as possible. They were able to use the church to host large gatherings.<\/p>\n

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10) <\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/span>Get books. Build a library of information.<\/p>\n

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11) <\/span><\/span><\/span>If Mia were to do this again she would try to eliminate the need for heating all together and create a so-called passive heating system. She is worried energy prices will increase living costs dramatically.<\/p>\n

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12) <\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/span>Hold large information meetings. These attract members.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>13) Create a communal area – even if it is rudimentary. They could just about afford an uninsulated “barn” to meet in, but they gathered there even when it was cold – drinking beer and socialising. It was well worth it.<\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interview with Mia Torpe Back in the 70s Mia and a few others decided to create an eco-village in a suburb of Stockholm. She still lives there, and is today environmental manger for a large housing organization. Her experience is invaluable for all would-be Intentional Community residents. Here are some highlights of the advice she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-envisioning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}