psypher wrote:
>...good [metaphorical] lord man! This is pretty well exactly what I
>want to start learning about. Shortly [in a couple of months] I'm
>moving out to british columbia for the express purpose of learning
>about intentional communities and how groups of people organize
>themselves - in community - in relation to one another.
Where are you moving to? (Vancouver? Calgary?) You should let us know when you get there, I'm sure some of the Seattle contigent could be persueded to take a little road trip up north for some congac and conversation. (Or beers and banter for that matter.)
>So, as someone who's interested in something similar, can you
>point me in the way of any resources which might be helpful
>[books, organizations to whome I could write - heck, anything]?
Most of my involvement has been at the most local of levels -- my own neighborhood, the establishment of its planning council, and the efforts to have it declared an urban village under the cities 1994 Comprehensive Plan. (The Fremont Urban Neighborhood Coalition (FUNC) http://www.scn.org/fremont/func/ ).
I also worked a little with Alex Steffen a couple years ago on the
publication of his (now defunct) Steelhead magazine and met a great many of
the people working on the Cascadia Project ( http://www.tnews.com/ ) through
him. Alex has a couple good articles related topics (urban/suburan
development/blight) at:
http://www.tnews.com/text/doughnuts_of_blight.html
http://www.tnews.com/text/myron_orfield's.html
There's a good on-line Library at the Community Development Society's site: http://comm-dev.org/libr01.htm
The Community Network Movement home page has some good resources as well: http://www.scn.org/ip/commnet/
And I suspect most of the techies on the list are already aware of the work
of CPSR (Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility) and their
Community Networks Working Group:
http://www.cpsr.org/program/community-nets/cnwg/cnwg.htm
Also an overview of the Seattle's Neighborhood Planning Program is at: http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/seattle/npo/npoover.htm
Hope that gives you a place to start-
-Prof. Tim