Hello all, I am new here and wanted to introduce myself and hear y’all’s opinion on something’s I’ve been working on.
I am a multidisciplinary designer with a concentration in architecture and environmental design. Lately I’ve been researching and exploring novel approaches to organized efforts, infrastructure development, and strategic implementation. The above image is mostly an unrelated snapshot example of my past work and design approach. It utilizes 80% up-cycled transportation repair materials such as scrap road-plate steel, treated lumber, common masonry, common schedule steel pipes, and polyethylene tubing to create an expanded public transit stop which uses solar heat gain to de-ice the surrounding ground during colder months.
Currently my focus has been on complex business model design. While I can’t share much of the details yet, I will say that it interlocks with more than a dozen symbiotic business models and social governance solutions into an approximate one square mile area through 400 pages of documentation; and can serve up to 1,000 people with a minimum of 100-120 people’s maintained efforts.
Everyone here would be doing me a huge favor towards such ends by providing short feedback to a brief set of questions related to the broad-stoke lived experience of what belonging to such an effort may be like.
Questions:
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How willing are you and how willing do you believe millennials and gen-z are to relocate their life some number of hours away to participate in a funded solar punk initiative?
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How willing are you and how willing do you believe millennials and gen-z are to share a 800 square foot all seasons yurt with one other person for 5-6 years?
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How willing are you and how willing do you believe millennials and gen-z are to participate in a flexible productivity schedule which typically requires 8-24 hours of blue collar work, 8-24 hours of white collar work, 8-24 hours of learning/teaching, and 8-24 hours of leisure weekly?
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If satisfactorily completing question 2 and maintaining question 3 legally assures lifetime private residency in a 2,000 square foot passive house with no rent or mortgage, utility or repair expenses, and gives rights of first refusal to ones children; would you still be interested if it means you do not own the house on paper?
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If your only income is from a cooperative owner-operated business model which straddles a couple of symbiotic businesses and professional expertise how satisfactory would this be to you?
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How willing are you and how willing do you believe millennials and gen-z are to work towards perpetually improved labor automation by sweating approximately 8-24 hours a week for as long as it takes?
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How might your answers change if the above things together resulted in a housing addition from 2,000 square feet to as much as 4,000 square feet after 10-12 years?
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How might your answers change if you are assured direct democracy over virtually all collective efforts supported by subject experts advocacy?
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What is your first reaction to the idea that the only way for someone to be removed from their residence and the community is through reaching a 85% community-wide vote?
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How might your answers change if the above allows for relocating to another networked community with a largely similar framework and governance as may be necessary and or available?
Regarding #5: You and 80-120 people you’ve intentionally spent at least 1-2 hours a week networking with for 2 months choose to relocate to approximately one square mile of exhausted agricultural land. Land which has been acquired by the nonprofit land trust to which you have voting rights. You have 5-6 years to deploy 20-35 million dollars to improve the land in alignment to permaculture, polyculture, and solar punk principles, while also building out 4-8 start up businesses to which you have proportional share through a cooperative model and labor commitment. Admittedly aimed at the entrepreneurial minded.
Regarding #9 It is certainly more nuanced and carries stipulations beyond just a simple voting process. The primarily intent is acknowledging the necessity of protocols for both positive and negative reasons for onboarding or releasing people from the community.
A governance rabbit hole of a conversation for both of these points which is partly beyond my available bandwidth to entertain or intended scope at the moment as I respond to others here as well.
Where is this 20-35 million coming from…? That’s a decent amount for early stage startups.
I think it’d be difficult to find 100 random people with the necessary skills and motivation to do this. Maybe you can do this with a group of families from the same culture/religion? But then you’re bringing along that baggage as well.
Do you have experience living in co-ops already?
I’m not at liberty to say exactly where the funding would be coming from yet, only that it would be strategically nonprofit investments. The quantity is due in part to the broaders goal of maximizing novel production methods and diverse infrastructure access sustainably, and toward supporting underserved surrounding communities.
Sourcing the right people won’t be simple, though it also isn’t difficult. Part of the model currently in R&D is focused on leveraging existing tools in specific ways which incentivize and draw the right individuals out of the ether. Methods leverage the modern reality of distributed epistemic tribal culture affinities and innate social drives for parallel offline connections. Imagine spending 2-3 months and 1-3 hours a week getting to know your nearest professional peers quite well and the broader group fairly well before meeting in person on-site for a week before making any lasting commitments.
Is there a pilot program that’s already running?
And again, have you participated in any co-op living situations? I ask this because it’s not a simple thing to get right, and even successful ones tend to have a large transitory population. I imagine both co-working and co-living is even more difficult.
Ah sorry forgot to answer your last question. Yes, I have experience in intentional communities and governance models. Thus far the first draft of governance documentation is over 150 pages.
The subject of my post is currently under R&D and NDA. So no pilot program for the foreseeable future. I am largely looking for feedback and insights here at the moment.