There’s no denying it- the eco-friendly lifestyle is hotter than ever, and I’m all about it. Adorable reusable shopping bags that don’t tear as I lug my groceries the 9 long blocks to my apartment? Yes please! Sturdy reusable water bottles that I can refill whenever I want to, keeping me hydrated and saving me money at the same time? Oh yeah.

Now that it's officially “in” to be green, it’s become easier than ever to make sustainable choices that benefit our planet and its people. Case in point: communal living projects that are sprouting up around the globe.

Co-housing essentially allows residents to have their own private bedrooms while sharing spaces such as kitchens and/or dining areas. “It’s all about living healthy and happy lives without harming the planet,” says Sue Riddlestone, who co-founded BedZED in London, a community of low-energy, water-efficient homes.

Similar projects are popping up in other countries too. In 2006 Riddlestone and her co-founder Pooran Desai developed an 8,000 home eco-village in Guangzhou, China, and they’re now working on an eco-town in Bicester, England that will feature solar panels, a bio mass plant, and an eco pub.

In the US, communal living projects have appeared in Mountain View, CA (home to Google...I’m not surprised), St. Petersburg, Florida, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. Globally, Germany now boasts 545 co-housing projects- at least one in every major city. Is that awesome or what?!

Now, the big challenge is to develop projects that eco-friendly and affordable. Irena Bauman, an architect and a professor of sustainable urbanism at the University of Sheffield, notes that “these experiments are prone to becoming gated communities. The big challenge is in upscaling the models and making them mainstream.”

Editorial

Defend the Planet

Hippies had the right idea- communal living is rad

By Christina Nuñez