Community in the Covid-19 Era
By Tom Braford
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, we were already well along the path of reimagining and redesigning at Arizmendi Ecovillage as a way of addressing other endemic challenges like global warming.
Coincidentally, many of our standard physical features already put us at the standard now required in airplanes and hospitals. These include room by room, separately controlled HVAC systems with constant air quality monitoring within the dwellings, common and commercial facilities and seasonally enclosed courtyards, as well as electrostatic cleaning of make-up air.
Extra wide pathways and hallways and substantial distances between individual unit entry doors, porches and balconies also facilitate social distancing when necessary.
Things like year-round on-site food production, well-stocked common house pantries and our e-cab and freight co-op can lessen the risk of contamination from outside acquisitions and deliveries. An ecovillage network supply chain that includes rural ecovillages will limit shortages of essential items.
Socratic governance with distributed decision making and the local currency that I covered last month will add resilience.
Many senior facilities have been hard hit by the virus, but they typically lack many of these features and have healthcare workers who are themselves at risk. Our seniors will be cared for by hiring living wage co-op workers who might live on site.
Most cohousing common houses are equipped with basic first aid supplies and will now likely include ventilators, and we will have a supply of on-site produced oxygen and ozone as a source of non-toxic decontamination when needed.
The biggest advantage of community of course has always been a well-known and trusted diversity of people with a variety of skills and knowledge to share.
The clothing and fashion industry is a barrier to creating a circular economy because it is so wasteful and a big source of resource depletion and pollution. One possible solution is wearable, real time, health monitoring clothes.
We are looking for some communication assistance in launching virtual Arizmendi Community now! Contact us with your interest through our website or Facebook page.
Contact:
braford@sbcglobal.net
www.ArizmendiEcovillage.com