Resilient Community Models

I’ve talked before in a previous article about why community is so important and what kinds of things we need as humans to build resilience, but how helpful is that really if I don’t give you a vision for what that should look like?

I also mentioned in my article titled Skills for Resilience some of the considerations for what kinds of resources you’ll eventually need at your disposal, so with that in mind let’s look at what one ideal scenario would be like in terms of what kind of a community we might want:

Instability

First, it’s worth describing the instable nature of the world we’re living in.

I went over a bunch of related themes in my article on the broken food system, but let’s take a quick overview:

• Our food and soil quality is degrading rapidly

• The supply chain is extremely fragile with a lot of moving pieces

• The local inventory for daily necessities is low and runs on “Just in Time” philosophy

• We are perhaps more susceptible than ever to disruptions that could leave us vulnerable

These issues carry over to our material resources, money, fuel, textiles, and medicines as well.

The entire point of what I’m doing here is to make sure that you the reader are prepared when the system breaks down.

Human Needs

In order to build a community in any form, we need to address the basic needs we have as human beings. While not all of these are the typical hierarchy of needs, they are the foundations of a community as it pertains to survival and resilience:

• Food: This is a given, we can’t survive without eating!

• Water: Also a given.

• Energy: This can be electricity, firewood, gas, or thermal heat. Whatever you use to stay warm and power your systems.

• Waste Management: We need to keep our spaces clean and free of waste byproducts!

• Medicine: We need some form of medicines to keep us healthy and strong and to heal us when we get sick. Ideally this would be part of your everyday diet but having specific crops for medicinal use is always a safe bet.

• Shelter: You can’t have a community without places to live and sleep.

• People: While the odd individualist can arguably be ok without human interaction, the fact is that the vast majority of people need other people on some level, and historically there is safety in numbers.

Models

Contrary to popular belief, there are a handful of good models we can use to achieve these needs.

In my opinion, an ideal scenario would be having hundreds of slightly different models based on what works best for families or peer groups that have adapted in their own unique ways to the times.

This ideal scenario would be one where people could live near each other with relative stability and provide for all of their daily needs locally and have people nearby who will stand up for them when times get tough. People would sell, trade, borrow, or barter for goods between each other as necessary and learn skills together that will help themselves, their families, and their neighbors.

HOAg (Homeowner’s Agriculture) The first model to look at is something like an HOA (Homeowner’s Association). This model is perhaps one of the most limiting and abused models in America that started with good intentions. The idea is that in order to keep the neighborhood “nice” (Bland, consistent, free of eyesores) the people living in a certain area pay a monthly cost to have an association run the place.

The basic idea here isn’t necessarily a bad one, but in nearly every case this results in overly strict neighborhoods with petty rules that ends up making things uncomfortable for everyone.

However, I do think this model can be redeemed.

What I suggest is using the model of an HOA but with rules that either prioritize freedom or encourage resilience in the community. These could be simple things like allowing and encouraging people to plant gardens, offering classes at a community center for any of the skills of resilience, or even planting public spaces with wild foods. This creates a sense of stability and gives people what they want in a suburban life while offering a safe place to explore and learn these kinds of skills.

On top of that it would greatly benefit an HOA to provide a way for people to monetize their own businesses within the neighborhood. This not only gives an incentive for people to participate in a community economy, but it can also make living in the HOA more affordable for people who want to contribute.

So, to sum up:

• Incentivize members to learn skills and grow food together

• Encourage local commerce

• Remove restrictions

• Create public spaces that lend themselves to a resilient community

The second model to look at is people in completely independent neighborhoods (Aka, your standard neighborhood found basically everywhere else).

In your standard suburban neighborhood what can you do to build community resilience? Well, this depends more on your municipality (or township, or county). The first huge step might be to loosen zoning restrictions. There are many places (Like the small towns near me) where it is against regulation to have a garden in your front yard instead of grass for example.

A little bit of freedom in this department would go a long way toward making people within the community significantly more productive than they could be otherwise. The same goes for restrictions on having produce stands on the side of the road or planting only “approved” trees on sidewalks.

In other words, the first step is to deregulate!

If you already have that mostly taken care of (or while you’re working on it) you should be building a relationship with your neighbors. Maybe they don’t care about being stable or healthy or anything pertaining to resilience, but building a relationship goes a long way.

In some ways this is similar to the HOA model but with more freedom from the start, and rather than an association you have to deal with, it’s local government. The pro is that you can grow the community on your own terms and as big or small as your needs allow.

For example, maybe you start by getting to know just your neighbors on either side of you really well and start sharing produce with them. Down the line, maybe the guy across the street becomes friends with you and starts raising bees or quail and suddenly there’s a new food to be offered and shared.

Main points:

• Deregulate local ordinances

• Start getting to know your neighbors even if they’re hard to like

• Give your time, your knowledge, food, or tools as tokens of good will

• Stand up for them when they go through a hardship

• Start a community economy.

The next model to look at is The Compound. This is a model found all over the world throughout history and somehow, it’s just now gaining some traction here in the US.

In this model, a family or group of friends lives together on the same plot of land (in other countries this is often in a connected building or multifamily home) splitting the work and acting as a small village operation.

The advantage here is that you will likely have a good relationship already with those involved (I would not recommend doing this with strangers for a variety of reasons, it rarely works out) and if your group (or one member of your group) owns the property then you are far less limited in what you can do on it.

The main way to approach this is to first ensure that your family or friends (whoever you want involved) are on the same page as far as what they want. It does you no good to plan on something huge like this only for your family to be completely uninterested.

The next step would be to come up with a timeline and a plan to buy some property (if you don’t already own some) and start the compound on.

Beware of making things overly complex. Don’t try and start any micro-governmental structure right away unless that’s something your family and friends are into. Keep things simple, take care of the legal work and remember that communities tend to thrive with more individual liberty and not less.

The main downside is that this could be tricky if not everyone is ready to make this kind of lifestyle adjustment at the moment, and it’s otherwise very expensive to fund yourself. Land is expensive these days, so it takes a lot of commitment to start something like this.

Main takeaways:

• Talk to your tribe of people (family, found family, acquaintances, coworkers whoever it is) and make sure everyone has a similar goal in mind.

• Keep things simple and deregulated

• Come up with a timeline and plan to fund the land

• If you own it already, plan for how to get your people there.

I would love to see communities pop up all over the place like these based around shared values and experiences (the Amish have this pretty well figured out) and for communities to start having collective land trusts in order to set aside spaces specifically for resilience.

This is what I consider a beacon of hope in a changing world. There’s still time, go learn skills and build relationships! An individual or small family can only go so far on their own!

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