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Winter 2005, issue #129 “Urban Communities & Ecovillages”
As you stroll down this former city street, now a long, narrow mini-park, you spot a small boy on
a ladder harvesting guavas from a guava tree. He carries the guavas a hundred feet away to a
beautifully designed wooden kiosk that serves as a fruit stand. An elderly woman in the kiosk
enthusiastically greets him as she takes the basket and starts displaying the guavas. A young
mother helps her sell these and other locally harvested fruit to the many people passing through
the neighborhood, who often pay in a colorful local currency. Nearby you spot a long “grape-
arbor/electric vehicle shed” with rooftop solar panels in the former parking lane outside a co-op
apartment building. Tiny one-person and two-person electric vehicles belonging to co-op
residents are plugged into batteries connected to the solar panels; grapevines laded with luscious
purple grapes twine up trellises covering the back and sides of this open shed-roof structure.
Beyond the arbor/shed, two retired gentlemen play chess on a handmade curved mosaic-
encrusted cob bench in the mini-park, while further on a group of teenage boys and girls shoot
baskets on a basketball court. People pass through the park on all kinds of human-powered
vehicles: bicycles, tandem bikes, unicycles, and lightweight scooters. Older people pedal slowly
on three-wheeled bikes; the young whiz by on skateboards. The street life is rich and interactive
with pedestrians too. Most people here seem to know each other. They offer a welcoming energy
to newcomers passing through their home-grown ecovillage.
“Aha!” you say as you observe people in relation to each other, to the landscape, and to
the architecture. “So this is what it’s like to live in a healthy, sustainable neighborhood.”
Passing between two buildings, you find a long narrow greenhouse running down the
center of the block. It’s a biological “living machine,” containing a series of large, connected
water tanks filled with aquatic plants and animals, surrounded by an exquisite array of
Lois Arkin , co-founder of Los Angeles Eco-Village, is an Ecovillage Network of the Americas
(ENA) representative for the Western U.S, a board member of Global Village Institute, and
Executive Director of CRSP, the nonprofit sponsor of Los Angeles Eco-Village, where she lives
and works. Crsp at igc.org. L.A. Eco-Villagers Lara Morrison and Esfandiar Abbassi also
contributed to this article.
Pull quotes:
“Aha! So this is what it’s like to live in a healthy, sustainable neighborhood.”
Chickens, ducks, and rabbits are integrated into the nutrient cycle of the gardens.
SIDEBAR