Plan for creating a sustainable community

We now have been working closely with 7 other activists on creating an Ringing Cedars Kin's Domain ecovillage here in Ontario for several months and with no doubt are gaining managerial and communicational experience. Reading experiences from other ecovillages it seems to be a common trend to go through rough times as virtually every group goes though this. For our experience major causes for this are no common vision (or different visions among the members) and a poor planning with some stages missed or jumped over. Here is a plan based on cohousing communities plan (from: Cohousing - a contemporary approach to housing ourselves) which can be helpful to some:

Getting started

• find others interested in proposal
• establish an organizing group
• agree on general goals, location, and financial expectations
• define organizational structure and decision-making procedures; draw up initial legal agreement

Preparing a Developmental Plan

• specify goals and establish priorities
• select consultants - architect, financial consultant, attorney, etc.
• identify potential sites
• formulate developmental strategy: consider concerns of officials and neighbours, residents' role, developer's role
• consider finincing options
• develop a design program
• draw up legal agreements for partnership or joint venture arrangement
• acquire site
• establish project timeline

Design and Construction Documents

• develop schematic design proposal
• complete design development
• obtain planning approvals
• secure finincing
• complete working drawings and building specifications
• obtain building permits
• solicit and negotiate construction bids
• select contractor
• finilize construction contract, loan and schedule

Construction

• monitor contracted work
• secure mortgage loans
• complete resident-built work

Move in!

As you can see it is concentrated on construction whereas this would be the least important in ecovillage plan and it also ends at moving in which also not the case with ecovillages. So for our purposes I would remove the construction stages from the plan (make it optional) and add another stage:

Develop the Vision

• continue crystallizing the common goals and objectives
• create a New Member protocol and procedure for accepting new members
• create a set of documents describing the Vision and the village
• create a long-term developmental plan
• develop finincing structure for personal and communal sustainability
  
• setup infrastructure: school, roads, possibly central electricity, hydro

In the personal field we are still working on financial sustainability. Latest news is that we are now part of the family business upgrading houses with energy-saving appliances and installing sustainable power sources. Pro Line Electric Ltd. - a company of Yulia's aunt and her husband who already have several employees and whom I have just built the website http://www.prolineelectricontario.com and Yulia is helping out with the auditing, engineering and research on sustainable and renewable energy.