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On the Edge of Utopia
Utopias have a bad history.
Describing a housing estate in a small town in Tipperary as Utopian might seem
like a bad joke except that the same development was awarded a Gold Medal at
the UN backed International Awards for Liveable Communities (Livcom) in
December.
Cloughjordan Eco-Village is
being developed by Sustainable
Projects Ireland Ltd. (SPIL), founded in Dublin in 1999 with the aim of
creating a model community as a template for future development.
“Utopianism at its best is about
imagining a future that may look very different from the present ... not in an
airy fairy way but in a way that robustly begins to plan for such a future”
according to Peadar Kirby, one of the first people to move into the estate in
2009.
Cloughjordan is that future. The project was launched in
2000 and has reached the point where it looks and feels like a living
community. 53 homes have been constructed on a 67 acre site just
off the main street. A further 30 sites have been sold with 50 sites left to sell.
There is a
community woodland, a 12 acre farm, a district energy facility, a solar park,
research gardens and allotments, a 32 bed eco-hostel and an eco-enterprise
unit.
This has taken 15 years and
cost over €7,000,000, only a fraction of which has come from the state. This
estate was built by a community, some of whom actually built their own homes.
I spent 24 hours in
Cloughjordan being shown around by Davie Philip, a relentlessly forthright
spokesperson for the project and a passionate advocate for the
‘oneness’ of community.
Cloughjordan
(pop.850) is a settler town, Norman first and Cromwellian second. It was a
vibrant market town in the 1800s, boosted by the arrival of the railway in
1864. By 2000 it was in decline, it’s importance as a rural transport hub
eliminated by changing demographics.
It
wears its history like a threadbare greatcoat, its wide streets and uniform
terraces exaggerating the sense of a town that has outlived its purpose. The
Eco-Village bought a derelict pub and demolished it, punching a hole in the
streetscape to give access to a site it purchased in 2005.
It’s
not the best preparation for the shocking contrast between the old and the new.
The Eco-Village has ripped up the old order, opting for a cluster model that is
reminiscent of a clachan.
The
shock is as immediate as it is visual. Sharp contrasts in house-type, scale and
material are accentuated by the openness of the site. There are no walls or
gates. Paths and play-areas take precedence over cars.
It
doesn’t look like a housing estate, in fact it doesn’t look like Ireland at
all. The effect is deliberate. “We
wanted make an impact and 15 houses made of sticks in a field was not going to
influence anyone” Philip tells me.
Architecture
isn’t the only thing that separates Cloughjordan old and new. The Eco-Village represents a very
different way of creating a community.
“Cloughjordan
is about a bunch of people coming to a location with the intention of creating
a community” says Bruce Darrell who has been involved with the project for 8
years. He spent a year and a half building a house with his neighbour and moved
in 3 years ago with his wife Morag and daughter Leontien.
“There
is no utopianism here, there are no absolutes. This project was set up 15 years
ago and it maintains a huge amount of the ethos of the original vision ... but
that matters less to some people, who may just see it as a nice place to live.”
Gregg
Allen spent ten years managing the development and agrees that the project has
become less utopian and more like an estate. But this not your average suburban
estate tacked on to a rural town.
It
is a self-organising community and everything is done differently. There
are around 130 members of the
community, 25 of whom are children. Life is
regulated by a system of monthly meetings and work groups.
Pat Malone, a
man of intense humanity, is responsible for growing food for all of them.
“Families pay up front for fresh produce which is placed in a central depot for
people to take what they need. There is no distribution or retail system to
distort the coast of high quality, organic produce.”
There is a
problem, however. The project is about 30 families short of the critical mass
needed to sustain this type of food production. The farm doesn't generate an
adequate wage and Malone, and his family, depend on income assistance to get
by.
“Research
shows that it takes a population of about 2,000 to maintain a fully viable and
varied local economy" adds Joe Fitzmaurice, the community baker. He
produces 1,000 loaves a week, 160 or so go to members and the bakery is
viable because it has a wider
market and a distribution network.
The project
has been severely effected by the crash of 2007. There are people who want to
live here but can’t sell their houses or can’t get mortgages. 25 people have
sites but can’t build and 15 more have paid deposits on sites.
The
purchase and servicing of the site required a lot of capital, which was raised
through the sale of sites to members. 50 sites remain unsold and this is
causing all sorts of difficulties.
Conflict
management is a key part of the monthly meetings. “Tensions exist in every
community” Kirby tells me “and you wouldn’t have a living community if you
didn’t have tensions. It’s how you manage them as a community that matters.”
“Other
eco-villages have said that the main points of contention are pets, parenting
and parking” Julie Lockett adds, laughing, “but they don’t really apply here.”
The flashpoints usually involve expectations; people have different ideas of
what they want this place to be and these have to be resolved through negotiation.”
The
same sort of pragmatism can be seen in the approach to education. It is a
secular community and religion is a personal matter. Access to
secular education is a priority but it will have to wait according to Lockett.
“We have set
up an eco-village, we’ve organised the build of our own houses, people are
getting their businesses up and running ... you can’t radicalise every area of
your life simultaneously, there’s not enough hours in the day.”
And
there are bigger problems. There is a skewed demographic in the estate because
of the dependence on sites sales and the combined cost of building a home,
anything between €180,000 and €300,000
Many members simply can’t
afford to live there. Social and affordable housing is regarded as a priority
and frustration with local and national government is apparent. “SPIL has
always been treated by Tipperary County Council as a standard developer” says
Allen.
The Liv Com Award may
change that and may help to get the population up to a sustainable level. It’s
established that this project is not about alternative lifestyles or some kind
of futurology.
This is about technology
assisted community systems that are being rolled out in major urban centers
across the globe and projects like this need a proactive and imaginative
approach by local authorities and statutory agencies in partnership with
communities, like the one adopted in Vauban/Freiburg on the French/German
border.
None of it matters without
jobs according to Pa Finucane who owns Django’s Hostel. “You can talk about
sustainability ‘til you’re blue in the face but, if you don’t have a
livelihood, it’s not sustainable.”
Tourism linked to education
is the mainstay of the hostel. Educating people in the benefits of living in a
sustainable community is a core activity and an important source of income.
The potential of web-based
eco-enterprise is personified by Una Johnston, an event manager who works
Stateside mainly.
“I can work
from anywhere as long as I’ve got a laptop, broadband and access to a VPN. The
fact that there is fibre optic cable underground means that I have got really
good quality IT systems. I don’t commute. I work from here.”
Self-starting
eco-enterprises got a boost with the opening this week of an enterprise unit
(funded by Enterprise Ireland, North Tipperary County Council and Enterprise
Board) in which Anthony Kelly and Ben Whelan have created the first ‘Fab Lab’
or digital fabrication laboratory in Ireland.
“This is the last leg of
the Eco-Village story; people have places to live, we have the farm and people
now have a place to work” says Kelly. Resilience, optimism and determination
characterise this community. They will finish this model village, this “beacon”
of community living.
Utopia hangs in the
balance, however. Will the new Cloughjordan go the way of the old Cloughjordan?
Or does this experiment in sustainable living in the heart of rural Ireland
offer new ways of maintaining old communities. Only time will tell and time is
running out, fast.