On The Edge of Utopia: Feature by Ciarán Walsh, Irish Inependent Weekend Magazine.

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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.