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Start research

Research is an important step for starting to setup your own community. There are pioneers out there in the world who have already been doing it for years. There is already a lot of technology, social structures and systems figured out along the way. That said the downside is that very little of this information can be found online, a lot of it is in the minds of the older generation. Slowly fading away.

Visit existing communities.

We highly recommend to visit other communities in your area to learn from their expertise. They have years of knowledge, mistakes, tryouts prototypes and they are often very aware of local conditions. Which trees grow, what are the challenges, how water flows etc. Ecovillage (GEN) is a good place to find them. But it can be challenging to visit many communities, thats why we made this chapter for you, we went there and made videos about it. This gives a glimpse of how some communities run and what's going on in their daily life.

Houses, vegetables, technology

Visiting communities is a good way to understand fully operational systems, once you see one running that is been around for a few years it's kinda magical to see all the details and structures they thought about. However inspiration and research can also come from individual actions, like alternative ways to build houses, what materials to use and how to construct them. Or how to grow food, visit farms, vegetables gardens etc. And how to manage energy infrastructure, drop by at a windmill or talk with a solar guy. The main point here is to keep your eyes open and try to learn from all the things that could be implemented in a community.

Watch online content

One of the main things we aim for is to document everything clearly online. So you can gain more knowledge in a centralised place. Besides the research videos we made there are also a few documentaries/videos we recommend you to watch and you can learn a lot from. Let us know in Discord if you have others to recommend. For now we have these:

🎥 Name	Type	Location	Lesson
Wild wild county	Video	India/USA	Make friends with your neighbours, avoid fear.
The experimental city	Video	USA	Good plans are hard to execute work without local support.
Spaceship Earth	Video	USA	Try things, but take care of your documentation.