Intentional community

An intentional community or commune is a voluntary residential community designed to foster a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork. Such communities typically promote shared values or beliefs, or pursue a common vision, which may be political, religious, utopian or spiritual, or are simply focused on the practical benefits of cooperation and mutual support. While some groups emphasise shared ideologies, others are centred on enhancing social connections, sharing resources, and creating meaningful relationships.

Some see intentional communities as alternative lifestyles. Others see them as impractical social experiments. Some see them as a natural human response to the isolation and fragmentation of modern housing, offering a return to the social bonds and collaborative spirit found in traditional village life. Others see them as ways to address problems that are seen as plaguing modern cities, such as alcohol abuse, poverty, unemployment and crime, especially when used in conjunction with emigration from industrialized countries and colonization of new lands.

The multitude of intentional communities includes collective households, cohousing communities, coliving, ecovillages, monasteries, survivalist retreats, kibbutzim, Hutterite colonies, ashrams, and housing cooperatives.

As well, planned developments such as some company towns that provided comfortable workers' housing and aspirations of a stable sober workforce, could be considered intentional communities and sometimes even spark from an aspiration for a utopia.

History

Ashrams are likely the earliest intentional communities, founded around 1500 BCE. Buddhist monasteries appeared around 500 BCE. Pythagoras founded an intellectual vegetarian commune in about 525 BCE in southern Italy.