Page 11 - C.A.L.L. #27 - Summer 2006

KALEIDOSCOPE
The Communitarian Scene from all Over and Under
Compiled (and partly translated) by Joel Dorkam

The current trend in intentional communities appears to be urban rather than rural,
although quite a few seem to be experimenting with some kind of mixture, like half
tea, half coffee .... A recent caption in Communities #129, most of which is dedicated
to just that topic, caught my attention: "A Home-Grown Ecovillage on our Street".
If this doesn't deserve the oxymoron first prize I no longer know what does. Anyway it turns out to be, like so
many other arrangements, a kind of compromise between mommy and daddy, namely city-born Eileen and
rural-born Jim Shenk. Well, good luck and godspeed to both of you folks!

A Home-Grown Ecovillage on Our Street by Jim Schenk

The seeds of Enright Ridge Eco-Village actually In 1978 Eileen and I founded Imago, a nonprofit
began 31 years ago as a compromise between my educational organization in Price Hill. Our idea

wife Eileen, who was city born, was to look at how we would live if
and myself, a native of a small we held the Earth and its people as
rural town. We struggled to find a sacred, and offer workshops and
home that would nourish both of conferences about sustainability.
our souls. I wanted a Imago eventually purchased eight

neighborhood that valued green acres of wooded area about a
living, with protected land, quarter mile down the street from
organic food, resource our house on Enright Avenue, and
conservation, alternative energy, began an outdoor Earth center
and cooperative relationships which helps 10,000 school children

with happy children and older annually connect with the natural
people. Eileen supported these world.
same values, but insisted that the
urban neighborhood she lived in was the perfect In 1993, 15 residents of Price Hill came together
location. She pointed out an urban environment to look at how Imago might take a step toward

offered the best chance for creating a village-like actually walking its talk. We decided to develop
community because of the numbers of people a model for revitalizing a transitioning
there with proximity to each other, public neighborhood into an ecological neighborhood.
transportation and options for employment. So With suburban sprawl destroying huge tracts of

we moved to a dead-end street in Cincinnati’s land, we concluded that the human population
Price Hill neighborhood. While Enright Avenue is would be more beneficially located in urban
a half-mile street on a ridge surrounded by 200- areas.
plus acres of woods, it’s only minutes from
downtown Cincinnati and our places of work.

Reprinted with permission from Communities magazine, a quarterly publication about intentional communities and
cooperative living in North America. Sample US$6; subscription US$20.00. store.ic.org.

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