New Standard of Living Blossoms at 'EcoVillage'

Scalia, for one, was tired of neighborhoods where people woke up, zipped off to work, zipped back and never interacted. The drone of suburbia got to him.

"There's no connection to what's going on outside their home," Scalia said. "It just doesn't seem like a healthy life."

The other day, Scalia and his wife joined others in Phill and Lily Thomas's home for a potluck dinner of organic pasta and grilled vegetables.

Neighbors walked through the unlocked front door and greeted the others with hugs.

"You've got people here you can trust," Phill Thomas said.

Almost all of EcoVillage's residents had shown up. Grady O'Rear was in the basement, seated in a pint-size chair next to the Thomases' 4-year-old, Henry, who was playing on the computer. Upstairs, Mikula and other neighbors were talking about cicadas. And all around, people seemed to be having a good time.

The potluck dinner is a weekly affair. It shifts to a different home every time, but that arrangement is temporary. Plans at EcoVillage call for a 5,000-square-foot common house where dinner will be available every night during the workweek. There will also be an area for child care, guest rooms, a commercial kitchen and community mailboxes.

What the plans don't call for is an outsider to oversee things. Ever. There is no hired firm, or even a part-time office worker, to make sure EcoVillage runs smoothly. The residents do almost all of the work themselves, taking charge of facility maintenance, land stewardship and the EcoVillage budget. (Each household pays an annual assessment of $1,200.) Residents must belong to at least one of eight governing committees.

The result of the social and financial covenants is a lot of togetherness. Neighbors know one another well. But that's the idea, said Tena Meadows O'Rear.

"It's not that we don't have private lives," she said. "The time we spend together has a whole different quality to it. We're trying to intentionally develop relationships that feel good to everyone."