Some of these communities are locationally anchored, such as the N Street Neighborhood in Davis, California, Southside Park Cohousing in Sacramento, or the dynamically lead and influential Eco Village Community in Los Angeles. Some non-residential communities are transformation-centered, such as Creative Initiative, a community that morphed into the very powerful Beyond War movement of the 70s and 80s. Some are spontaneous communities that emerged in response to an external stimulus. Or else they came into being due to the opportunistic coming together of circumstance and design. Some striking examples of this are Village Homes, a community of 240 residences in Davis, California, and the beautiful and innovative home-sharing community of nine members at the Walnut Street Cooperative in Eugene, Oregon.

Each of these, and the multitude of others that Harold observed, are defined as “collaborative communities”. Their success is dependent on the ongoing willingness of their members to assume a measure of personal responsibility for its success, to work in collaboration with other members, and to stretch beyond narrow self-interests. Members of these communities share other important traits, including:

• Personal authenticity — striving to live according to one’s personal beliefs
• Mutual trust — and the expectation that communities will be emotionally safe and be supportive of members’ personal missions and objectives
• Commitment to both the community and its processes.

It became very clear that the test of any community’s effectiveness is the degree to which the members themselves meet an array of individual and collective knowings, aspirations and needs. And that a community is, in fact, an intricate, elegant, sometimes fragile, yet beautiful, dance of interconnecting reciprocal relationships.