h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've been thinking recently about communal living, and like most people the first thought that comes to mind is a bunch of scruffy vegetarian hippies living in tents in a field, growing their own food and knitting their own clothes. But this is just one of many stereotypes that lazy media perpetuate surely? Obviously there will be those sorts, but it doesn't have to be that way. In the same way that there are indeed big bellied, bushy bearded ale drinkers, it doesn't have to be like that, there's other contributing factors that lead to the stereotype, usually around food.

If you go back fifty years to the sixties, just over a generation really, you'll find communal living everywhere. And not the hippies practicing free love. There was the extended family. A lot of the elements of communal living could be seen in the family, shared resources, shared labour and company.

Families would often borrow lawnmowers, step ladders, cups of sugar, the odd fiver from each other. They were the first point of call if you needed a hand building a shed, painting a room, babysitting the kids. Apart from not actually living together, the extended family was actually very similar to communal living.

These days though families are farther flung. Spread of jobs and ease of travel has meant that people move around a lot more. If I needed a hand building a shed I'd be hard pushed to get family to help. Mine are over 200 miles away and the in laws are over 600 miles away. But in a small way they've been replaced by friends. I may struggle to get my brother over without a few weeks planning, but I know of at least half a dozen friends I could get over in half an hour if needed with just a phone call.

Thing is though, even if friends now fill in the core concepts of communal living, like family I still don't personally want to live with them. This is, I think, the aspect of communal living that puts a lot of people off. I've never lived in a shared house and having seen some of them, and listened to tales of others, I'm not sure I'd ever want to. But should this exclude me, and all the others like me from communal living? Is it possible to have communal living without the actual living together part of it?

I think it is if we bring our idea of communal living into the 21st century. More and more people are looking at self-sufficiency, but paradoxically it's not as easy by yourself. But with some friends from your extended family to share the farming, and produce, it gets a lot easier. Tending vegetables for ten isn't much more work than tending for two, but there's more hands to help. Brewing four gallons of beer doesn't take much longer than brewing one. Baking five loaves of bread doesn't take much longer than baking one.

Can this be done though, can we modernise communal living? Well, yes. Lots of people flat or house share, and already lots of big old houses have been converted into flats. People are in effect living communally, but without much benefit other than shared rent. Why not take this a bit further and bring in other elements? Why not, instead of having either the garden belonging to the downstairs flat, or cut up into small pieces, why not have it as a communal allotment? The big old houses tended to have big gardens too, if they've not been built on, and these would be ideal for supplementing the fresh veg for a house.

This still leaves that sharing a house problem. Some people like to share a house or a flat, but I'm not one of them. I like to know I can wander around in the morning without worrying who sees me. I like to know I can get an early night without worrying that my housemate will be watching telly until dawn. So the question is, how can these two lifestyles mix? The question really is, why can't they? Why can't a group of friends buy adjoining houses and knock through the gardens to have a communal allotment? Convert adjoining garages into a shared kitchen/diner and lounge/hall. Each family having its own house and home, but also having the communal aspects too.

This could also be taken further, in planning and regeneration. I recently walked past the site of some old terraces in Manchester, they'd mostly been knocked down, but from the three blocks of back to backs, two rows were still standing facing each other. The two outside, outward facing rows of houses had been knocked down, but the ones that backed onto them were still standing, and I thought that those house could now have a decent garden if they extended back. And those two rows remaining, well between them there was a good sized area that could be used for a communal garden and allotment. In the same way that you get squares in London with a communal central garden, you could do that here with a terraced street. You could, while regenerating the “North” create areas of communal green spaces, neighbours helping each other become self-sufficient. You could bring the commune into the 21st century, and into the city.

What you're looking for is a cooperative (co-op). I've never experienced one in situ, but I've read about them and seen the occasional news story about them. For instance, there's a cooperative grocery/pantry store in New York (iirc) that's currently battling over whether or not to stock Israeli goods over the Palestinian situation. This was featured on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Other than this political dust up, they normally seem to get along and benefit from the arrangement. Basically, every member of the co-op has to put in 4 hours per week working in the store.

Farming communities also often form co-ops often for their farming supplies and equipment.


I have also seen just the sort of community vegetable garden you're describing created on formally derelict property in inner city neighborhoods.

There's a few food co-op stores and co-op groups around here in Manchester (the home of the co-op movement) and there's something called Sew and Grew Everywhere up in Scotland that do a part of this.

But they all seem to be doing one small part of it, never going the whole hog as it were.

Unfortunately, communal green spaces don't work in practice - you end up with nobody using them at all.

the problem with communal green spaces is that generally it ends up with one person doing all the work or people arguing about who should get what. unfortunately when it comes down to it unless you were very good friends from the off set I think it would end up causing more upset than sharing.

There are some churches in North Carolina that own land. They use it to grow vegetables, then either sell them cheaply or give them away at harvest.

It's nice, because the frustrated farmers get something to do, and everybody gets food.