Picture by permission from Ross Chapin Pocket Neighborhoods: Project: Greenwood Avenue Cottages Architect: Ross Chapin Architects Developer: The Cottage Company. This picture is a representation of the two homes adjacent to the alley in the Aurora Dwelling Circle.

New Earth Living LLC is a housing development company and general contractor committed to creating a new model for living that fosters social connection, affordability and a small ecological footprint!

These micro-communities are designed to foster interaction among residents and make it easy for neighbors to share resources and live happier, simpler, less resource-dependent lives. Residents can participate in the design of common spaces and the customization of their individual homes. email: coz@newearthliving.net  607-327-1081

We are currently designing the homes of the Aurora Dwelling Circle to incorporate many of the principles from the book: Pocket Neighborhoods,  by Ross Chapin: www.pocket-neighborhoods.net

Just beyond the porches of the three new homes are small private gardens creating peaceful personal spaces for residents to nurture and enjoy.

Written by Rachel Stern Ithaca Journal rstern@gannett.com

Instead of blue jeans and green Greater Ithaca Activities Center Conservation Corps T-shirts, Susan Cosentini thought they should wear red capes and blue shorts like Superman.

She suggested this wardrobe change to eight 13-year-olds who were taking apart two old barns on Aurora Street Monday afternoon. The barns, which Cosentini owns, were being dismantled and salvaged to make way for three new sustainable homes to be built on-site.

“Basically, you people are the change agents in the world,” she said to the group of students. “I will be dead when the benefit of all this starts to happen, so hopefully you and your children will benefit from it. By working here today, you are saving the world.”

Finger Lakes ReUse teamed up with the GIAC Summer Conservation Corps to take down the barns and salvage the building materials. Then, Cosentini’s New Earth Living LLC will build The Aurora Dwelling Circle in place of the barns.

The dwelling circle will be made up of one three-bedroom unit and two two-bedroom units, Cosentini said. The theme throughout the whole project, she said, is sustainability.

“We are recycling the materials from the barns, and then using the space to build houses that will hardly use any fossil fuels whatsoever to heat and cool,” she said. “Almost (all) of the landscape will be edible, people will share resources. This is going to be the new paradigm.”

Monday afternoon the sound of hammers, wood falling and nail guns came from behind 523 N. Aurora St. Dressed in blue jeans, boots, goggles and green gloves, 13-year-old Francesca Merrick forced a long nail out of a piece of wood with a crowbar.

Alongside Merrick, P.J. Rausch-Moran struck a nail with a hammer, then flipped the hammer over and pulled the nail out. The members of GIAC’s Summer Conservation Corps were working to de-nail the wood from the barn so that it can be reused. Cosentini paid FingerLakes ReUse for the demolition work. The nonprofit community organization will take most of the wood and sell it at the reuse center for 50 to 90 percent below the price of newer lumber, said Diane Cohen, executive director.

“Doing it this way reduces the carbon footprint because we have pulled it out and had some community energy to process it and make it ready for resale,” she said. “This is locally produced material, it is being sustainably harvested and so it reduces trucking.”

And it is fun.

Merrick, a student at Lehman Alternative Community School, said she cannot wait to see what the site looks like when it is finished. Though it is hot out and the work is tough, Merrick said she is having a great time.

“It is awesome,” she said. “It is hard work, but it is totally worth it. It is so rewarding and satisfying especially when there is a really hard nail and you can just bang it out and you realize that you just saved a whole pile of wood.”

The students started deconstructing last week and Cohen said she hopes the barns will be completely taken down and salvaged by the end of the week. Then, it will be time for Cosentini to turn the open space into a smaller version of EcoVillage at Ithaca, she said.

A pedestrian walkway will take the place of where a van and trampoline sat on Monday afternoon. The walkway will lead to the new units. Cosentini said the units will be priced between $160,000 and $250,000.

The grounds will have organic gardens, including fruit and nut trees, along with a root cellar, water catchments and will be in downtown Ithaca, so reliance on a car will be greatly reduced, she said.

“When we get rid of the car, we lower our carbon output and then reduce greenhouse gas emissions – which is huge,” she said. “People will be engaged and related in a powerful way.”

Cosentini said she hopes to have residents set in place by the fall, and then break ground in the spring. From there, the building should take about nine months, she said.

In the meantime, the students will continue to de-nail, hammer away and get the wood ready to be reused.

“It all starts with what these kids are doing,” Cosentini said. “They are saving the world with this work.”

To volunteer at Finger Lakes ReUse, emailnina@fingerlakesreuse.org or call 257-9699. For more information on The Aurora Dwelling Circle, email coz@newearthliving.net, call 327-1081, or visit newearthliving.net.

“The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.” “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”

Gilding cites the work of the Global Footprint Network, an alliance of scientists, which calculates how many “planet Earths” we need to sustain our current growth rates. G.F.N. measures how much land and water area we need to produce the resources we consume and absorb our waste, using prevailing technology. On the whole, says G.F.N., we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. “Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,” says Gilding.

This is not science fiction. This is what happens when our system of growth and the system of nature hit the wall at once. While in Yemen last year, I saw a tanker truck delivering water in the capital, Sana. Why? Because Sana could be the first big city in the world to run out of water, within a decade. That is what happens when one generation in one country lives at 150 percent of sustainable capacity.

“If you cut down more trees than you grow, you run out of trees,” writes Gilding. “If you put additional nitrogen into a water system, you change the type and quantity of life that water can support. If you thicken the Earth’s CO2 blanket, the Earth gets warmer. If you do all these and many more things at once, you change the way the whole system of planet Earth behaves, with social, economic, and life support impacts. This is not speculation; this is high school science.”

It is also current affairs. “In China’s thousands of years of civilization, the conflict between humankind and nature has never been as serious as it is today,” China’s environment minister, Zhou Shengxian, said recently. “The depletion, deterioration and exhaustion of resources and the worsening ecological environment have become bottlenecks and grave impediments to the nation’s economic and social development.” What China’s minister is telling us, says Gilding, is that “the Earth is full. We are now using so many resources and putting out so much waste into the Earth that we have reached some kind of limit, given current technologies. The economy is going to have to get smaller in terms of physical impact.”

We will not change systems, though, without a crisis. But don’t worry, we’re getting there.

We’re currently caught in two loops: One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability. At the same time, improved productivity means fewer people are needed in every factory to produce more stuff. So if we want to have more jobs, we need more factories. More factories making more stuff make more global warming, and that is where the two loops meet.

But Gilding is actually an eco-optimist. As the impact of the imminent Great Disruption hits us, he says, “our response will be proportionally dramatic, mobilizing as we do in war. We will change at a scale and speed we can barely imagine today, completely transforming our economy, including our energy and transport industries, in just a few short decades.”

We will realize, he predicts, that the consumer-driven growth model is broken and we have to move to a more happiness-driven growth model, based on people working less and owning less. “How many people,” Gilding asks, “lie on their death bed and say, ‘I wish I had worked harder or built more shareholder value,’ and how many say, ‘I wish I had gone to more ballgames, read more books to my kids, taken more walks?’ To do that, you need a growth model based on giving people more time to enjoy life, but with less stuff.”

Sounds utopian? Gilding insists he is a realist.

“We are heading for a crisis-driven choice,” he says. “We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter. We may be slow, but we’re not stupid.”

Pale Blue Dot – Animation from Ehdubya on Vimeo.

This all we got! One precious perfect little home

If everyone on Earth lived as Americans do, we would need 5 Earths to sustain us.

In fact, we only have this ONE perfect little blue miracle we live on.

The ™ initiative asserts that through our combined efforts, intention and creativity we can reduce the ecological footprint of 5 people or 5 households down to that of one person or one household.

The aim is that all 7 billion of us, as well as generations to come, live respectfully and sustainably on this precious, staggeringly beautiful planet.

Resource sharing – The Program

THE ™ PROGRAM galvanizes residents and the larger community around social equity and sustainable practices to reduce consumption and collective ecological impact. The name for the program was chosen as a call to action and a reminder if everyone on the planet lived as Americans do, we would need 5 planets to support all 6.8 billion people. We only have one planet.

New Earth Living has created the 5-2-ONE initiative as a framework for all its Dwelling Circle communities. The initiative calls for at least 5 households to reduce their consumption to that of one household.

5-2-ONE sets a finite physical goal, and creates a shared intention among residents. In the physical realm, dwelling circle homes use 1/5^th the land, 1/5^th the energy, and 1/5^th the “stuff” by building close, designing tight, and sharing joyfully. In the social realm, 5-2-ONE is a reminder to be conscious about consumption, to share conservation techniques among neighbors, to continually renew our sustainability commitment and to infuse playfulness into the great task of our time: living within the limits of our exquisite planet so that ALL 6.7 billion of us may simply live.

The paradigm of the “nuclear family” as the optimum “consumption unit” has created a culture where every household now owns goods and operates equipment that might easily be shared. e.g. cars, lawn and garden tools, and home appliances. The Dwelling Circle encourages sharing to significantly impact overall sustainability, while still allowing individuals access to the things which are expected as part of a modern lifestyle. The possibilities we create for increased sharing will create corresponding reductions in the resource extraction, energy use, carbon emissions and waste associated with goods production.

With the goal of reducing the footprint of 5 households to that of one, Dwelling Circles will provide common facilities and the means for multiple households to be accountable for shared tools and equipment. With a larger number of people responsible for an object, we anticipate an added benefit. It is more likely that the group will be able to purchase more durable objects for their use, and have or develop the skills to maintain and repair those objects, so as to maximize their useful lifespans.

Commitments to reduce use of resources, share goods and labor, and to advance inclusivity in decision making and in financial considerations require a focus on community communication skills. New Earth Living has not overlooked that component of the emerging paradigm. In our comprehensive model for living, communication is an essential component of the social dimension.

Susan Cosentini and Rob Morache at the communal garden of the Aurora Dwelling Circle.

The Aurora Dwelling Circle
(ADC) brings the principals of
EcoVillage to downtown Ithaca.
Susan Cosentini, of Cosentini Construction and New Earth Living
is at the helm of  ADC, a pilot project located
at 519-523 N. Aurora St. She will receive $25,000,
a portion of the federal grant, for energy modeling
and monitoring equipment .
Cosentini expects the groundbreaking
for the pilot project, with a total estimated cost
of $800,000, to happen in late summer or early
fall.
As the founder and owner of New Earth
Living, as well as the developer of the ADC and
future dwelling circles, Cosentini is thrilled.
“Dwelling circles are small, urban eco-villages
of five to eight households, supporting neighbor
relationships and resource sharing, while
respecting privacy and individuality,” she
explains. Dwelling Circles offer complete, individual
dwelling units, with shared indoor and outdoor
spaces for social gatherings, recreation,
and other uses such as a bike garage, workshop,
yard and garden, root cellar, basement storage
area and a large kitchen and entertainment area
available for community dinners.
One of eight advisors on New Earth Living’s
board is James Howard Kunstler, an expert in
suburban and urban development and peak oil,
as well as the author of “The Geography of
Nowhere” and “The Long Emergency.” “New
Earth Living is doing a great job of re-thinking
the way we live in the U.S.A. as the fiasco of suburbia
becomes more and more self-evidently
crazy,” he says.
Riane Eisler, another New Earth Living board
member, is a social scientist and the bestselling
author of “The Chalice and the Blade” and “The
Real Wealth of Nations.” “This paradigm shifting,
comprehensive approach to living offers a
new model for people to live in partnership with
each other and the earth,” she says.
The ADC was born last summer during a conversation
between Cosentini and Rob Morache,
designer for New Earth Living and president of
New Earth Strategies, a consulting firm providing
design and development planning for
builders and developers. “We are really trying to
make a project that gives higher density development,”
says Morache, “but we didn’t want
higher density development to overwhelm the
neighborhood.”
Morache explains that the North Aurora Street
site comprised of two adjacent lots, one with a
house on it and the other empty. “The existing
house will be spruced up, renovated, and be part
of the ADC,” he says. “A traditional two-family
house, with a unit on the first floor and a unit on
the second floor, will be built on the empty lot.”
Two barns are also on the site. They will be dismantled
by Finger Lakes Reuse and replaced by a
three–story, two-family structure and four
garages that face an alley. Above the garages will
be a three-bedroom unit and a two-bedroom unit.
Cosentini says that the ADC will be ultra-energy-
conservative, from building and mechanical
materials, to location and site planning. And the
concept will also move beyond its footprint. A
district bio-mass boiler will service all four
homes in the pilot project, as well as two adjacent
homes that are not part of the ADC.
The ADC buildings will include soy foam insulation
in the walls and cellulose in the ceilings,
windows will have soy foam insulated fiberglass
frames, foundations will use 40 percent fly-ash (a
recycled waste product from coal burning), countertops
will be solid recycled plastic (with alternate
green options) and flooring materials will be
natural fiber carpet on recycled cotton pad,
ceramic tile, and pre-finished hardwood.
Also part of the DNA of the ADC is that member-
owners will participate in what is called “The
Listening Workshop” as part of the initial gathering
of the circle. “In the age of cheap oil,” says
Cosentini, “we have been able to isolate ourselves
from each other, but in turn are losing our communication
abilities. The workshop will focus on
communication skills that can allow us to live
closely together.”

What if instead of information transfer; communication meant being sensitive and receptive in conversation?

What if instead of a geographical area or like-minded people; community meant a group of people that are sensitive and receptive to each other?

We have designed a 4 hour workshop that demonstrates and teaches this skill.

Communication is the basis of Community. Community is the core of Resiliency and Resiliency is at the heart of Sustainability

“It is the the opportunities for informal interactions that allow people to get to know their neighbors, and it is these interactions that provide the roots for true community to flourish” Sarah Susanka in her forward to Pocket Neighborhoods by Ross Chapin

The Conscious Communication Workshop:

Riane Eisler: Eminent social scientist.  Bestselling author of  The Chalice and the Blade and The Real Wealth of Nations and president of the Center for Partnership Studies.  “I enthusiastically support New Earth Living and the Dwelling Circle concept, this paradigm shifting, comprehensive approach to living offers a new model for people to live in partnership with each other and the earth!”