Rating: 
Summary: Supurb
Review: The book contains a number of interesting, well written articles, as well as a huge amount of well organized information on communities from all over the world. As far as I can tell, you can't find this information anywhere else. It's an invaluable resource.
Rating:
Summary: Still a Great Resource Ten Years Later!
Review: When the first edition of the Communities Directory came out in 1991, I read it from cover to cover. As a member of a small community forming in Kansas, I was searching for practical information and networking links. It had come too late for us; we'd done just about everything backwards and the project went under. However, using the informative maps and charts in the directory, I was able to locate another community in the Midwest, and tried the easier way--by living first in an established community, learning from their experience.Ten years later, an enlarged edition of Communities Directory is out. I'm no longer searching for a community home, or trying to find out how to set up a land trust or incorporate as a nonprofit. Today I live in a community I helped found five years ago. But I find myself turning to the Directory to check out communities that friends and acquaintances mention that they have lived in or visited. Or to help someone who writes or visits us if they need to select a more compatible community to contact. The charts are very helpful if people know what they want. There are thirty possible pieces of information for each community, including the location, founding date, number and gender of members, the kind of leadership, how decisions are made, dietary norms, whether or not it costs to join, whether it's income sharing or not, and the community's primary purpose, etc. Maps tell you at a glance how many communities are in the state or country you are interested in, the names of those communities, and where they are. Once you have a name, you can look up the community in the alphabetical listing to learn what the community says about itself. Articles cover many aspects of founding and maintaining communities, organized into four major categories: 1) what an intentional community is; 2) the various kinds of communities including co-housing, income-sharing, student co-op, kibbutz, special groups of people such as handicapped, activists, gay, religious, etc.; 3) how to establish a community, and 4) how to deal with various problems to keep the community functional and meet members' needs. When I tell people I meet that I live in an intentional community, they usually give me a blank look. What's that? But more and more people are becoming interested in some form of cooperative living, especially young people who have experienced student cooperatives or who have encountered the communities movement in a college sociology class. For anyone who wants to know more about this trend, the Communities Directory is an invaluable resource.
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