Enright Ridge Urban Ecovillage

The Enright Ridge Urban Eco-village, Inc. (ERUEV) is a registered 501(c)(3) organization located in the East Price Hill neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. ERUEV also operates in tandem with Imago Earth Center and Community Earth Alliance. The Enright Ridge Urban Eco-village encompasses Enright Avenue, Terry Street, McPherson Avenue, and Wells Street. There are multiple gardens that are dispersed throughout the block either as their own lots or in member's backyards, there is also a greenhouse that acts as the distribution center for member's shares. As of 2007, ERUEV became registered members with the Fellowship for Intentional Community.

History

ERUEV was created through its parent organization, Imago Earth, in 2004 by Jim and Eileen Schenk and fifteen other residents in the area. Jim and Eileen called a meeting and invited 29 neighbors to attend to discuss creating an eco-village on Enright Avenue. During the meeting, the participants began by breaking into three groups,: the deck group, kitchen group, and living room group.  Three questions were asked to the groups, “What does an eco-village mean to me?" "Does it make sense for Enright Avenue?" and “What an eco-village would mean on Enright Avenue”.  From these of these items each person chose 4 areas that “they felt important and might be interested in working on.” These areas included, 1) Hiking trail, 2) Community meals, 3) Community inclusion such as weekly potluck and monthly newsletter, 4) Marketing Enright Ridge as an eco-village which will improve homeownership, property values, and bring people interested in in the eco-village idea onto the street. In addition, the immediate tasks involved to make ERUEV possible was to;

1. Declare Enright Avenue an eco-village, Enright Ridge Urban Eco-village.
2. Setting up task groups to begin the process of developing the eco-village.
3. Keeping communication open with all residents.

Participatory Process

In order to involve the rest of the neighborhood, the group developed a concept called Treasure mapping, in which a 4’ x 4’ plywood box was made for residents to submit their responses in terms of developing the eco-village. The eco-village runs along a ¾ mile long street so the committee divided the street into 8 areas, and had “ambassadors” for each area, whose job it was to pass out fliers about the event to get people to come out.  The box was put on the back of a truck along with two tables and taken ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­to an area, unloaded the tables, put the box on one and magazines, markers, scissors, tape, etc. on the other table, materials that people could cut out and put on the box to express what they wanted to see happen in each of these four areas: Families in the eco-village, Greening the eco-village, Housing in the eco-village and Marketing the eco-village.

After assessing all of the responses, a comment submitted by Thomas Berry would set the tone for the Eco-village. He said, "“Developers see human needs and desires as primary; environmentalists see the Earth community as primary. Developers expect nature to adapt to human activity; environmentalists ask humans to adapt to nature. Developers, in general, exhibit a low sensitivity to the concerns of the Earth community; environmentalists are driven by a painfully high sensitivity to other beings.”

From this exercise they developed a Housing Task Force, Communications Task Force, the Ecological Green Group (EGG), and Marketing .

Housing Task Force

Housing in the eco-village is one of the most ecological aspects of being environmentally friendly. Instead of starting with virgin land and virgin forests to build the homes, they wanted to utilize the existing neighborhood they were living in. The housing committee has focused on purchased houses that are foreclosed on or otherwise would possibly be torn down, rehabbed them and sold them to homeowners, while keeping a few to rent.

Communications Task Force

The Communications Task Force has two focuses: Firstly, to keep people informed in the eco-village about what is happening, because there are a lot of people not directly involved with the eco-village, it is a way to keep them informed and comfortable that there is not an attempt to pull the wool over their eyes. This is done primarily by a monthly four page newsletter that is handed out by the ambassadors. The second focus is on the broader community. This focus is important in terms of serving a model for a way to rejuvenate our cities, make them more livable while also helping to preserve the planet.  Since we believe that humans need to stay clustered in order to preserve places for other species, we need models for making our cities sustainable. This committee keeps up the eco-village website, gives presentations about it, and welcomes new people who move to ERUEV.

Ecological Green Group (EEG)

The Ecological Green Group is focused on educating people in the eco-village on how to be ecologically oriented. They do articles in the newsletter and supply a Pathfinder for people to use to assess sun availability for solar applications and gardening. The pathfinder encourages people to put photovoltaic cells on their homes to generate electricity.

Marketing Committee

The Marketing Committee worked to advertise the houses available in the eco-village.  The primary ways were to host a yearly house tour of the eco-village and second, to offer monthly tours of the eco-village.

ERUEV Today

Over the years new people have moved to the eco-village including many young families. The Marketing Committee ceased, and the Communications Committee took over many of their tasks. In 2009, a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program was started. The CSA uses backyards and lots rather than a farm. It hires local urban farmers and volunteers and provides organically grown food grown in the neighborhood. The CSA has written and published a book called, “Starting Your Urban CSA, A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Community-Supported Agriculture Project in your Urban Neighborhood.”

ERUEV now has over a third of residents involved in the eco-village, about a third open, and another third indifferent to the ecological aspect of the eco-village, but open to the positive changes that have taken place.

Thomas Berry said, “We must now reinvent the human as species within the community of life species.” The goal within the eco-village is to reinvent their community, and to do it as a model for other neighborhoods. We are in a time of serious Earth changes, it is critical that we quickly reinvent ourselves, and to do it in the urban setting.  Enright Ridge Urban Eco-village is a demonstration of one possible way of doing this.