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OCR
ECOVILLAGES Judit Farkas Ecovillages are local communities created as a conscious effort by a group of people of diverse sizes. Their inhabitants aim to create settlements that fit into their natural environment as efficiently as possible and without harming it. They believe that a means of counteracting undesirable ecological, economic, and social processes is through small-scale, self-reliant, long-term sustainable and community-based settlements and lifestyles that offer the opportunity to protect the natural environment and provide a meaningful human life and well-being. It can be seen that ecovillages are at the intersection of ecological thinking and community living. According to their inhabitants, one of the best responses to the ecological crisis is community living, because the crisis of the contemporary world is also a crisis of society and community. As theories of human relationship with nature have argued, our treatment of nature is a reflection of the state of society, and individualization and alienation egually determine our relationship with nature and with other human beings.
