Oldal 264 [264]
262 JUDIT FARKAS
was to be launched later. In 1994, the international network, the Global Ecovillage
Network (GEN) was established, of which the Hungarian ecovillage Gyürüfü
was already a founding member. The spread of the ecovillage idea, and thus the
creation of many ecovillages, was greatly helped by the rise of the internet: this
was a period when computers and the web were becoming increasingly accessible,
which in turn made the GEN website widely available and helped the movement
and the ecovillage model to spread. The first international ecovillage gathering
organized and sponsored by the Gaia Trust and the Findhorn Foundation took
place in Findhorn in 1995. Its title — Ecovillages and Sustainable Communities.
Models for the 21st Century — precisely articulated and mapped out the path that
ecovillages wanted to follow. Today, there are ecovillages all over the world. This
gives them their diversity, as they operate under very different climate conditions
and social arrangements. They are also differentiated by a host of ideologies,
religions and other characteristics’.
The first ecovillages in Hungary were founded after the regime change in the early
1990s. Most of them — through their founders — have links with the underground
green and alternative social movements of the late socialist era (for more on this,
see Farkas 2017b): the idea of ecovillages was already conceived in these circles,
and after the regime change, the conditions (the possibility of establishing formal
organizations, funding through tenders, cheap land purchase, etc.) emerged that
made planning and constructing the first ecovillages possible. The first initiatives
were put in practice in Galgahéviz (Galgafarm), Gyürüfü, Visnyeszéplak, and
Drävafok. In the second half of the 1990s, newer ecovillages were established, first
Krisna Valley, the Gömörszőlős initiative, and Agostyan Eco-Village, and then, in
the 2000s, Märiahalom BioVillage, the community of Nagyszékely, Magfalva, the
Association of Organic Farms of Szeri and the Nyim Eco-Community. They are
linked by the informal Hungarian Living Village Network (MÉH), see www.
elofaluhalozat.hu." Their population ranges from 10-15 to 150-160 people per
community, with a total of about 500 people currently living in such settlements.
§ https://ecovillage.org/
They include art colonies, eco high-tech groups, re-primitivizing communities, open education
centers, close reclusive collectives, etc.
The reason why the word „eco-village” is not used in the name is due to the degradation of the
word ‘eco’ on the one hand and the existence of several different definitions of eco-village/living
village within the movement, on the other. The name ’living village’ was chosen after lengthy
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