Hannah Ashley Dr.

Erin Dietel-McLaughlin Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric 3 December 2012 Eco-villages: The Escape from Suburbia

For the past two centuries, humans have built a lifestyle that relies on fossil fuels to run

everything. This lifestyle is so normal that I know I myself cannot see life without cars, a nice suburban house, the big supermarket and malls, and computers. And yet, I have seen news stories and documentaries about the shortage of fossil fuels and a growing population. The ecological devastation has been evident, like the BP oil spill in 2010, smog, acid rain, and dying species and ecosystems. Ive always wondered if there was more I could do with my lifestyle other than just carpooling and going to the farmers market once a week. I wondered if there was any thought for a sustainable, zero carbon footprint lifestyle.
I started this topic for my research paper. I rst researched what consequences this energy

dependent lifestyle has. I was mainly trying to nd information about ecological devastation, but as I continued my research, I was surprised to discover how this energy dependence has damaged human psychological and physical health as well. I read about the consequences of always driving and never seeing anyone has created isolation. So with this information in mind, I wanted to create a paper that not only shows that living sustainably would benet the earth but benet human health as well.
Finding sustainable communities was not hard at all. Even though I had never heard of

them before this project, I was surprised to see that sustainable communities have a pretty strong presence throughout the world. The most popular of these communities were called eco-villages.

These communities were designed to have a smallest carbon footprint possible. These communities are also very conscious of making sure everyone is included and everyone is involved. Everyone in the eco-village helps out with gardening, repair, cooking community meals, and babysitting. As I read on I realized that these villages were not actually villages with a mayor and schools. They actually looked like a regular suburban neighborhood, with a few exceptions. People drive to go to work in the city, kids attend school in the normal school district and people go shopping at the mall. This neighborhood is very focused sustainable living, a lot of the food is provided at the village, and the architecture and lifestyle are all environmentally friendly. So that is why I wanted to narrow this audience to Americans who lived in the suburbs. Coming from the suburbs, this is the audience I am most familiar with. Also, because ecovillages bore some similarities to suburban neighborhoods, I wanted to draw out the similarities and differences, and show that a sustainable lifestyle is possible in the neighborhood setting.
For my project, I drew mainly on images. I think that with many of the accidents

regarding fossil fuels and also tours of eco-villages denitely followed the saying of a picture is worth a thousand words. I think that photos can stir up questions and emotions, especially regarding the topics of our lifestyle and its consequences. Another reason for this is that I found more pictures than videos of eco-villages. However, I actually like the photo format. My essay is comprised into two different parts. The rst part briey introduces the suburban lifestyle and its consequences. I tried to spell out a lot of the argument through pictures (especially as I showed different aspects to a energy dependent lifestyle). I have music from Linkin Park in the background. The specic song I used has lyrics that talk about building things up to burn them back down again, which is what energy dependence has done in a lot of cases in our lives. When I get to the eco-village segment, I change the music to a song that talks about coming home and

the joy of community and nature, which I think denitely describes eco-villages. I tried to put as many photos as possible that captured eco-village layout and life. As for my argument, I tried to put a lot of emphasis on the showing. With lots of pictures of the eco-village life, I hope that people will be able to see what kind of life that would be lived on such an eco-village. During the peer workshop, people commented to try and put less emphasis on the words, and more on the pictures. I tried to do this during the beginning of my eco-village argument, but towards the end with counterarguments and answers, I resorted to more text. I think that this was necessary to spell out the arguments this way.
I was actually surprised at how similar the visual essay is to a written essay. It still

required research and gathering of source material. Actually, this visual essay I was a little scared of, just because I have never done an essay in the medium before. I hope that it turns out well as my rst production of an essay in this piece. The key to this essay as with any other essay is trying to stay organized and keeping the argument in mind.