This entry might reveal a little too much about myself, but I just have to give a shout out to this little community in Missouri. Dancing Rabbit has been around for 10 years now and some might refer to them as a “Transition Community,” but they really are something different.
A Transition Community is, according to Transition Towns Wiki, “a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change?”
I think this idea of transition towns/communities is awesome, and I hope to see it continue to catch on around the U.S. and the world. But from what I can tell about Dancing Rabbit (through their website) they are something pretty different. If a transition town is a group of people within a community, then what do you call a group of people that decide to start their own town? That is what Dancing Rabbit is trying to do. Their town is a small one right now at 30 people, but they claim to desire to reach 500 to 1000. Their covenants include things like not driving a personal vehicle (they share two for the whole community) and not using fossil fuels to heat their homes, etc.
I have been looking for community experiments like this one and am surprised it took me this long to find Dancing Rabbit. I was so excited to find them I thought there might be others like me out there. May the rabbit keep dancing.