In 2011, the Welsh government created a policy called One Planet Development intended to allow/promote sustainable development in the countryside. Because land is scarce and no homes are allowed to be built on open land, this policy enables people to live and build under certain restrictions:
- buildings must be zero-carbon, which typically means using low-energy materials and powering everything on-site
- water and waste must be handled efficiently
- residents must demonstrate that they live within a small ecological footprint (to the degree that they're not allowed to fly anywhere)
- residents must have a land-based business to support their needs
The approval process is quite arduous and intrusive. The government wants to ensure that people aren't taking advantage of loopholes. But once you're approved, you're "allowed" to live sustainably on the land. Lammas is one of the ecovillages created under this plan, with natural, low-energy buildings, small scale agriculture, and educational offerings.
The Welsh government intends to expand the program to eventually require all development to be in this style of low-impact, land-based living. (whether they hold to this commitment or give in to the destructive capitalist system remains to be seen)
They (the ecovillagers, Welsh officials, and academics) have done a lot of research on this sort of sustainable development. Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything comparable in the United States.
The land-use situation here is very different, though. Undeveloped rural land isn't scarce; it's just that the only way we seem to know how to build is the devastating suburban sprawl style. And the main way we defend against sprawl is by putting land into conservation, so that nobody can ever occupy it. I think this is short-sighted and shows a lack of imagination and future vision.
If there's any hope of living sustainably, we have to think about providing pathways toward it, instead of assuming it's impossible and creating laws that prevent people from even trying. For instance, restrictive zoning and strict building codes currently lock people into building to a standard which requires unsustainable energy and resource use — even as energy codes become more strict, the total embodied energy of the project increases, as the building materials are more exotic, and more professionals are required to complete the build. New home owners/builders are limited by exorbitant land prices and building costs. When costs are this high, only the rich are able to afford to build, and they certainly don't have a reputation for wanting to live within ecological limits, as subsistence farmers...
If you must go through a bank, the bank will never allow you to build an ecological, straw bale cabin, because all they care about is a return on investment. And even if you do manage to build something without bank funding, you're subject to ever-increasing property taxes because the rest of society is not living sustainably, held captive by the financialization of real estate and unrealistic expectations of material comfort.
So there are many links in the chain that compel us to live unsustainably.
It's worth thinking about how to remove some of those links, to make it legally and economically possible for dedicated people to live sustainably here. One Planet Development could be a model for similar zoning regulations in our area. It's hard to know how to move this idea forward.