To help answer these questions, I have interviewed multiple individuals from four intentional communities in Massachusetts. I have written my findings here for us to learn from. I have asked nine questions of each community member, and for reasons of privacy have changed names to letters. I interviewed more members in some communities than others.
The following is the criteria that each community I visited met:
In The Quest for Utopia in Twentieth-century America: 1900-1960 Timothy Miller writes of community:
1. - A sense of common purpose and of separation from the dominant society
2. - Some form and level of self-denial, of voluntary suppression of individual choice for the good of the group
3. - Geographic proximity
4. - Personal interaction
5. - Economic sharing*
6. - Real existence
7. - Critical mass
*For the purpose of this project, economic sharing was not included in the criteria. The other criteria, however, were met by each community in order to maintain continuity and clarity in what is compared.
Miller, Timothy. The Quest for Utopia in Twentieth Century America. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Univ., 1998. Print.