The data cited here are from a table in Communities Directory, published by Fellowship for Intentional Community. This directory lists 550 intentional communities, of which population data are available for 469. It would be preferable to use adult population, but this is available for far fewer communities. The communities for which a breakdown is available suggest that most are largely adults. I have taken 120 total population as a proxy for 100 adult population.

Of the 469 communities with population data, 295 are secular and 174 are spiritual.

There are 21 secular communities listed which exceed 120 total population. Of these, the largest two (and ten in total) are housing cooperatives. (The largest two are student housing at Oberlin College and in Wisconsin University.) The populations of the remaining eleven are (rounded to the nearest 10):

                             550,   
                           300, 320
                        200, 200, 220,
                   120, 150, 150, 150, 160.

The spiritual communities have a considerably different population distribution. The largest three have populations of 7600, 5000, and 1100, far larger than any of the secular communities. A total of 20 of the 174 spiritual communities exceed 120 in total population, whereas 21 of the 295 secular communities exceed 120, a significantly lower rate. Few of the housing coop communities are small.

Thus the fraction of secular communities which are not housing coops and which have total populations over 120 probably lies between four and seven percent, and the largest does not exceed 1,000 members. The fraction of spiritual communities which exceed 120 in population is 11 percent, with three exceeding 1,000 in population, but none exceeding 10,000.

contact the webmaster: Dmitri Donskoy Last modified: Tuesday, December 1, 1998

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