I live in an eco village in Australia and I could probably share some insight I guess.

(((( EDIT: in case it's not clear; I totally love the idea behind it, but I'm trying to paint the picture that it's not as glorious as it seems on paper; I personally think it needs a lot more of a structure (I lean conservatively), and I'm currently building an internal website/platform to try and unify many of the free-spirits that live here; otherwise people just do whatever they want and step all over each other. People move here because it's nice to be here, but they have their own version of ideals. )))))

My wife's family started it a number of years ago. Very green/eco-conscience values, and so made an eco-village of 5-6 acres housing 22 houses (and about 65 residents afaik).

We're a little oasis in the middle of suburbia, surrounded by trees, native plants and habitats, and a growing vegetable garden; it's very lovely to live and work in.

Unfortunately, people have moved in who are more fundamental than the ones who actually went through the trouble of building it, so they have totally unrealistic expectations or ideas, and that's ALL they have. -- It's entirely down to my wife's family (and me by extension) to maintain it. People love to keep saying how human societies are "naturally altuistic" and will "naturally co-operate" but it's entirely not the case.

- The people who are more likely to move here are the fundamentalist types, leading to strong opinions and personalities. A lot of them like to drink and throw random parties / fire-pits.

- A lot of normal people move here because they have families and full jobs. They have NO INTEREST in digging holes or putting up fences / other structures, over weekends. They are just here because it's a lovely place to be. fully supportive though, just not interested in helping out.

- Some are free spirited and so won't follow rules. One recently got a dog (not allowed because it endangers the natural wildlife we try and re-habituate on the property) - Another will buy a massive air-con system (against principles because we were trying to be an "eco-village" so there's certain efficiency requirements and etc). - people will just break the rules and not really care. (The one who got a dog, just last year got a cat, but didn't like the cat anymore, so they just let the cat run wild. Guess what happened to the lovely wagtail birds and other native/rare wildlife we spent so long in making a suitable home for.)

- We don't have any repercussions for breaking rules. "consensus" doesn't mean anything if random people move here.

- Not everyone gets along. Currently there's explosions of arguments because of different gardening styles that leads to tears and destroyed garden beds.

- One of the fundamentalists who moved here is really hung up on the idea that the original brochure for the place suggested that we could potentially grow 30% of our food usage in the community gardens - despite not helping to produce food, at all, and being one of the ones who argues the most about differing gardening styles (and potentially sabotaging).

- Currently my wife is one of the few people who actually works in the garden. We've planted garlic because we get a good 2-300kg of garlic a year and it's relatively low maintenance for the number of hands in the garden we have (3-4 people spend 2 hours, once a month, wife and her family are the only ones that work every other day in the community gardens because it's part of the original vision).

- instead of gratitude for the (legitimately delicious) fresh garlic, it's rather "wtf I can't eat a dinner plate full of garlic". - We also grow bananas, cherries, strawberries, zuchini, eggplant, tomato, host of other food. most of it spoils because no one eats it. (previous fundie won't eat it because it might admit she's wrong in whatever argument she's currently having with my wife).

- a few don't believe in "hierarchy" so (in their mind) we're not allowed to have a maintenance team, garden team, etc. We regularly get massive repair bills to fix up pools and other things because any attempt of organising preventative maintenance is something they're fundamentally against because it implies XYZ maintenance efforts are more important than making sure everyone is the same level.

- One of them keeps asking everyone to go skinny dipping in the pool. "bring your kids!" etc.

I only came into the picture recently and I'm a lot more conservative leaning politically, I think my wife sees it as a bit of a fresh air; and I seem to have a knack for talking to everyone; so at the moment I'm doing a lot of refereeing and crisis management to make sure that people can get along. I'm also aiming to build a bit of an organisation platform so that there's no more "NOBODY IS ALLOWED TO LEAD" arguments;

It will forever be "a great idea" and "totally going to work this time" /s