Our lifestyles evolve from our childhood circumstances, and tend to be constrained by the societies we live in. While, if thought about, this is hardly surprising, should we really allow ourselves to be restricted in this way. Just because everybody we know lives an hours drive from their work and has an ecological footprint 30 times larger than the majority of the people on the planet, do we really have to follow suite? Are our communities, if we are still actually members of one, so distorted and corrupted by greed, avarice and selfishness that it is too late for us to turn away from such evils?

Human communities of the 21st Century need to take a leaf from the indigenous communities book and adapt their lifestyles to focus more on their immediate geographical localities. In an Age that talks about globalization and a global community, how many of us are still full members of a local community? The advent of the motor vehicle and the rapid expansion of its use last century resulted in the fragmentation of communities in the more technologically advanced nations.

Prior to the 20th Century most people still lived in indigenous communities, with the exception of relatively small populations of peoples from the mainly European colonizing nations. Although many greeted the arrival of the motor vehicle with scorn and ridicule, it rapidly became the main form of transport within the more technologically advanced countries, particularly after World War II. In New Zealand there was approximately 175,000 private cars out 250,000 total vehicles in 1930, this increased to 250,000 out of 400,000 by 1950, 1.3 million out of 1.7 million by 1980, 1.7 million of 2.5 million by 1998 and is still increasing (NZ Statistics, 2001).

This has promulgated a change in mindset in many populations. Where previously people had resided close to their places of work, it is now the norm to live quite large distances away and commute by car. Where entertainment and pastimes were community based and supported community awareness and fellowship, the car enables people to travel straight from their door to distant, larger scale entertainment events that they view in the main with total strangers. Many people no longer even know their neighbors by more than appearance, let alone associate with them. It is ironic that when cities have populations often numbering in the millions, so many people feel isolated and lonely. While those in smaller residential communities rarely experience this,

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