The October 1, 2009 edition of The New York Times reports that “intentional communities,” or communes, are on the rise. Fashion-forward twentysomethings currently facing uncertain career prospects are on the hunt for like-minded individuals to share tiny apartments in Brooklyn in order to form knitting circles, culture kefir, raise chickens or otherwise get with whatever “alt” or “recessionista” lifestyle fad currently gooses the zeitgeist.

The Times article focuses primarily on two subjects, “Ms. Berger, 28, and Mrs. Hazard, 24,” who are in the process of putting together their own urban collective. They want roommates who are into … wait for it … “permaculture, living sustainably, gardening, dancing, hula hooping, yoga, herbalism, making music, active listening, [and] non-violent communication.” Such a résumé of preferences and accomplishments represents quite a tall order, but most new collectivists like Ms. Berger and Mrs. Hazard are dizzyingly optimistic. The article reports that these prospective collectives want “a relationship [that] would be more important than the real estate. What they hoped to put together was a kind of family, but without sibling rivalry or parents, of course; the thought was that everyone would do the dishes without grumbling.”

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a bunch of college graduates wanting to shack up together; it’s cost effective, after all. As the Times story observes, “The impetus for the group home or collective they hope to form is less about finances — though it is true that pooling resources yields better real estate.” But such entrepreneurial concerns these neo-communards claim take a back seat to “community building,” which they’re in the process of realizing one Bed-Stuy bungalow at a time.

Interestingly, it’s more than just the naive younger with a freshly minted humanities degree who are looking for a couple of flatmates. Baby boomers nursing ailing 401Ks (as well as parents, in many cases) are also looking for that special someone — or perhaps five special someones — with whom to share their golden years. Midlifebloggers.com reports that women in their fifties are now foregoing the idea of a lonely retirement and are living it up Golden-Girls style (I’m sure there are frequent disputes over who gets to be the past-the-sell-by-date Southern tart):

During their ‘white wine sessions,’ [retired women] talk about pooling their resources in the future and getting a big home together. This is not an original idea; women all around the country are not only discussing the concept — but, actually doing it. In an article from AARP, The New Housemates, provides reports from the U.S. Census Bureau that 500,000 women 50 years of age and older currently live with nonromantic housemates.

Bloggers are lauding this new trend in communal living as a welcome return to the values embraced during the 1960s and 1970s, when living on a goat farm with five other crunchy, patchouli-soaked strangers was all the rage. (And of course, suggestions of free love and various polyamorous configurations add a little spice to the tofu.) Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I for one can’t help but think of a different era, one replete with boarding houses smelling of boiled potatoes and dirty laundry, where free rooms were let to downtrodden lodgers and five or six families shared a flea-ridden, two-room flat.

Yes, the century of which I speak isn’t the twenty-first, or the twentieth, but the nineteenth. In 1899, for instance, just as the calendrical odometer was set to roll over, there were 350,000 people per square mile just in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The island as a whole was crowded with more than 40,000 tenements, which housed more than one and a half million people all living communally, and not necessary in a manner one’s likely to see celebrated on the pages of The Utne Reader or The Whole Earth Catalog.

Space race: "intentional living" version 1.0.

Today the average density for a large city in the US is 5,000 people per square mile. Which means that as cramped as today’s New Yorkers feel, their digs are their veritable own private Idahoes compared to what their counterparts a century ago enjoyed.

We project upon the prospect of communal co-habitating the rosiest elements of the 1960s and 1970s — all peace, love, plowshares into swords and unrefined handwoven fabrics; a real-time, three-dimensional montage of hippiedom’s stock tropes, sanitized and Craigslist-ready.

Right now communal living seems like the environmentally responsible, sensible thing to do, a way to reconnect with all those strangers one ignores while watching Dancing with the Stars, or while playing one too many games of Grand Theft Auto. And certainly it would be fun to raise chickens in Brooklyn, especially since organic eggs are going for about $4.99 a dozen these days. But we’re also still breathing the stale yet somehow exhilarating (and likely toxic) air of the great bubble that just burst, which makes it easy to fetishize communal living, because we can’t help but believe it would only turn out for the best. By making such assumptions we show ourselves the dupes of mass culture, as we project upon the prospect of co-habitating thusly the rosiest elements of the 1960s and 1970s — all peace, love, plowshares into swords and unrefined handwoven fabrics; a real-time, three-dimensional montage of hippiedom’s stock tropes, sanitized and Craigslist-ready. These new ashrams of boomers and millennials would have no cult killings, race riots, venereal disease or drug overdoses.

No, for them it’s impossible that communal living could ever be other than a Potemkin village of the Aquarian Age, that it could ever lead to  dozens of angry, disenfranchised people occupying an apartment crawling with bedbugs and reeking of yesterday’s cabbage. Fetishization requires that one ignore the inconvenient reality, present or future, posed by the object of one’s interest. It also requires a decently comfortable standard if living. With unemployment well on its not-so-merry way to 15 percent, a moribund currency, and an administration that seems hogtied by Wall Street, those five carefree roommates and a chicken might just become a brutal necessity. Today’s kicky lifestyle might just become tomorrow’s inescapable reality.

Ylajali would love to hear from you. Drop her a line at hansengenbub [at] gmail [dot] com.