Cultural Creatives

It turns out there's a large segment of the population that has removed itself entirely from the new home market because it's so alienated by what it sees. The people who comprise this group, described as Cultural Creatives by a 1997 American Demographics magazine article, (see below), are more than ready for an alternative, and they've adopted Not So Big as their rallying cry. In many ways, the Not So Big House, although ostensibly about house design, is also about how we choose to live, what's important for a balanced existence, and what will insure a healthy planet and community for future generations. These are the concerns of many Cultural Creatives, eager to live their own lives in a way that supports their values. Not So Big thinking helps them to do just that.

If you start with the design of your own home, making it a place that fits your lifestyle, you'll be making a small but noticeable contribution to solving the current crisis of scale and consumption.

"Most Cultural Creatives do decorating and remodelling rather than buy a new house because builders don't really give them what they want in a new home. In thirteen years of doing research on the housing desires of Americans, I don't think I've seen an architect do as clean a set of designs as Sarah Susanka, designs that actually deliver what this emerging subculture of 50 million Americans really wants."

--Paul H. Ray, Ph.D., Co-author of The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Changing the World, Harmony Books, 2000.

Cultural Creatives

The Rise of Integral Culture
An article by Paul H. Ray. "At the threshold of a "Great Divide" in history such as this, the worst upset may be to know you are at a watershed where the given world diverges sharply from everything you have known, and have been, into the unknown. Changes from one kind of civilization to another do not happen often in history: the invention of agriculture, the rise and fall of conquest states and empires, the coming of industrialism and urbanism. An earlier generation may have been perfectly justified in discounting any further such radical changes. We cannot."

www.culturalcreatives.org
The website that's by, for and about The Cultural Creatives. As of the year 2000, there are 50 million adults in the United States who have the worldview, values and lifestyle of the Cultural Creatives.

The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Changing the World
A book by sociologist Paul Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson.

Cultural Creatives Ring
The original Cultural Creatives online community. This site also includes the EcoHome Living Center, a section specifically on ecohousing.