The problem is ERE isn't any one lifestyle, so it's hard to bring people together. For me, ERE City is so passe. My ideal would be more of a Village or Colony. A small, completely self-sufficient perma-culture/simple living outpost on a large plot of isolated, rural land in some temperate area of the world. Solar panels, simple drinking wells, hunting, gathering, farming, fishing and aquaculture. Preferably close enough to civilization to get an internet connection and cell phone reception, and access to emergency services as needed, but far enough (and large enough of a plot) to form an isolated culture or "country within a country", similar to the Amish, but secular, modern, and come and go as you please.
I see it as something like a holding company or LLC, or the original London Company of Virginia, where the initial "founders" parcel out "shares" in the form of subplots of land. Everyone could develop their plot of land however they please. Yurts, tents, log cabins, tiny homes, mobile homes, underground homes ala Mike Oehler (
http://www.undergroundhousing.com/), all accepted. McMansions accepted too if you want but you might raise some eyebrows!
Residency could be full-time or seasonal. Personally, I'd just want a home base in between my travels. Some folks might want to hold a "city home" to get their fix of action-packed city-slicker hustle and bustle.
As the land is improved, and the community grows, and self-sufficiency increases, membership in the community would also increase in value, so the initial founders could realize a profit by selling out portions of the land to new shareholders at an appreciated value. Alternately, they could rent parts of their land to interested parties. There could be a type of rent-to-own structure built on the classic employment structure of "indentured servitude" in which potential ERErs lacking the funds to buy into the ERE neighborhood could agree to work for 5 years on the land.
Of course the work wouldn't only be simple and self-sustaining (although that work would be available for those who want it). Once we have that more or less automated, we would devote our minds to bettering ourselves and mankind, as well as producing a profit (further increasing the value of "shares" in the ERE Company). We could develop software, invent new products and patents, become a think-tank, create and conduct an ERE college in classic philosophical style, or get a reality TV show gig.
The possibilities are limitless! In my head, anyway.
