| Grank is a prospective self-reliance, sustainability, and community center located in St. Louis' southern suburbs. Our mission is to encourage a more harmonious, sustainable, suburban existence, promoting community demystification and empowerment through a positive example of self-reliance. We exist to preserve an affordable setting for these ideals to flourish.
It is in the suburbs that one confronts the epicenter of resource misallocation and subsequent over-consumption. Grank believes that with an emphasis on self-reliance techniques, a modicum of community-based reorganization would go a long way in stabilizing suburban existence—preserving (and improving) the useful infrastructure there, and actually bettering the quality of life by encouraging a multi-disciplinary populace and injecting a greater sense of purpose.
Grank seeks to engage and empower the community by hosting social functions and workshops, facilitating consensus building and resource sharing, and maintaining a general open-door policy. There are no up-front costs for residency here. Instead, housing is provided by the land trust, which holds the land in exchange for the tenants carrying out uplifting, paradigm-shifting programs in pursuit of Grank's mission. The most important criteria for potential tenants is imagination enough to envision a more sustainable way of life, sufficient work ethic to see it through, and courage enough to live it.
By bringing models of intentional living into the suburban consciousness, we can help to preempt economic hardship; discourage destabilizing shifts in population, investment, and infrastructure; and fortify future security. The ultimate goal is for Grank to become a replicable model for suburban restructuring and responsible community development everywhere. Status: on the brink of greatness | Community location is placed at the center of the zip/postal code, city/state, or city/country (not based on street addresses) |
