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		www.potrc.org What does India's Barefoot College have in common with the annual Burning Man gathering in the United States or the Dutch urban development project Leidsche Rijn? While each of these settlements represents a distinct local story, none of them have accepted established ways of envisioning community or the regulations imposed by society. Their success is founded upon the active participation of individuals in designing, building, and implementing their architecture and infrastructure systems. Some of the projects, such as Barefoot College and Burning Man, have been carried out without government support or involvement. In contrast, the planning of Leidsche Rijn is being sponsored by the municipal authorities, which have waived restrictions in order to accommodate these new ways of thinking, while Rural Studio is a part of an academic architectural program at the University of Alabama. Somewhere between the two extremes lies East Wahdat in Jordan, is an example of a settlement that was initiated by individuals without official approval, but was later given resources and support by a government that recognized the value of their initiative. Self-sustaining technology plays a vital role in these communities. Not only urban Californians, but also communities in both developed and developing nations, have enthusiastically embraced high-tech developments, such as wireless communication networks,. Some of these communities have turned high-tech possibilities into low-tech solutions, such as the clockwork mobile telephone, which does not use electricity: you just wind up the receiver and talk. Other technological solutions that aid sustainability, such as solar-power and water re-use, are integrated fully into the planning and construction of communities like Barefoot College and Leidsche Rijn. Today, all these communities are considered success stories. Each of these communities is a real-life example of individual initiative in modern global society. Perhaps most importantly, as these communities develop internally and are studied by others, they are changing the way we think about the role of the individual in society (the individual is becoming an equal participant in shaping urban environments), private space (gated communities and shanty towns are among the most successful forms of urban life today); self-reliance (and its link with self-sustaining technologies); ecology (global concerns are transformed into individual practice); and even beauty (one need only consider the architecture of Rural Studios and Leidsche Rijn). All the communities involved in Urban Independent are based on self-sustainability and use both low- and high-tech approaches in problem-solving and architectural strategies.