Source
https://www.earthsong.org.nz/resources/documents — original source (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)
Earthsong / Waitakere Eco-Neighbourhood — Site Development Feasibility
A one-page site-selection due-diligence checklist — the criteria framework the founders of Earthsong (then working as the "Waitakere Eco-Neighbourhood Cohousing Project") used to assess a candidate parcel of land before purchase. It enumerates six dimensions to check for any site — Size (total area, zoning, theoretical units allowed), Title, Physical aspects (11 factors), Services (6 utilities), Other issues (neighbours, iwi, "earth energies") and Financial (asking price → residual land value → vendor terms). ⚠ This is a blank template, not a completed study: it contains no numbers — no total site area, no zoning designation, no unit count, no prices. It is a methodology artifact (the checklist itself), NOT the filled-in Ranui site data. So it does not supply "units-allowed / dwellings-per-ha" sizing evidence, and it does not bear on RT_327 (which asks for community-building floor-area per household, m²/hh). Its value is as a real NZ community's site-feasibility criteria set. Read verbatim via pdftotext (single page, zero digits present anywhere).
context: bothat the framework level;feeds:records the case linkage to earthsong_ranui (no calculation-layer number to feed).
Summary
This single-page document is the site-development feasibility checklist of the group that became Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood (Ranui, West Auckland), issued under its founding-era working name, the Waitakere Eco-Neighbourhood Cohousing Project. It is a due-diligence template — a structured list of the questions a candidate site must be tested against before the group would commit to buying it — and it is blank: every line is a criterion prompt, none is filled in with an actual value. The framework is organised under six headings: SIZE (total site area, zoning, theoretical number of units allowed), TITLE (clear title, no covenants), PHYSICAL ASPECTS (access, topography, orientation, ground stability / bearing capacity, flooding / overland flow paths, soil percolation, microclimate — frost / damp / wind / sun, soil fertility, soil toxicity / residues, biology / fauna / flora, any other Council issues), SERVICES (sewer, stormwater, water supply, electricity, gas, phone), OTHER ISSUES (supportive neighbours?, cleared with local iwi?, good earth energies?), and FINANCIAL (asking price of land, estimated possible number of units, $/unit, Council fees, estimated development costs, residual land value, motivated vendor?, terms — option period, deposit, interest rate, feasibility duration, settlement date). The document is undated; the “Waitakere Eco-Neighbourhood” working name places it in the site-search phase before the group settled the Ranui land in November 1999 (the same working name appears on the 1999 founding Cohousing Agreement). It is one of a family of Earthsong founding-era primaries in the same collection (the thematically-adjacent “Criteria for land search” sits alongside it in that collection), and it is aggregated by the Earthsong case page. Its interest is methodological: it documents how a real NZ intentional community structured its site-acquisition due diligence, spanning physical-site constraints, utility servicing, cultural/relational clearance (iwi, neighbours) and a residual-land-value financial test.
Key claims
- claim: "SIZE criteria checked for a candidate site: (1) Total site area; (2) Zoning; (3) Theoretical number of units allowed. [Prompts only — no values are filled in on this blank template.]"
source_location: "p.1, 'SIZE' section"
- claim: "TITLE criteria: Clear title, no covenants. [Prompt only — no title data filled in.]"
source_location: "p.1, 'TITLE' section"
- claim: "PHYSICAL ASPECTS criteria (11): Access; Topography; Orientation; Ground stability/bearing capacity; Flooding/overland flow paths; Soil percolation; Microclimate - frost, damp, wind, sun; Soil fertility; Soil toxicity/residues; Biology/fauna/flora; Any other Council issues. [Prompts only — no site measurements filled in.]"
source_location: "p.1, 'PHYSICAL ASPECTS' section"
- claim: "SERVICES criteria (6 utilities to check for availability/connection): Sewer; Stormwater; Water supply; Electricity; Gas; Phone. [Prompts only — no servicing data filled in.]"
source_location: "p.1, 'SERVICES' section"
- claim: "OTHER ISSUES criteria (3): Supportive neighbours?; Cleared with local iwi?; Good earth energies? [Prompts only — captures the relational / cultural / values-based clearances the group treated as feasibility factors.]"
source_location: "p.1, 'OTHER ISSUES' section"
- claim: "FINANCIAL criteria (8): Asking price of land; Estimated possible number of units; $/unit; Council fees; Estimated development costs; Residual land value; Motivated vendor?; Terms (option period, non/refundable deposit, interest rate, feasibility duration, final settlement date, etc). [Prompts only — no figures filled in; documents a residual-land-value approach: land price is tested against estimated units, per-unit yield, Council fees and development costs.]"
source_location: "p.1, 'FINANCIAL' section"Relevance
To Neobiome Intelligence (framework, not data). This is a real NZ self-organising community’s own site-feasibility criteria set, and its dimensions map closely onto the site-assessment gates Neobiome Intelligence computes for siting a self-sufficient community — utility servicing (sewer / stormwater / water / electricity / gas / phone), physical-site constraints (topography, orientation, ground bearing capacity, flooding / overland flow paths, soil percolation, microclimate, soil fertility/toxicity), zoning-driven unit yield (SIZE: zoning → theoretical units allowed), and a residual-land-value financial test (asking price ↔ estimated units ↔ $/unit ↔ Council fees ↔ development costs). It corroborates, from the ground, that NI’s feasibility dimensions match how communities actually screen sites — including two factors NI’s data-led model under-weights: cultural/relational clearance (“cleared with local iwi?”, “supportive neighbours?”) and a values dimension (“good earth energies?”). But it carries no numbers, so it feeds no calculation cell; its NI value is as a validation/design reference for the site-assessment checklist, not as a parameter source.
⚠ Not density or sizing evidence. This file does not supply “substantive density/sizing evidence for RT_327 (units allowed / dwellings-per-ha)”: (a) the document is a blank checklist with zero figures — it has the line items “Zoning”, “Theoretical number of units allowed”, “Estimated possible number of units” and ”$/unit” as prompts, but no filled-in values; and (b) RT_327 is not about dwellings-per-ha — it asks for shared community-building floor area per household (m²/hh, e.g. common-hall/workshop/barn), which this document does not touch. The Earthsong site-sizing figures that already exist in the corpus (1.68 ha, ~32 dwellings, ~11 dph) come from LIT_018 and are already on the case page — not from here. So RT_327 remains open and unaffected, and no sizing/density number is drawn from this source.
To the thesis (governance / community-formation). The document is a concrete NZ artifact of how an intentional community operationalised its site-acquisition due diligence — a citable example for the thesis’s account of the founding recipe of a cohousing project: the group codified, before any purchase, a multi-dimensional test spanning legal (title/covenants), regulatory (zoning, Council fees/issues), physical, servicing, relational (neighbours/iwi), values (“earth energies”) and financial (residual-land-value, vendor terms) criteria. It sits alongside the other Earthsong founding-era primaries (the 1999 Cohousing Agreement, the Statement of Intent, the Trust deed) as documentary evidence of a deliberate, structured, resident-led development process.
Research targets
Documents to retrieve
- None. The thematically-adjacent “Criteria for land search” PDF sits in the same Earthsong document collection; if a follow-on pass wants the group’s completed/applied site-search record (the criteria filled in for the actual Ranui parcel), that companion file — plus the founding-era council/planning documents in the same collection (e.g.
zoning.pdf,councilanalysis2003.pdf,reserves.pdf) — would be where it lives, not this blank template.
Research gaps
- None. This is a complete one-page document (a blank template by design — nothing is missing from it). It does not resolve any existing RT: in particular it does not address RT_327 (community-building floor area per household, m²/hh). RT_327 stays open.
Notes
Primary Earthsong founding-era document, read verbatim via pdftotext (single page; a plain and a -layout extraction agree, and there are no digits anywhere in the file — confirming it is an unfilled criteria template). Downloaded as an authoritative file within the Earthsong document collection (not AI-prepared / not agent-retrieved) → no ## Retrieval provenance block required.
data_quality: verified — every line of content (the six criteria headings and their sub-criteria) traces verbatim to the raw; there are no quantitative claims that could be mis-stated. “Verified” here therefore certifies the criteria framework is faithful to the source, not any figure (there are none).
context: both with feeds: [cases/earthsong_ranui] — a deliberate combination. The document is genuinely relevant to both outputs: to NI as a real-world validation of the site-assessment dimensions it computes, and to the thesis as a community-formation artifact. Because it carries no number, nothing feeds an EDT/SSI calculation cell; the feeds: entry records the case linkage (as with the sibling Earthsong sources) rather than a calculation-layer feed, and the case page earthsong_ranui carries the reciprocal evidence_sources/sources entry and a short site-selection note. both is retained because the criteria framework has direct NI-design value.
Undated. Attributed to the site-search phase before the November 1999 Ranui land settlement, on the evidence of the “Waitakere Eco-Neighbourhood Cohousing Project” working name (Earthsong’s founding-era name, which also heads the 1999 Cohousing Agreement); no year is asserted in frontmatter rather than fabricate one.
Sibling to the other Earthsong primaries in the corpus (Interview V [INT_005], Interview VI [INT_006], OT_078, OT_092, OT_093, OT_094, OT_098, LIT_018, plus the Cohousing Agreement / Membership Agreement / Trust deed / Statement of Intent), all aggregated by the case page earthsong_ranui. The case page’s evidence_sources/sources and a short site-selection note give this source its inbound link.
Connections
Links to
Referenced by
Sources (1): OT_241
Cases (1): Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood