More than 1,100 such settlements, known as eco-villages and co-housing communities, have been built or are in the planning stages, according to the Communities Directory. That is more than double the number a decade ago, and Tony Sirna, a resident of the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in northeast Missouri who helps maintain the directory, said he received about 15 to 20 listings a month for new communities. Many of them, he said, are started by disaffected baby boomers who have grown weary of car-dependent, McMansion-filled sprawl.

Image Down Home The Farm in Tennessee has changed since 1976, below. One commune business makes radiation detectors. Credit... John Russell/Associated Press

The new breed of cooperative living, however, is far from radical. In co-housing, the fastest growing segment, participants design their own subdivision with an emphasis on closely spaced, modest homes and Norman Rockwell-style social interaction encouraged by communal areas and pot-luck dinners. Eco-villages, many with solar-powered homes that are constructed with hay bales, are driven by an environmentally minded ideology. Residents are likely to avoid meat, wear hemp-fiber clothing and resemble the hippies of yore.

"There are plenty of people in the mainstream seeking an alternative to the alienation of suburban living, people who want more connection and community in their lives," Mr. Sirna said, as he prepared a stir-fry for three erstwhile strangers with whom he now shares a home and pooled income. "For them, it's not such a far-fetched idea to want to share resources and cooperate with their neighbors."

Although a few dozen traditional communes continue to thrive, including Ganas, the 100-member community on Staten Island whose founder was wounded last month (and whose members say their lives are much more mundane than the headlines would indicate), and Twin Oaks, a 30-year-old colony in rural Virginia, most new projects are like ElderSpirit, seven co-housing communities under development that are being marketed to older people.

At others, like Earthaven Eco-village in Black Mountain, N.C., residents revel in their off-the-grid existence, growing much of their own food, recycling wash water and debating the merits of straw-bale versus rammed-earth home construction.