We define a 21st-century intercommunity as a broadband-enabled arcology, as exemplified by Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti once fully networked; or as a broadband-enabled ecovillage or co-housing complex. The non-cyber portion consists of the efficient blending of architecture and ecology for economies and enhancements of living and working. The cyber portion consists of integrated broadband infrastructure and network-based intercommunity services. The typical intercommunity, such as a broadband-enabled Arcosanti or Chautauqua, will be an integrated whole built by modern methods and incorporating interior food production and associated climate control, plus pervasive communications.

Today's cities, suburbs, industrial parks, shopping malls, and megafarms use too much energy; pollute too much; and tax people's bodies, minds, and spirits much too much. Life is too chaotic, work and innovation too unproductive, and success too elusive. Furthurmore, the planet cannot long sustain the current burn rate of its resources.

The 21st-century intercommunity promises economies and simplifications that spell greater happiness, productivity, and health for more people with less effort -- all within Earth's resource budget.

Intercommunity promises a return to simpler, more idylic ways of living. But the "good old days" were often fraught with back-breaking work, poverty, disease, conflict, and struggle. Intercommunity development is rather a move forward to a better time that never was. The 21st-century intercommunity is needed because progress and self-betterment are what we're all about. There are mundane, practical benefits as well.

For families, companies, and non-profit organizations, the intercommunity system offers many benefits inherent in arcology principles, including lower costs per square foot for real estate; lower heating, cooling, and maintenance costs; much reduced need for commutation or auto maintenance; and heightened mental output thanks to closer human contact and ready broadband resources.

General benefits include reduced pollution; sustainable use of Earth's energy and physical resources; increased health thanks to local food production and reduced stress of close-knit living; and reduced reliance on foreign oil thanks to moderated need for surface transport.

In addition, intercommunities created in third-world countries can help lessen the poverty that divides people and enflames resentment.

In time, globally-linked intercommunity complexes will be like the internet except physical. Intercommunity "nodes" will supply everything people need locally to live and earn a living, while connecting them to the world via high-speed networks, energy grids, and people-friendly transportation conduits. Unicultures will be analagous to neurones; and the planetary intercommunity network, a brain. Each neuronal "cell" will be a self-sufficient world, but traffic between these worlds will create a vastly richer world beyond today's imagining.