Could you explain more about what lotissements are? I read the entry in French Wikipedia, but it was not clear from that whether they are truly autonomous "villages": i.e. autonomous economically, in terms of energy supply, food, etc. From your diary, it seems that people actually commute outside of the villages for work. If so, they are clearly not autonomous in that sense.
Rather than Israeli kibbutzim or ecovillages, are lotissements more like low-cost versions of "gated communities"? What do you think of the idea of intentional communities? Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
