Honest tools for forming community
Most forming communities fail before they ever reach land — not for lack of idealism, but for lack of the right people, honest information, and patient sequence. These four free tools serve the journey in that order: people before land, evidence before enthusiasm.
Built and maintained by Gustaf Palm, drawing on a database of 4,311 verified intentional communities — an independent, deduplicated count of a movement no national census records. Every tool follows one rule: never imply more certainty than the data has.
Community Compass
Find the people and communities already looking for each other. Honest matching with receipts — every match explains itself.
Start your search → 02 · the fieldThe Living Atlas
See every verified intentional community on Earth — 4,311 of them, mapped honestly, locations softened to respect the people living there.
Wander the atlas → 03 · the groundLand Selection Framework
Know the land before you love it. Multi-source site analysis where every value carries its source and vintage — no hidden scores, ever.
Read the ground → 00 · the other beginningCommunity Commons
You don't have to go somewhere to belong. A field guide to building community exactly where you already stand.
Open the guide →How these tools are made
- People before landCommunities die at the trust stage, not the land stage. The tools are sequenced the same way.
- Source and vintage on every valueNo hidden composite scores. If a number appears, you can see where it came from and how old it is.
- Non-extractive by designFree to use. No accounts, no tracking, no selling of anything about you. Residential locations deliberately softened.
- Corrections welcomeEvery dataset gets more honest when a real person says what we got wrong. Write in.
Who makes this
I'm Gustaf Palm. These tools grew out of years inside the regenerative-community field — including a two-and-a-half-week gathering of practitioners in the Swiss Alps that convinced me the movement's hardest problems are navigational: finding each other, seeing what already exists, and reading land honestly.
I also advise communities, networks and organisations on this terrain through Islands of Coherence. The tools stay free either way.