Lois Arkin is the Executive Director of CRSP (the Cooperative Resources & Services Project), the nonprofit organization she founded in 1980 as a resource center for small ecological cooperative communities. She is the founding energy and vision holder for the Los Angeles Eco-Village <www.laecovillage.org>, the main project of CRSP since 1993. The two-block L.A. Eco-Village neighborhood is a demonstration of the diverse processes used in moving toward a sustainable community in an older built-out blighted central city area near downtown L.A. The emerging Institute for Urban Ecovillages is her current focus which provides training, education and resources for urban ecological cooperative community development.
Lois co-authored and co-edited: “Sustainable Cities: Concepts and Strategies for Eco-City Development” which won an American Planning Association-L.A. Section award. A second book she co-authored and co-edited, “Cooperative Housing Compendium: Resources for Collaborative Living,” was published by the Center for Cooperatives at U.C. Davis. She received a second award from the APA--L.A. Section for Advocacy Planning in the late 1980s.
She is the Western U.S. council member of the Ecovillage Network of the Americas and was among the founders of ENA. She is a board member of the Global Village Institute and the current Ecovillage Column co-editor for Communities Magazine.
She was a co-founding board member of the Eco-Home Network and the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing. In the 1960s and 70s, she worked in the aerospace industry, worked with troubled youth for a public agency, and co-founded a nonprofit arts organization which she grew to national prominence.
She holds a BA degree with a major in Anthropology from California State University at Northridge. She lives and works in Los Angeles Eco-Village.