Communities Seeking Resilience — The Emerging Transition Town Movement

by Project Censored

The daily news highlights the environmental and health costs we are paying, and the unstable future we are facing. The choice before us seems clear: We can stand by old habits and suffer, or find new ways to adapt and thrive. Transition organizations and towns provide such a choice – giving you a chance to collaborate with others to begin the shift toward a stable, sustainable world.

A Transition Town is a place where there’s a community-led process that helps the town/village/neighborhood/organization become independent and sustainable. This process begins when a small group of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: How do we sustain ourselves and thrive as a community in these changing times? How do we significantly increase resilience (in response to peak oil), drastically reduce carbon emissions (in response to climate change)
and greatly strengthen our local economy (in response to economic instability)?

These core concerns lead to homegrown, citizen-led education, multi-stakeholder planning and (eventually) to grassroots community initiatives that seek to mobilize the larger community and build shared resilience in the face of these modern day concerns. Transition Initiatives work to create a fulfilling and inspiring local way of life that can withstand the shocks of rapidly shifting global systems. It’s happening in over a thousand highly diverse communities across the world – from towns in Australia to neighborhoods in Portugal, from cities in Brazil to rural communities in Slovenia, from urban locations in Britain, to islands off the coast of Canada.

 

Title: Local Visionaries: Transition Groups Plant the Seeds for a Homegrown Future

Author: Rachel Trachten Fall

Publication: Edible East Bay

Date of Publication: Winter 2012

URL: http://www.ediblecommunities.com/eastbay/harvest-2011/transition-groups.htm

 

Title: International Energy Crises Make the Case for Change: Towns Lead Transition

Author: Frances Beinecke

Publication: Shareable

Date of Publication: March 24, 2011

URL: http://www.shareable.net/blog/international-energy-crises-make-the-case-for-change-towns-lead-transition

 

See also:   “Transition 101”, Transition US:  http://transitionus.org/transition-town-movement and

Transition Network News: http://www.transitionnetwork.org/news

 

Student Researcher: Robert Usher, San Francisco State University

Faculty Evaluator: Kenn Burrows, San Francisco State University