Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
7﻽6
Conclusions
The two organizations described in this chapter are alike in wishing to create more
sustainable, resilient and liveable urban places that involve grass-roots community
actions in towns and cities, often using similar policies to those described in pre-
vious chapters, especially Chaps. 4-6. However the two examples operate from
different imperatives, at different scales and with different emphases. The Transi-
tion Town movement is mainly based on complete small settlements, although with
some exceptions, and has grown because of worries over the future problems that
will occur from climate change and from the descent from some peak oil situation.
As important has been the realization that the economies of many towns, in services
and industries, are dominated by outside ownerships that makes them too dependent
upon decisions made by remote governments and often even remoter faceless cor-
porations who are more concerned about their profits and market share than the for-
tunes of the towns in which they are located. So the pioneers of the Transition Town
movements and subsequent adopters seek ways of creating greater local interaction,
and through co-operation try to find ways to counteract future problems in many
sectors before change is thrust upon an unprepared settlement. So a big question is
posed by The Transition Network.
For all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive,
how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drasti-
cally reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate change). (TNTI)
The various sectors of transitioning are designed to find ways of coping with the
new conditions by re-localizing many activities and to re-energize a local town or
community to provide commonly accepted goals that increase the degree of sus-
tainability in economies, social relationships and well as in environmental terms,
creating a greater social and economic resilience or ability to counter changes that
are likely to take place in the near future. This does not mean that TT enthusiasts
are trying to create a locally self-sufficient economy, closed like the agricultural
communes that were developed from the 1960s by groups that rejected the consum-
er-driven, individualistic life-styles. Rather the idea is to increase the town's abil-
ity to cope with future climate changes and reduced oil supplies, to increase local
enterprise, so more money circulates in town and profits are reinvested locally not
flowing out, in addition to creating healthier, more socially active and interactive
communities. Many of these ideas can be found in the parallel movements that have
developed to create sustainability within districts in cities, especially the emerg-
ing theme of EcoDistricts, through local community action. These, however, are
clearly at a different scale to Transition Towns and as yet are primarily U.S. based
and more linked to public-private partnerships. What this approach is attempting to
do is to create a more integrated and even professional approach to inner city re-
development, since professional urban development experts are involved in an early
stage, although unlike most government planning approaches there is a determined
effort to create community engagement.
There can be little doubt that both approaches are welcome and needed addi-
tions to the government or developer-led processes of change that are seeking more
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