Transition Culture

Fascinating!

How can you focus on the nature of a town, when the reality is that towns grew, and grow, from economic activity. A port town, an agricultural district town, the crossroad of trade routes town.

How can there be an enduring future for any town, that doesn’t fill a distinct and enduring economic, ecological, or service niche?

I don’t look at a house and evaluate it based on who lives there. I look at the community, at the function the building serves, and the resources it consumes. Towns must endure the same scrutiny for utility and demands.

Tinkering with the resources consumed, adjusting the utility, are all well and good. But assuring the health of the underlying reason for that town to exist, for the service it performs, has to take precedence.

A town that exists to house residents overlooks the obvious. That community must serve a purpose, or ultimately fail to sustain itself.

I don’t mean this as a criticism of Transition, but as a global glossing over of fundamental truths. Nations, states, regions, towns, cities, farms, homes — identifying a need and satisfying that need as “a place to live” is just an accepted . . urban myth.

Thanks for this, Rob. I was very much hoping that there would be something available that we could access here in the US. Really nice program, even if it wasn’t “all Transition, all the time.”

[…] in my life, I want it to be a small part, not a big part, of my day. The show I watched today was Town with Nicholas Crane, and the featured town was Totnes, in southern England. Totnes is, of course, a transition town and […]

According to Youtube “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by The Open University.” I guess The Open University isn’t so open after all!

no longer online 🙁