Transition Culture

An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent

Transition Culture has moved

I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.

Archive for “Research on Transition” category

Showing results 31 - 35 of 49 for the category: Research on Transition.


18 Feb 2011

A second review of ‘Localisation and Resilience’

Here’s another review of ‘Localisation and Resilience’, this time from the latest edition of Permaculture Magazine:

It’s nearly three years since I received a copy of The Transition Handbook and was inspired to become involved in the movement. Much has happened since then both in terms of the way Transition has developed and in the wider world of global economics and environmental concerns. So it was with great interest that I read Rob Hopkins’ PhD thesis (progenitor of the Transition model). 

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Categories: Book Reviews, Localisation, Research on Transition, Resilience


16 Feb 2011

Energy Cities report explores Transition in Kinsale

Here’s something you might find to be a useful resource. It is a study produced by Energy Cities called “Governance and Vision: Visions of Cities towards a low-energy future”. It contains a very good section on Transition in Kinsale (although they perhaps didn’t get that Kinsale is a town, not a city…). It contains several other interesting case studies, and is available to browse online in that format where the pages actually turn over before your very eyes, as well as making the sound of a turning page, a format that I still find amazing and am quite awed by.

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Discussion: Comments Off on Energy Cities report explores Transition in Kinsale

Categories: Climate Change, Community Involvement, Energy Descent Planning, Localisation, Peak Oil, Research on Transition, Resilience, Transition Initiatives


9 Feb 2011

A Review of ‘Localisation and Resilience’ by Frank Kaminski

Localisation and Resilience at the Local Level: The Case of Transition Town Totnes (Devon, UK)
By Rob Hopkins
475 pp. University of Plymouth, Devon, UK – Oct. 2010. £15.00; available only in PDF at Transitionculture.org.

For several years groups of innovative, environmentally conscious people worldwide have been part of a social change movement called Transition. It strives to create relocalized communities that are resilient to the looming climate and energy crises, and in which “the future with less oil could be preferable to the present.”

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23 Dec 2010

Exclusive to Transition Culture! An interview with Christopher Alexander

I know that I have officially signed off for Christmas, but I can’t resist the temptation to post this now, think of it as my Christmas gift.  About 3 weeks ago, I travelled to a snow-covered West Sussex to meet one of my heroes.  Christopher Alexander, architect, thinker, designer, author of the seminal ‘A Pattern Language’ and of the more recent extraordinary ‘The Nature of Order’ series of books, has long been someone whose work I have admired greatly.  It is sometimes said that it is generally best not to meet your heroes as they usually disappoint, but that wasn’t the case here.  I met Chris and his wife Maggie in their beautiful old home (I’m starting to sound like a writer for Hello! magazine), and after lunch and a general chat about the Transition approach (about which Chris knew very little in advance of our conversation), we did the following interview.  I am deeply grateful to them both for a fascinating and illuminating afternoon.

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6 Dec 2010

A Critical Response to Michael Brownlee’s call for ‘Deep Transition’

I read Michael Brownlee’s recent piece ‘The Evolution of Transition in the US‘, with a mixture of fascination and a sense of disquiet that increased the deeper I got into the piece.  The concept of Transition has been regularly critiqued, a positive process which has helped to shape what it is today.  Most critiques run along the lines of “Transition, nice idea, but it isn’t [ … ] enough”.  So, for Alex Steffen, Transition isn’t technologically savvy or optimistic enough, for the Trapese Collective it isn’t politically savvy enough, for John Michael Greer it is guilty of ‘premature triumphalism’, for Ted Trainer it isn’t sufficiently rooted in alternative culture or focused enough, while for others it is too riven with New Age thinking and pseudoscience.  Now, according to Brownlee, it is fatally flawed by not having the ‘Sacred’ at the heart of what it does.

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