16 Feb 2011
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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14 Feb 2011
I was honoured last week to be able to interview Michael Shuman, who has long been one of pioneers of thinking on the question of localisation. It was a fascinating conversation…
Can you tell us about your work and what you do, for those unfamiliar with that…
Right now my formal job portfolio is split 50/50 between BALLE, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, and another for profit called Cutting Edge Capital. BALLE is a non-profit founded about 10 years ago, which is building networks of local businesses through North America and I do research and economic development activities for them. Cutting Edge Capital is really working with small businesses and communities to help them figure out ways of creating more local investment solutions.
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9 Feb 2011
Dave Chapman exploring the Dairy Crest site in Totnes, site of the proposed ATMOS Project.
Dave Chapman works for BASSAC (the British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres) and lives in Totnes, where he is active within the ATMOS Project. For the Ingredient of Transition being prepared for the forthcoming new Transition book on the Community Ownership of Assets I talked to Dave about community asset development and also about the ATMOS Project.
Why is the community ownership of assets important? Why does it matter that the community is able to own its own assets?
Self-determination, more than anything else. It’s about defining where you’re going to. Land ownership enables you to define where you take a community in the end, so it can come down to supporting energy use, food use, employment, housing – it’s the basis for the right mix within a community.
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9 Feb 2011
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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2 Feb 2011
My aunt just moved house, and her new place contains many fixtures and fittings that almost certainly date from the early 1960s, which are, to say the least, rather dated. There are those things in front of lights that look like a heavy glass ashtray, and a wide range of lampshades for which I feel pretty sure there is no highly valuable ‘retro’ market on Ebay. One in particular got me thinking. Modelled on what people presumably imagined lamps were like before electricity, it is a great clunky wooden thing with 4 arms, each of which has a ‘candle’ (a light bulb) on the end. What I thought was fascinating was the detailing.
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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.
