Transition towns

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Transition Towns refer to community-based initiatives that work towards local resilience in response to peak oil, climate change and the economic crisis. These Transition Town initiatives are part of the Transition Network, a network of 1000+ community initiatives across the world, which refers to itself as “a movement of communities coming together to reimagine and rebuild our world”.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

General introduction to approach

Transition Town initiatives provide spaces for experimentation where citizens can build community resilience and pioneer alternative economic and social solutions. This includes the (re)discovery of (new combinations of) old and new skills and services to increase socio-ecological and socio-economic independence, and experimenting with permaculture design principles for urban farming and local food production, cooperative production of renewable energy, time banks and other complementary currencies Seyfang & Longhurst 2013.

The TRANSIT research project includes a number of case-studies on transition initiatives and the Transition Network as manifestations of social innovation in the sense that they explicitly engage with changing social relations, involving new ways of doing, thinking and organising. In research project TESS the Transition Black Isle (Scotland) was one of the case studies. Transition Town Halle was studied as a case study in the GLAMURS project and supported by the BASE project the cases of Transition Town Initiatives in Bristol (UK) and Peterborough (Canada) were described.

Shapes, sizes and applications

The Transition Network originated around 2006 in the United Kingdom (UK) and has since rapidly spread across the world. Longhurst (2015) indicates that in 2014 the growth of the movement led to the proliferation of 1120 transition initiatives in 43 countries (see also Feola and Nunes 2014) .

There have been many empirical studies on the Transition Network and local initiatives, ranging from urban studies and critical geography to research fields focused on degrowth and sustainability transitions (e.g. Mason, K. and Whitehead, M. 2012, Bailey et al. 2010, Hopkins 2012, Seyfang & Haxeltine 2012).

Transition Town Totnes (TTT) in the UK is the first and longest running Transition Initiative, which was launched in September 2006. It is also the location of the Transition Network who share an office building with the local Totnes initiative. TTT describes itself as “a community-led and run local charity that exists to strengthen the local economy, reduce our environmental impact, and build our resilience for a future with less cheap energy and a changing climate, (...) a collection of local volunteers with a small staff team, who come together to work on projects” [1]. Their work “ranges from increasing low impact affordable housing, sharing skills, creating livelihoods, reducing energy costs and carbon emissions, growing our local food economy and working in partnership with other local projects” [2].

Transition Wekerle, launched in 2008 (re-named in 2011), was the first official Transition initiative in Hungary, and helped develop the Hungarian Transition Hub. According to its own website, Transition Wekerle “relies heavily on the cooperation of individuals, local NGOs and local institutions” and “focuses on local food, local energy and local economy in order to lighten our eco-footprint, promote active citizenship, new ways of cooperation and solidarity”. Their initiative ranges from “improving the energy efficiency of old homes through insulation, collecting fruit and vegetable donations at the local market for poverty-stricken families and promoting urban gardening by organising seed-swap events” [3].

Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice

The approach of the Transition Network is explicitly designed to be applicable anywhere, including the urban context. In fact, one of the interesting things about the Transition Network is that it enables people to experiment with approaches and solutions that may originally have been associated with rural areas (e.g. permaculture, organic agriculture, renewable energy, ecovillages) and do so in their urban neighbourhoods. As argued by North & Longhurst 2013: “the question of how the Transition model can be applied in urban settings has not been clear, leading to the implicit assumption that urban Transition initiatives are more complex and difficult. In contrast, [we argue that] the plasticity of Transition politics means that, in some cases, an urban context might be more productive for the development of Transition initiatives because it allows for a greater diversity of political action as well as providing a density of networks and resources that can be critical for the survival of grassroots interventions”.

The Transition Network explicitly aims to contribute to both social justice and ecological sustainability, although these are primarily framed in terms of resilience rather than sustainability. The first two principles that the Transition Network emphasizes on their website and in “The Essential Guide to Doing Transition”[4] are formulated as follows:

We respect resource limits and create resilience – The urgent need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, greatly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and make wise use of precious resources is at the forefront of everything we do. We promote inclusivity and social justice – The most disadvantaged and powerless people in our societies are likely to be worst affected by rising fuel and food prices, resource shortages and extreme weather events. We want to increase the chances of all groups in society to live well, healthily and with sustainable livelihoods.

The striving for inclusivity is also reflected in sharing Transition initiatives and approaches in an explicitly accessible and open format and tone to enable everyone to “Getting Transition started in your street, community, town or organisation”.

Narrative of change

Transformative potential

Summary of relevant approaches

References