Transition Towns - a new way to form community

Tom Atlee - A fantastic resource for co-intelligent living - has brought to my attention a fantastic model for creating communities that work - Transition Towns.

Tom Atlee wrote:

The concept of energy descent, and of the Transition
approach, is a simple one: that the future with less oil
could be preferable to the present, but only if sufficient
creativity and imagination are applied early enough in
the design of this transition. -- Rob Hopkins


Dear friends,

I've been hearing more and more about a sustainability program called Transition Towns in recent months. And it is not just me: it has gone viral. It is being initiated in communities around the world at an ever-accelerating rate. At the time of this writing, there are 126 communities who qualify as Transition Towns (see ) -- despite the considerable criteria involved (see ). Beyond that, there are about 600 more communities seriously considering it, all laid out on Google Maps to help everyone find each other and start new groups...

(Note: The links above are from the excellent Transition Towns wiki, which is a delightful portal through which to explore this topic.)

First worked up as a student project in the UK in 2005, Transition Towns has spread around the world in 3 years, entirely from the grassroots, truly viral. I feel like a late-comer. It is almost embarrassing to be writing to you about it now, in 2009, but I figure the world can use all the help it can get right now, and building resilient communities is a "the more the merrier" kind of undertaking.

The Transition Town movement is sometimes called the Transition Initiatives movement because it has come to include cities, colleges, islands, and all sorts of other communities in addition to towns.

And it is no surprise why it is spreading so rapidly. Not only are these folks incredibly pleasant, upbeat, and savvy about the use of the internet, but the Transition Towns initiative offers a refreshingly creative channel for people's growing unease about the slow-motion collapse of the old structures and systems we've come to depend on. It offers an inspiring, fully adaptable and evolving positive vision of incremental change toward sustainability that any community can realistically and pragmatically implement -- one that can be launched by any group of ordinary citizens. The Transition Town (TT) approach not only faces global-impact challenges squarely, but suggests that we can "build ways of living that are more connected, more enriching and that recognize the biological limits of our planet."

While Peak Oil and Climate Change are understandably
profoundly challenging, also inherent within them is the
potential for an economic, cultural, and social renaissance
the likes of which we have never seen. We will see a
flourishing of local businesses, local skills and solutions,
and a flowering of ingenuity and creativity. It is a
Transition in which we will inevitably grow, and in which
our evolution is a precondition for progress. Emerging
at the other end, we will not be the same as we were:
we will have become more humble, more connected to
the natural world, fitter, leaner, more skilled, and
ultimately, wiser. -- Transition Towns Handbook

Perhaps most remarkable is that the Transitions Towns approach engages people NOT by scaring them out of their wits or telling them what to do, but by providing powerful motivations, possibilities, and ways for them to explore creative local responses for and among themselves. There is no blueprint. The guidance provided involves tools, ways of talking and co-creating together, visons, and links to other people and resources engaged in this effort. What we do with all that is up to us.

Transition Town (TT) initiatives are formally about the "localization" of communities to prepare for disruptions arising from the twin crises of
(a) PEAK OIL -- not running out of oil, exactly, but when the world's demand for oil exceeds its ability to produce it (and the current low price of of oil will not last long: see ) and
(b) CLIMATE CHANGE and the extreme weather and other disruptions that accompany it.

However, there are other crises that effective localization and community resilience programs like TT can also prepare us for, from economic depression (which we're already tasting) to the disappearance of government services in a flood of red ink (see and ) to solar flares disrupting our power grid and electronic control systems (an eventuality NASA has deemed possible by 2012 ). We have gotten ourselves into a kind of addictive dependence on globally vulnerable systems whose potential (likely? current?) collapse dictates a prudent (inevitable?) turn towards relocalization and resilience.

As peak oil expert Richard Heinberg points out, the sooner we start learning to live without oil and the vast supply networks it feeds, the easier it will be for us when the current set-up is simply no longer an option.

So all this community preparation would be a great idea, regardless -- and I'd want to spread the word for that reason alone. But when I researched the TT approach, I found something even more intriguing to me, personally: the Transition Towns process uses two of my favorite processes -- Open Space and World Cafe. In fact, I even discovered that the most visible co-founder of this movement, Rob Hopkins, wrote in his Masters dissertation "Energy Descent Pathways: Evaluating potential responses to Peak Oil"


"'[F]or many commentators, the need for engagement
points inexorably in the direction of new fora, such as focus
groups, citizens juries or panels, round tables, "visioning",
and new consensus conferences, in which, with no technocratic
monopoly of information, the necessary deliberation can take
place'. This arises from a growing realisation that environmental
values are not preformed, rather that they 'emerge out of
debate, discussion and challenge, as [people] encounter new
facts, insights and judgements contributed by others'."
"[Tom] Atlee's concept of 'co-intelligence' offers a tool for
harnessing the power of communities to implement change.
He defines its aim as being 'to increase the capacity of a
society as a whole to act in a co-intelligent manner' and
recommends the use of a wide range of facilitation and
empowerment tools to enable this. 'Our goal...' he writes,
'can become the creation of ways in which people can
collaboratively arrive at solutions to their (and our) collective
problems'. Some of the mechanisms cited by [Gene] Rowe
and [Lynn J.] Frewer, most notably Open Space Technology
and World Café, are also advocated by Atlee, and are
increasingly being used around the world by groups working
to initiate relocalisation projects." (p. 41)

Wow. It made my day to find that my work played a role in inspiring and informing this intiative that just might make a decisive difference in how things turn out in our world.

But back to the Transition Towns movement. It has much to teach us. Here's my take on one set of its core principles:

The key to sustainability is RESILIENCE -- resilient communities, resilient people, resilient cultures, resilient systems. Resilience, TT folks like to point out, means a community or system can bounce back after challenges and shocks -- everything from food-supply interruptions to economic downturns to energy crises. Resilience is in many ways the healthy counterpoint to obsessive efficiency. Resilience makes healthy systems in which life-serving productivity arises from their well-being and responsiveness. Obsessive efficiency, in contrast, makes productive systems at the expense of well-being, degrading people and trashing ecosystems to maximize production and monetary profit. When productivity is defined as units produced and profits made per hour, rather than as life-value added, it becomes the enemy of life. The effort to create resilient Transition Towns is an effort to make an evolutionary leap into a kind of economics that focuses on supporting and adding value to life, not only in the OUTCOMES of productive activity, but in the vitality of the activity, itself.

Three requirements for resilient systems are Diversity, Modularity, and Tightness of Feedbacks.

DIVERSITY is about the variety of a system's elements and parts. It shows up in the idea that every vital function should be performed by more than one entity (redundancy, which is essential for resilience) and that if a community includes diverse people pursuing many various approaches to challenges and providing different sources of resources, it can keep functioning even if some of its parts fail. And if one approach doesn't work, there's a good chance another will. When you want to nurture diversity, you help people do what they are individually and collectively passionate about and good at rather than formulating and managing master plans into which you engineer human cogs. This kind of "follow your energy" self-organizing dynamic is where the Open Space process shines.

MODULARITY means that the whole scene works largely through groups or communities who are
(a) able to perform all the needed functions and
(b) networked so they can share experience and information.
This is an alternative to having everyone dependent on centralized governance and vast and vulnerable supply networks that pull everyone down when they collapse. Modularity enables the system as a whole to better re-organize in the event of a shock.

TIGHTNESS OF FEEDBACKS refers to how quickly and strongly one part of the system can respond to changes (good or bad) in another part. This factor involves good communication systems and, more importantly, local-ness. The more local our interactions are, the more the results of our actions are obvious to ourselves and others, and the more readily consequences can inform and shape our individual and collective responses through learning, answerability, corrections, rewards and penalties, and all the other forms of feedback.

Rob Hopkins stresses that Transition Towns is about cutting carbon and building resilience. Cutting carbon and building resilience. They go hand in hand, each inadequate by itself, each helping the other, each with long- and short-term implications.

There is MUCH more to the wisdom and practical know-how contained in the Transition Team materials, but I'll leave it for you to discover. I've included a number of further links below -- including links to the basic TT primer and Rob Hopkins' extensive TRANSITION HANDBOOK -- mostly sent to me by people on this list (Thank You!).

I have a feeling that in the not too distant future a majority of folks reading this will be involved, one way or another, in Transition Towns. The time is very very ripe.

Coheartedly,
Tom

=======================

For a quick, clear, and compelling introduction to the Transition Town movement see this great article from the Christian Science Monitor*

and this great introductory talk by TT co-founder Rob Hopkins, about 6 minutes long


For some no-talk inspiration about community engagement for the kind of world we dream of, here's a wonderful slideshow -- with great music -- about the many Transition Town communities being formed in New Zealand. It's about 4 minutes long:


Here's an excellent talk by Rob Hopkins, about 18 minutes long


Here's a PDF file about the Transition Network (14 pages), "Who We Are and What We Do":


And here's a PDF file (51 pages) of the Transition Initiatives Primer:


These PDFs contain information and guidelines that show a lot of wisdom about the psychology of an enterprise like this, and about connecting and partnering with different segments of the community, including local governments.

Here is the Amazon Link for The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins:

00322188/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227893553&sr=8-1>

Rob Hopkins' blog http://transitionculture.org/ includes, among much else, an engaging account of his own family's efforts to give up their addiction to "the car".

Here are a recent set of videos, about ten minutes each: Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Towns Movement, speaking at the Positive Energy Conference in Findhorn this past Spring. They are short and very enjoyable, instructive, and inspiring.

First segment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kizxt14aPM8

Second http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbLsmR21gnk

Third http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwjGDtHGd9c

Fourth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciZc5vv5-yY

Fifth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0GYI5CJTkw

Sixth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db9KpaELhCg


-----------

* NOTE: I wanted to feature that excellent Christian Science Monitor article on Transition Towns (ironically dated September 11, 2008) -- in its entirety -- but the Monitor has done something with its website that makes it impossible to cut and paste that article (and others?), so all I can give you is the link and hope that you will take the trouble to click it. I do highly recommend it.

PS: In researching this, I ran across this stunning fact: "Americans drove 100 billion fewer miles in the 12 months ending in October than they had the year before, a decline of about 3.4%, the Transportation Department reported Friday. Miles driven fell by 9 billion miles, or 3.5%, to 250 billion miles in October compared with October 2007. So far in 2008, miles driven have fallen 3.5% to 2.45 trillion miles."
. I'm boggled that people can throw around numbers like billions and trillions when talking about miles driven. I then stumbled on a chart showing miles driven each month from 1983 to 2007
which shows the yearly average was at 3 trillion miles per year for both 2006 and 2007 and will -- thankfully, painfully, undoubtedly -- be much lower for 2008. At 20 miles per gallon (about average for the US), that's 150 billion gallons of gasoline burned by American drivers during each recent year. If I were the earth, I'd be getting hot under the collar, too... It is high time to get our act together. And it adds immense poignancy to Rob Hopkins' blog entry on his own efforts to give up driving




Dear friends,

MORE ON TRANSITION TOWNS

The real question is not “How can we keep
everything going as it is?” but rather “How
can we learn to live the good life within
realistic energy constraints?” -- Rob Hopkins

There were some juicy responses to my last mailing, the one on Transition Towns (TT). Here's a taste of it...

Two subscribers -- Nancy Roof (publisher of Kosmos Journal) and my brother Dick -- sent me the printed text of the Christian Science Monitor article I had wanted to share with you, so I've pasted it below. It includes the "Twelve Key Steps Toward Transition" -- a truly remarkable quiltwork of practices for helping a community self-organize. It includes -- and goes well beyond -- a number of approaches I've been promoting for over a decade. I've never seen them woven together so powerfully. They include:

1. Leadership that empowers a living system to self-organize, and thus works its way out of a job.

2. Inclusive collaboration -- working with all involved parties, catalyzing them into an effective whole.

3. The use of Open Space and World Cafe to explore issues, pulling people together with powerful questions that matter and giving them permission to "take responsibility for what they love" in an organized way with no one in charge,

4. Focusing on resilience for sustainability.

5. Using visioning, storytelling, and "backcasting" -- including what I call "imagineering" -- people telling stories of what they want to have happen, as if it has happened -- to align people around their own powerful visionary narratives. This was the inspiration for last August's Story Field Conference in Colorado.

Subscriber David Eggleton recommended one more great TT website -- -- where each of the 50 U.S. states has its own section. Here and on other TT sites like California's and Portland OR's subscriber and HopeDance magazine editor Bob Banner says, the "people are fantastic.... wise, resourceful, awakened, purposeful.. its a wonder to see all the cool people doing such creative work!!!" You can visit the HopeDance TT portal at .

Vicki Robin -- co-author of "Your Money or Your Life", the classic manual to help us change our relationship to money -- wrote, "When I heard about Rob [Hopkins, the dynamic co-founder of the Transition Towns initiative] and TTT [Transition Town Totnes, UK, where Hopkins kicked off the project] two years ago I knew it was a transformational approach to relocalization, which I've known for several years now is what needs to happen. For me it's YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE at a community level... It was the only sane place I found to put creative energy with any hope it would grow."

Although I believe, as Rob Hopkins does, that action is needed at all levels from global to personal, I can't think of any challenge faced by a city or town that wouldn't directly benefit from this inspiring community-level program. And many community members active in Transition initiatives naturally get involved in personal, national and global efforts, as well. The fact that it seems to be fun is... well, let's just say that there seems to be a lot of icing on this particular cake!

"If you want to create a new culture, throw a better party!" -- Rick Ingrasci