What is a Transition Town?

Transition Towns are communities - just like yours - looking peak oil and climate change squarely in the eye.
We live in an oil-dependent world, and have gotten to this level of dependency in a very short space of time, using vast reserves of oil in the process - without thinking ahead to plan for when the supply is not so plentiful. Most of us avoid thinking about what happens when oil runs out (or becomes prohibitively expensive), but Transition Towns show us examples of how the inevitable and profound changes ahead can have positive outcomes. These changes can lead to the rebirth of local communities, which will grow more of their own food, generate their own power, encourage local trade and local currencies, and build their own houses using local materials.

What Does a Transition Town Look Like?
A Transition Town (or Suburb, Neighbourhood, Island, Village, Beach, etc) is somewhere that is harnessing local creativity to come up with real, practical solutions for how that community can manage the transition to a lower energy future by increasing it's local resilience in the face of diminished oil supplies, and mitigate the effects of climate change by reducing it's carbon emissions.

Local resilience means that each community provides more of what it needs. This doesn't have to mean "going without", but instead means that as the transport and manufacturing costs of our global economy increase (with the price of oil), a resilient community will actually have more high quality good and services available, and greater opportunity for meaningful employment, as it will have invested it's wealth in local people and local businesses.

Imagine how the area you live in might look if more of your neighbours worked nearby and could walk or cycle to do their work and their shopping. Imagine the image of a noisy, smelly and dangerous local street being transformed into one with more local people wandering around, and more kids out playing. Imagine how your local shops might look if they were brimming with locally grown fresh food and locally produced craft goods. The transition to a vibrant local community is not only going to become necessary with the increasing cost of energy, but it can also result in better places to live and work if we approach the task with energy and creativity.

What can I do?
You could consider starting a transition initiative in your town. If you want a few pointers about how to go about that process, have a read of this forum: Starting a Transition Town initiative

See the full list of Transition Towns and read about what is happening in other towns by visiting www.transitiontowns.org.nz