Act: Inspiration

Learning From Knight’s Soul of the Community, Leaning Toward the Future of Placemaking

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The Knight Soul of the Community study investigated community attachment—a multidimensional construct that went beyond measuring just satisfaction to also look at community pride, community optimism, and other emotional feelings about place. Attachment is not the traditional idea of engagement that is usually studied in places, but a separate construct. Understanding residents’ emotional bonds to place represented by attachment took our examination beyond the outward behaviors of traditional engagement and gave new insights into the dynamics of how place affects people. That, alone, was a significant contribution to understanding place success that had basically gone unmeasured.

Hungry for change: Transitioning to local food supplies

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The fact that globalisation has an impact on people’s lives in the UK is undeniable while the desirability and level of this impact is still very much up for debate. After spending the last few months in Totnes — a small yet increasingly well-known town in Devon, UK — I have spoken with many people seeking practical ways to connect to their local area so that they do not have to rely so heavily on sprawling global supply chains.

How to Be a Citizen Placemaker: Think Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper

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Imagine that you live in a truly vibrant place: the bustling neighborhood of every Placemaker’s dreams. Picture the streets, the local square, the waterfront, the public market. Think about the colors, sights, smells, and sounds; imagine the sidewalk ballet in full swing, with children playing, activity spilling out of storefronts and workspaces, vendors selling food, neighborhood cultural events and festivals taking place out in the open air.

Look out Monsanto: The Global Food Movement Is Rising

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Chewing on a mouthful of locally grown lettuce, I wondered if the claims I’d heard about the global food-justice movement were true. Was there a line to follow, however crooked, between my purchase of these greens, land reform in Brazil and opposition to genetically modified seeds in California. Or was it all just empty calories.

Four powers

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When various transitioners and change makers seek to influence the politics, economy and future course of a small town, they first organize a civic association. There are many kinds, from churches and town beautification committees all the way to activist groups and guerrilla gardener clubs. Alexis de Tocqueville rightly saw such civic underpinnings as something essential, the very foundation of American democracy.

The Five Stages Of Collapse, By Dmitry Orlov – Book Review

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Many of us who have been researching collapse for a decade or more repeatedly use the word in writing, speaking, and daily conversation, but few of us have the opportunity to define it with such precision or personal experience as one finds in Dmitry Orlov’s forthcoming book ‘Five Stages of Collapse: A Survivor’s Toolkit’.

Alternative currencies – April 10

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•The Other Side of the Coin in Spain •Avoiding Economic Collapse: Complementary Currencies •Social currencies gain strength in Brazil •Digital Gold Rush: The Bitcoin Boom and Its Many Risks •Bitcoin interest spikes in Spain as Cyprus financial crisis grows •Why one English town created its own currency

Occupy Sandy builds worker power in Far Rockaway

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Three and a half months ago, the walls upstairs at the Church of the Prophecy in Far Rockaway, a low-income coastal neighborhood of New York City, were covered with maps of where help was most needed. The church was a hub for the Occupy Sandy relief effort after Hurricane Sandy. Now, nearly five months after the hurricane struck, the maps have been replaced by posters extolling the virtues of collective struggle and art made by neighborhood children enrolled in Occupy Sandy’s twice-weekly after-school program.

Practicing Ecology: Julie Richardson on the Transition to a New Economy

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If you follow the River Dart from where it meets the sea in Dartmouth (a small harbor town in Southwest England) to its many sources high up on Dartmoor (one of England’s largest national parks) you would travel a landscape that is both timeless and ever-changing. Standing atop one of Dartmoor’s large outcroppings of granite, you can actually begin to see the planet’s carbon cycle at work.

Considering Transition community events as cultural and creative acts

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Our work comes from necessity, rather than theory: it’s grassroots, vernacular, based on gatherings, rooted in time and place. It doesn’t have a hero writer or diva centre stage, with an audience gazing passively upward, but takes place in a room full of participants, with an organising, often invisible, core. Everyone belongs in this space and time. Everyone has a voice.