building resilient communities

First Principles for Sustainable and Equitable Transportation: A Review of Beyond Mobility

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Subway systems, trams, Bus-Rapid-Transit, high-speed trains, cars – these can all play useful roles in well-designed transportation systems. But we must not forget what still is and what should remain the world’s most important transportation method: walking. That is one of the key messages of Beyond Mobility: Planning Cities for People and Places, a survey of urban planning successes and failures around the world.

When Winning in Court Won’t Save the Environment Looking for a Plan “C”: (Part 2)

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Plan C is a concerted effort to encourage and support the use of ballot measures allowing voters to have a direct say in the climate-related laws and policies of their states.  Ballot initiatives are as close to a pure democratic practice as one is likely to find.

My Review of David Holmgren’s ‘RetroSuburbia’

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David Holmgren’s new book is a fascinating, and intoxicating blast of ‘what if?’ which ought to be put through every suburban letterbox in the world, although given its size I have doubts that it would fit. I am a huge Holmgren fan.

Patterns of Commoning: Commons and Alternative Rationalities: Subjectivity, Emotion and the (Non)rational Commons

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When I tell people that I work on inshore fisheries management the response is inevitably disparaging. Most people continue to assume that the commons is an ecological disaster waiting to happen and that all fishermen are greedy individuals.

Cultivating Place: Refugees and Urban Gardening in Baltimore

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There’s a difference between simply settling somewhere and finding a home. Refugees are faced with this reality every day — among new neighbors in a new city, building a sense of belonging is no small task. Working to create a place for oneself is a bold act of hope for a new life. So, what can public spaces do to help create a sense of place for refugees?

Sustainable St Albans Week 2018

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Sustainable St Albans Week  – a Transition St Albans initiative – does make steps to get the mainstream to engage with climate change – but we came at it, not from science, but from necessity, borne out of our personal motivations about climate change; tiredness and frustration that we couldn’t get more people on board.

Could Community Activism Replace Charity in our Society?

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Giving money can often be a way of avoiding our feelings of guilt, whereas increasingly people are using these negative emotions as motivator for positive change. Community voluntary action is taking the place of charitable donation as people increasingly allow themselves to respond emotionally to social inequality when they see it around them.

Local and Regional Community Resilience Building is Going Global

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The passion and enthusiasm at the Gaia Education/GEN/Transition Towns tent was infectious and nourishing. Overall, what most filled me with hope was that the conversations about local and regional resilience-building and the need for a deeper transformation are now global conversations, offering a common ground for collective action beyond multi-lateral dialogues.

Indigenous Communities Carry on Berta Cacéres’ Work by Defending Nature and Health Care in Honduras

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On March 2, hundreds gathered in Honduras to commemorate the life and work of the renowned Honduran activist Berta Cáceres on the second anniversary of her assassination. Carrying torches, Cáceres’ supporters marched to the city center of La Esperanza to demand justice for her 2016 assassination.