local economies

Transport and urban design – headlines

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•How Biking Improves Employee Productivity •Lulu and the Life-Sized City •In Seattle, Bike Lanes Are Good for Business •Plan to Convert Roads to Gravel Begins Despite Pushback •Smoking Ban: Shipping Shifts to Cleaner Fuel •On your bikes! Turkmenistan president orders entire nation to saddle up for national cycling day

Local Economic Blueprint highlights potential of community resilience

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Today sees the publication of what may well turn out to be one of the most important documents yet produced by a Transition initiative. Over the next few weeks we will be returning to it, to hear a range of perspectives on it, and hope it will generate debate and discussion. The document is the ‘Totnes & District Local Economic Blueprint‘, and you can download it for free here. The Blueprint is the first attempt that I am aware of to map in detail a local economy and to put a value on the potential benefits of an increased degree of localisation. If you like, it identifies “the size of the prize” of Transition.

The rebirth of a landmark

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On March 15, 2003—10 years ago today—the newly renovated San Francisco Ferry Building reopened its doors. The historic landmark and international culinary destination is such a Bay Area institution that it’s hard to imagine a time when it did not hold that beloved place in the hearts of food lovers, but the transformation was many years in the making.

Settlements (from A Potent Nostalgia)

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The current system of aggressive nation states and trade blocks – largely subjected to still more aggressive corporate powers, such as Cargil, Monsanto and so on will prove easy to subvert, since they deal exclusively in price. We return to capital worth in labour and resource. Value has been resonant with social justice in all cultures, and I think most people have come to understand what “real economics” and valued capital might mean. Worth may be a potent social dynamo: both morally and by weight and measure. Corporations and trade blocks are exclusively oil powered, or oil-replacement (a fantasy) powered – not a durable foundation!

The Ghosts of Shoppers Past: why assumptions matter

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Regeneration’ is one of those terms that is like motherhood and apple pie. Everyone wants regeneration, right? You’d be mad not to, surely. Yet all too often regeneration is about sweeping away the economy of local independent businesses and replacing it with big chains and brands. I’m sure if I found old photos of the centre of Manchester before it was ‘regenerated’ there would be a dazzling variety of independent businesses there, all now long gone or shunted out to the edge of the city.

All placemaking is creative: How a shared focus on place builds vibrant destinations

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Placemaking is a process, accessible to anyone, that allows peoples’ creativity to emerge. When it is open and inclusive, this process can be extraordinarily effective in making people feel attached to the places where they live. That, in turn, makes people more likely to get involved and build shared wealth in their communities.

Infrastructure for the sake of jobs?

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Jobs and economic growth are a result of having a productive system in place, not the other way around. We need to create real net wealth that benefits not only the local communities, but the region as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, jobs are great. But, building infrastructure with the primary purpose of creating jobs, with little consideration to context, is setting a bad precedence and setting up communities for unexpected liabilities.