Download or read book The Transition Handbook written by Rob Hopkins and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2008-02-25 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Move from feeling anxious about the oil crisis to developing a positive visions and taking traction action to create a more self-reliant existence with this ground-breaking book. We live in an oil-dependent world, and have become reliant in a very short space of time, using vast reserves of oil in the process – and without planning for when the supply is not so plentiful. Most of us avoid thinking about what happens when the oil runs out (or becomes prohibitively expensive), but the reality may not be as bad as we think. The Transition Handbook shows how the inevitable and profound changes ahead could have a positive effect. Written by permaculture expert Rob Hopkins, he discusses the possibility of a rebirth of local communities, which will generate their own fuel, food and housing. These will encourage the development of local currencies, to keep money in the local area, and unleash a local 'skilling-up', so that people have more control over their lives. The growth in interest in the Transition model continues to be exponential. There are now more than 35 formal Transition Initiatives in the UK, including towns, cities, islands, villages and peninsulas, with more joining as the idea takes off. With little proactivity at government level, communities are taking matters into their own hands and acting locally. If your community has not yet become a Transition Initiative, this upbeat guide, filled with beautiful black and white photographs, offers you the tools to get started. The Transition Handbook is the perfect manual to guide communities, as they begin this 'energy descent' journey.
Download or read book From What Is to What If written by Rob Hopkins and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Big ideas that just might save the world”—The Guardian The founder of the international Transition Towns movement asks why true creative, positive thinking is in decline, asserts that it's more important now than ever, and suggests ways our communities can revive and reclaim it. In these times of deep division and deeper despair, if there is a consensus about anything in the world, it is that the future is going to be awful. There is an epidemic of loneliness, an epidemic of anxiety, a mental health crisis of vast proportions, especially among young people. There’s a rise in extremist movements and governments. Catastrophic climate change. Biodiversity loss. Food insecurity. The fracturing of ecosystems and communities beyond, it seems, repair. The future—to say nothing of the present—looks grim. But as Transition movement cofounder Rob Hopkins tells us, there is plenty of evidence that things can change, and cultures can change, rapidly, dramatically, and unexpectedly—for the better. He has seen it happen around the world and in his own town of Totnes, England, where the community is becoming its own housing developer, energy company, enterprise incubator, and local food network—with cascading benefits to the community that extend far beyond the projects themselves. We do have the capability to effect dramatic change, Hopkins argues, but we’re failing because we’ve largely allowed our most critical tool to languish: human imagination. As defined by social reformer John Dewey, imagination is the ability to look at things as if they could be otherwise. The ability, that is, to ask What if? And if there was ever a time when we needed that ability, it is now. Imagination is central to empathy, to creating better lives, to envisioning and then enacting a positive future. Yet imagination is also demonstrably in decline at precisely the moment when we need it most. In this passionate exploration, Hopkins asks why imagination is in decline, and what we must do to revive and reclaim it. Once we do, there is no end to what we might accomplish. From What Is to What If is a call to action to reclaim and unleash our collective imagination, told through the stories of individuals and communities around the world who are doing it now, as we speak, and witnessing often rapid and dramatic change for the better.
Download or read book The Transition Companion written by Robert Hopkins and published by Green Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2008, the best selling The Transition Handbook suggested a model for a community-led response to peak oil and climate change. Since then, the Transition idea has gone viral across the globe, from universities and London neighbourhoods to Italian villages and Brazilian favelas. In contrast to the ever-worsening stream of information about climate change, the economy and resource depletion, Transition focuses on solutions, on community-scale projects and on positive results. The Transition Companion picks up the story today, describing one of the most fascinating experiments now under way in the world. It shows how communities are working for a future where local enterprises are valued and nurtured; where lower energy use is seen as a benefit; and where cooperation, creativity and the building of resilience are the cornerstones of a new economy. The first part discusses where we are now in terms of resilience to the problems of rising oil prices, climate change and economic uncertainty. It presents a vision of how the future might look if we succeed in addressing these issues. The book then looks in detail at the process a community in transition goes through, drawing on the experience of those who have already embarked on this journey. These examples show how much can be achieved when people harness energy and imagination to create projects that will make their communities more resilient. The Transition Companion combines practical advice; the tools needed to start and maintain a Transition initiative; with numerous inspiring stories from local groups worldwide.
Download or read book Smart Resilient and Transition Cities written by Adriana Galderisi and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Smart, Resilient and Transition Cities: Emerging Approaches and Tools for Climate-Sensitive Urban Development starts with a presentation of three widespread Urban Metaphors, which are gaining increasing attention from urban planners and decision-makers: Smart City, Resilient City and Transition Towns, being all of them focused on the need for enhancing cities' capacities to cope with the multiple and heterogeneous challenges threatening contemporary cities and their future development and, above all, with climate issues. Then, the Authors provide an overview of current large-scale and urban strategies to counterbalance climate change so far undertaken in different geographical contexts (Europe, United States, China, Africa and Australia), shedding light on the different approaches, on the different weights assigned to mitigation and adaptation issues as well as on the main barriers hindering their effectiveness and translation into measurable outcomes. Opportunities and criticalities arising from the rich, 'sprawled' and 'blurred' landscape of current strategies and initiatives in the face of climate change pave the way to a discussion on the lessons learnt from current initiatives and provide new hints for developing integrated climate strategies, capable to guide planners and decision makers towards a climate sensitive urban development Smart, Resilient and Transition Cities: Emerging Approaches and Tools for Climate-Sensitive Urban Development merges a scientific approach with a pragmatic one. Through a case study approach, the Authors explore strengths and weaknesses of institutional and informal practices to foreshadow innovative paths for an adaptive process of urban governance in the face of climate change. The book guides the reader along new governance paths, characterized by continuous learning and close cooperation and communication among different actors and stakeholders and, in so doing, helps them to overcome current 'siloed' approaches to climate issues. - Links resilience, smart growth, low-carbon urbanism, climate-friendly cities, sustainable development and transition cities, being all these concepts crucial to improve effective climate policies - Includes a number of case studies showing how cities, different in size, geographical, cultural and economic contexts are currently dealing with climate issues, grasping synergies and commonalities arising from current institutional practices and transition initiatives - Provides strategic and operative guidelines to overcome barriers and critical issues emerging from current practices, promoting cross-sectoral approaches to counterbalance climate change
Download or read book Transition in Action written by Jacqi Hodgson and published by Green Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A community-based guide to reducing local dependence on fossil fuels and reducing the local carbon footprint over the next 20 years, a period during which they anticipate changes associated with declining oil supplies and the impacts of climate change to become more apparent.
Download or read book The New Town Square written by Robert R. Archibald and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2004-05-17 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this lyrical volume Robert R. Archibald explores a growing crisis of modern America: the dissolution of place that leads to a dangerous rupture of community. Community_born historically within the collective space of the town square where citizens come together to share stories and make meaning of their common histories_is dissipating as Americans are increasingly isolated from that shared space and are being submerged into an individualistic consumer monoculture with disregard for the common good. This volume examines how public history museums and historians can help restore community by offering a source of identity for people and their places, becoming a wellspring of community and an incubator of democracy, a consciousness of connection with a responsibility to those in our past and future. The New Town Square offers its readers a space to understand and celebrate the shared space of community, and is a vital resource for public historians and those interested in restoring the meaning of community.
Download or read book Communicating Global to Local Resiliency written by Emily Polk and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the communication processes of the Transition Movement, a community-led global social movement, as it was adapted in a local context. First it analyzes how the movement’s grand narratives of responding to “climate change” and creating greater “resiliency” were communicated into local community-based stories, responses, and actions in the Transition Town of Amherst, Massachusetts. Second, it seeks to understand the multilayered communication processes that facilitate these actions toward sustainable social change. Transition Amherst developed and/or supported projects that addressed reducing dependency on peak-oil, creating community-based-local economies, supporting sustainable food production and consumption, and participating in more efficient transportation, among others. The popularity of the model coincides with an increase in the interest in and use of the term “sustainability” by media, academics and policymakers around the world, and an increase in the global use of digital technology as a resource for information gathering and sharing. Thus this book situates itself at the intersections of a global environmental and economic crisis, the popularization of the term “sustainability,” and an increasingly digitized and networked global society in order to better understand how social change is contextualized and facilitated in a local community via a global network. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the ways in which the theories of Transition are applied over an extended period of time in practice, on the ground in a Transition town.
Download or read book The Power of Just Doing Stuff written by Rob Hopkins and published by Green Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Packed with real-life examples and the voices of people who have created innovative local businesses and invested in all manner of new enterprises, this call for local action argues that the seed of a new economy and the answer to the desperate search for a new way forward in an increasingly economically insecure and ecologically unstable world is an understanding by individuals that change starts with them. The aim of the Transition movement is to galvanize people into taking action, whether on a large or a small scale, with the goal of creating communities that model a local economy rooted in place, in well-being, in entrepreneurship, and in creativity. While the book is primarily focused on food production and sustainable energy, the practical applications it offers also address how to rebuild a local community in the face of austerity due to a natural disaster or economic collapse. Eschewing political arguments of any kind, this discussion will appeal to readers of all persuasions who are eager to play a role in creating a more stable and healthier world one community at a time."
Download or read book A Borderlands Town in Transition written by Gilberto Miguel Hinojosa and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 1983 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wave upon wave of newcomers has penetrated the semiarid plains of the U.S.-Mexican borderlands. Among the settlers and sojourners along the Rio Grande in the mid–eighteenth century were the founders of Laredo, who came seeking survival and permanence in that chaparral country. Established in 1755 as an outpost of New Spain, Laredo, like other borderlands towns, has periodically been buffeted by powerful outside forces that upset the stable society and family unity characteristic of the early villa. Unlike some other border communities, though, it has maintained a prominent Mexican-American political and economic elite. Applying quantitative techniques of demographic analysis and interweaving their results with more traditional narrative, Gilberto Miguel Hinojosa tells the story of a borderlands town and its people. He shows how larger events such as war, economic depression, and changes of sovereignty affected family structure, racial and ethnic divisions, social-class relations, age composition of the population, property ownership, literacy, and other aspects of the daily lives of the townspeople. His conclusions suggest that life in these communities was far from the static, uneventful existence it was once believed to be.
Download or read book Coming Back to Life written by Joanna Macy and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal empowerment in the face of planetary despair
Download or read book Dismantling Apartheid written by Walton Johnson and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a result of Pretoria's 1976 imposition of independence on the "black homeland" of Transkei, its capital city, Umtata, became one of the first communities in South Africa to experience fundamental changes in the apartheid. This timely book discusses those relationships that remained unchanged, as well as the important race and class realignments that accompanied apartheid's dismantling. Walton R. Johnson shows that although the universal franchise radically altered municipal government and desegregation changed access to some public and private amenities, transformation of the basic patterns of dominance and subordinance occurred slowly. He describes how the established dominant group perpetuated key parts of the old order by guiding and manipulating a pliable new African middle class. For the mass of Africans the facade was new, he makes clear, but the underlying structures were the same: effective social and political control stayed for a long while in the hands of the white elite and few new economic opportunities opened for Africans. His chapter on personal ideologies shows how deeply cultural much of this behavior was. Providing an informed account of change and continuity in one town, Dismantling Apartheid is a compelling preview of future social relations in South Africa.
Download or read book Transition to an Industrial South written by Michael J. Gagnon and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned New South booster Henry Grady proposed industrialization as a basis of economic recovery for the former Confederacy. Born in 1850 in Athens, Georgia, to a family involved in the city's thriving manufacturing industries, Grady saw firsthand the potential of industrialization for the region. In Transition to an Industrial South, Michael J. Gagnon explores the creation of an industrial network in the antebellum South by focusing on the creation and expansion of cotton textile manufacture in Athens. By 1835, local entrepreneurs had built three cotton factories in Athens, started a bank, and created the Georgia Railroad. Although known best as a college town, Athens became an industrial center for Georgia in the antebellum period and maintained its stature as a factory hub even after competing cities supplanted it in the late nineteenth century. Georgia, too, remained the foremost industrial state in the South until the 1890s. Gagnon reveals the political nature of procuring manufacturing technology and building cotton mills in the South, and demonstrates the generational maturing of industrial laboring, managerial, and business classes well before the advent of the New South era. He also shows how a southern industrial society grew out of a culture of social and educational reform, economic improvements, and business interests in banking and railroading. Using Athens as a case study, Gagnon suggests that the connected networks of family, business, and financial relations provided a framework for southern industry to profit during the Civil War and served as a principal guide to prosperity in the immediate postbellum years.
Download or read book Transition Teaming written by Pattie Noonan and published by Council For Exceptional Children. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Schools and community agencies must work together to provide transition services to secondary students with disabilities. Effective transition requires the resources and expertise of adult service agencies, community groups, employers, families, school transition specialists, teachers and other practitioners. This book provides a step-by-step process and concrete strategies by which secondary special educators can build collaborative relationships with service agencies and others in the community to provide transition services. 26 strategies are broken down into specific activities to bring the needed groups and individuals to the table and into transition teams, and communicate effectively to plan and deliver transition services that are collaborative, effective, and sustainable.
Download or read book Urban Sustainability Transitions written by Niki Frantzeskaki and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-06-14 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world’s population is currently undergoing a significant transition towards urbanisation, with the UN expecting that 70% of people globally will live in cities by 2050. Urbanisation has multiple political, cultural, environmental and economic dimensions that profoundly influence social development and innovation. This fundamental long-term transformation will involve the realignment of urban society’s technologies and infrastructures, culture and lifestyles, as well as governance and institutional frameworks. Such structural systemic realignments can be referred to as urban sustainability transitions: fundamental and structural changes in urban systems through which persistent societal challenges are addressed, such as shifts towards urban farming, renewable decentralised energy systems, and social economies. This book provides new insights into how sustainability transitions unfold in different types of cities across the world and explores possible strategies for governing urban transitions, emphasising the co-evolution of material and institutional transformations in socio-technical and socio-ecological systems. With case studies of mega-cities such as Seoul, Tokyo, New York and Adelaide, medium-sized cities such as Copenhagen, Cape Town and Portland, and nonmetropolitan cities such as Freiburg, Ghent and Brighton, the book provides an opportunity to reflect upon the comparability and transferability of theoretical/conceptual constructs and governance approaches across geographical contexts. Urban Sustainability Transitions is key reading for students and scholars working in Environmental Sciences, Geography, Urban Studies, Urban Policy and Planning.
Download or read book Total Transition written by Sandeep Pai and published by Rocky Mountain Books Ltd. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follow the journey of a Canadian and Indian couple, Savannah and Sandeep, as they travel the world to capture the human side of one of the biggest energy transitions of our times - the global shift from fossil fuels to renewables. In this exciting and provocative new book, readers are taken into the homes of the coal miners who live and work in Jharia, a town in India that has been on fire for the past 100 years due to poor coal mining practices. Life in Jharia is a version of Dante's inferno - 700,000 people live in the most unimaginable conditions. Yet even though residents of Jharia say they are dying slowly every day, they also say they'll never leave. Almost 11,000 kilometres away, in the Canadian oil sands, workers and indigenous people similarly describe their complex relationship with the industry that employs them. Although fossil fuel extraction is harming the environment and impacting people's way of life in the oil sands region, a much-needed shift to renewable energy could also leave communities without their livelihoods. Written in the form of a travelogue, Total Transition provides a whirlwind look at the global growth of renewable energy - highlighting exciting developments in solar and wind energy in Canada, India, Africa and Europe, and discussing hurdles standing in the way of a total transition. Energy experts and leaders of innovative renewable energy projects share hope and optimism about the future of fossil fuel workers and their communities in an increasingly renewable world.
Download or read book Shillong written by Sutapa Sengupta and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The out break of Jaintia uprising in 1860-61 proved the inadequancy of Cherrapunji as the location of the District Head quarters of Khasi Hills. The search for a new location for the District Head quarters ultimately led the last of the commissioner of Assam Col. Henry Hopkinson to the valley of Yeodo. The present Shillong was covered at that time by deep forests surrounded by populous villages, like Laban and Mawkhar. Jungles were cut, some allotments were made to Europeans and Eurasians in the core areas. The migrant business people were allotted land in what is now known as Police Bazar. With the shifting of the offices from Cherrapunji Yeodo was renamed Shillong after the sacred peak by Col. Henry Hopkinson on 28 April 1866. With the formation of the chief commissionership of Assam in 1874, the political and administrative head quarters of the chief Commissioner Col. R.H. Keatings was shifted after 40 days of stay at Guwahati to Shillong on 20 March 1874. Since then Shillong has not ceased to grow as the capital city of provice except for a brief period of 1905-1912. Even then, most of the Government offices remained in Shillong. The home coming from Dhaka to Shillong did not take much time.
Download or read book Powerdown written by Richard Heinberg and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2004-09-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This stark look at prospects for a truly sustainable culture speaks frankly about how it is time to "Powerdown," or to reduce per-capita resource usage in wealthy countries, develop alternative energy sources, and much more.
