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A Visit to Titusville: Building Resilient Communities
A Visit to Titusville: Building Resilient Communities
The University of Pittsburgh recently invited me to their Titusville, PA campus to speak about the Transition Towns movement.I chose the theme of creating communities that have the resiliency to withstand the inevitable challenges of this century. I met with three classes, had lunch with student leaders, made a public presentation that was well-attended and interactive, and spoke with community leaders.
Titusville, where the oil industry began, is today a small, shrinking town in search of its future. It is fairly representative of small and mid-sized communities across the country. Like many, it has the potential to become a more resilient community if it chooses.
My message is one that Transition Centre has adhered to for nearly a decade. Below you will find the core principles of that presentation.
A bit of background: Transition Centre was modeled on Transition Towns. There are a number of popular options for developing a more sustainable community, but the TT model, as found in The Transition Handbook, had some attractive features. The key ideas were: local, grassroots, and community resiliency.
In 2009, we formed Transition Centre as an unofficial Transition Towns hub. In 2010, we formed two formal local Transition Town initiatives. In partnership with other organizations, we made a number of presentations in Pennsylvania and neighboring states. What is our model?
- Localization: Our problems may be on a global scale, but we embraced the motto: “Think globally, act locally.” In fact, we can only act at the level we can understand and solve our problems. That is our own community, our home place. One by one, a thousand points of light bring us out of darkness.
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10 Stories of Transition in the US: Transition Fidalgo & Friends’ Vision 2030
10 Stories of Transition in the US: Transition Fidalgo & Friends’ Vision 2030
The following story is the ninth installment in a new series we’re calling “10 Stories of Transition in the US.” Throughout 2018, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Transition Movement here in the United States, we will explore 10 diverse and resilient Transition projects from all over the country, in the hope that they will inspire you to take similar actions in your local community.
For more information about Transition, please visit www.TransitionUS.org/Transition-101. Click here to view other stories in this series that have already been published, and here to subscribe to the Transition US newsletter if you’d like to be notified of additional stories as they become available.
In 2005, a group of Permaculture students from Kinsale Further Education College set a course for how their town of 7,000 people on the west coast of Ireland could transition to a better quality of life while dramatically reducing fossil fuel consumption. Exploring 11 key sectors, including food, energy, tourism, education, and health, Kinsale 2021: An Energy Descent Action Plan laid out a clear vision for their community’s future and identified practical steps that would need to be taken each year to achieve it. Initiated, overseen, and edited by their professor, Rob Hopkins, this plan was soon adopted by the Town Council of Kinsale, and when it was posted online, it quickly spread around the world as people everywhere embraced it as a groundbreaking tool for cultivating community-level sustainability and resilience.
In the three years that followed, Hopkins co-founded the first official Transition Initiative in the world, Transition Town Totnes, published The Transition Handbook, and helped to launch the international Transition Towns Movement.
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