What’s a Transition Town?

From transitiontowns.org:

It all starts off when a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change?

• Climate change makes this carbon reduction transition essential
• Peak oil makes it inevitable
• Transition initiatives make it feasible, viable and attractive (as far we can tell so far…)

In my experience,

Transition Towns are really just a collection of people in a geographic region – of any size – using their respective skills to move their communities forward. Everyone brings something different to the table, and they get to pursue whatever they can think of – with the ultimate goal of creating a more resilient place to live, eat and work.

Because the process is so open and encouraging of everyone’s solutions, those who get involved are really motivated.

Anyways, it’s caught on – in a big way. In 2006 there was only one Transition Town.  Now there are 251 around the world. Close to 700 others are ‘mulling it over’. The eagerness of the prime beneficiaries to do something meaningful is what makes it so viral. More info is available here.

Currently, there are four official Transition Towns in Ontario,

23 are mulling it over

(in early 2009 there were 10)

Here is the founder, Rob Hopkins, discussing peak oil and Transition Towns:

And here’s a map to help you find Transitioners in your community

View Transition Towns in Ontario in a larger map