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posits that the success of all these efforts depends on the profound comprehension
that humans are not separated from nature; rather, they are biological beings and
their cultural institutions are tightly connected to the natural cycle and the
landscape in which they live.
The complex urban development efforts that look on cities as ecosystems are
becoming increasingly dominant in todays discourses on sustainability. The
theme has a large literature and numberless methods and examples (see, e.g.,
Tang 2013) devoted to it; these will be developed in the — planned — new volume
of this EH Reader. In this paper, the focus is on grassroots urban communities,
specifically two of the initiatives, community gardens and the movement of the
Transition Towns.
Transition Towns Movement (TM, TTM, TTN)4
The Transition Towns Movement was initiated in England by Rob Hopkins.
The first Transition Town was founded in England — under the leadership of
Hopkins — in the town of Totnes. The movement's site showed that in January
2023, 1121 groups belonged to the movements (https://transitiongroups.org).
The members are fairly well-off, educated people who accept the scholarly
consensus on anthropogenic climate change and the energy crisis (Boudinot —
LeVasseur 2016: 386).
The movement is based on the postulate that the dual threat of the depletion
of non-renewable energy sources and anthropogenic climate change urge people
to rethink and redesign their ways of living and bring about more resilient and
sustainable communities. Their objective is to contribute to a world of low carbon¬
emitting resilient communities based on social justice, active participation and the
culture of care. The instruments for achieving this are the resilient and adaptive
local communities which can cope with the above-mentioned challenges. The
movement's aim is to assist such communities’ founding and development. Hopkins
based his idea on the theory of resilience and adopted Brian Walker’s and his
colleagues’ definition: “Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb shocks and
avoid a shift to an alternate state (regime) so that it still preserves the same function,
structure, identity and feedback” (cited in Scott Cato — Hillier 2011: 6). In addition
to resilience, the movement also lays great stress on developing adaptive skills.
Transition may affect all aspects of local life: searching for, or creating, local
food and energy resources; strengthening the local economy, local producers and
small enterprises; trading or exchanging second-hand goods; economizing with
energy resources; environment-friendly transportation options; introducing local
currencies, and so on. The Transitioners (as they refer to themselves) try to find
alternative modes for running the economy and elaborating the vision of a non¬
The names used in activist and academic literature include Transition Movement, TM, Transition
Towns Movement, TTM and Transition Towns Network, TTN. In short, they are often called
Transition Towns.
Hopkins was an instructor of permaculture, which knowledge he used to elaborate the concept
of Transition Towns: he reinterpreted the 12 basic principles of permaculture (see the chapter on
Food Supply as a Global Challenge) for the scale of the community.