Market Square: Looking Over The Horizon 12
The Market Square, the Town, and the Planet
Published in the Stratford Gazette, 17 January 2013.
Looking over the horizon is something we all do all the time, whether we’re shopping for groceries or choosing a career. But the horizon involved in grocery shopping is quite different from the large-scale one: the future that we’re moving towards as a planet.
There’s no avoiding that future. We have to think about it not only in our own lives but as a community. All of us make decisions every day that shape the way our town is evolving.
Looking over the horizon is a tricky thing to do, and it’s harder now than it was in the past because all of us on the planet are living in a period of rapid transition: climate change, the depletion of natural resources, the ballooning population, the shaky global economy. But looking ahead has to be done, and many people are doing it in many different ways – scientific, inventive, imaginative.
One approach which I find particularly interesting is that of the Transition Town Movement. This is a world-wide grassroots network of communities who recognize that rapid changes are taking place and who believe (sensibly) that it’s better to prepare for them than just to wait until they hit us. The movement includes thousands of towns in dozens of countries: the Transition Network website lists 75 communities in Canada that are either officially part of it or are seriously considering joining it.
The movement deals with all aspects of community life – food and agriculture, waste, recycling, energy, transportation, building design, and so on. There’s no one pattern that all the towns follow: each works out what it wants to do and what it can do in its circumstances.
Two concepts are crucial. One is that transition works better at the community level than on a larger scale. So it’s local, like so many other innovative approaches to the problems of the planet.
The other concept is resilience, and this is rapidly becoming a key word for people who are looking over the horizon. Resilience goes beyond sustainability. “Complex social systems must possess capacities for adaptation, social innovation, and creative transformation in order to be resilient in the face of both gradual and abrupt changes. In this sense, resilience in any system can be seen as the basis of its ongoing sustainability.” In other words, as both communities and individuals we have to be flexible and creative, aware of what’s happening and resourceful in adapting to it. We have to be able to deal with shocks and then to adjust. This resilience has to be planned for – it doesn’t just happen.
Resilience is not a last-ditch, emergency kind of thing. “Making a community more resilient, if viewed as the opportunity for an economic and social renaissance, for a new culture of enterprise and re-skilling, should lead to a healthier and happier community while reducing its vulnerability to risk and uncertainty. Becoming more resilient is a positive and enriching step forward; resilience is a historic opportunity for a far-reaching rethink.”
This rethinking involves not just drawing graphs that make projections on the basis of current trends but taking a creative leap forward to envisioning the kind of future that will be possible under the constraints that we’re likely to face. It’s proactive rather than reactive. It’s a way of counteracting the hopelessness that some people experience when they contemplate the way things are going. Resilience is not just hunkering down: it’s envisioning a community that could in fact be very enjoyable to live in.
The Transition Movement is only one of the inventive ways in which people are looking over the horizon. In Stratford, many individuals and groups are thinking along similar lines. What’s happening in areas such as local food and other community-based initiatives makes us a more resilient community.
And what does this have to do with the Market Square? The running title of these articles is “The Market Square, the Town, and the Planet.” The three levels – and all the others in between – are linked. What happens on the planet as a whole affects Stratford and affects the Market Square, which is the town’s core. What we do individually in this town – the way we use its facilities and spaces, the decisions that we make about its future – is one tiny part of what is happening on the planet.
My information about the Transition Movement comes from the Wikipedia article on “Transition Towns” and the “Transition Network” website, and from Rob Hopkins, The Transition Companion: Making your community more resilient in uncertain times. The first quotation about resilience comes from an article in Alternatives Journal, Volume 36, Number 2 (2010).
Brandis has lived in Stratford since 1996 and is a full-time writer. She is the author of a number of books – visit Marianne's website
Published in the Stratford Gazette, 17 January 2013.
Looking over the horizon is something we all do all the time, whether we’re shopping for groceries or choosing a career. But the horizon involved in grocery shopping is quite different from the large-scale one: the future that we’re moving towards as a planet.
There’s no avoiding that future. We have to think about it not only in our own lives but as a community. All of us make decisions every day that shape the way our town is evolving.
Looking over the horizon is a tricky thing to do, and it’s harder now than it was in the past because all of us on the planet are living in a period of rapid transition: climate change, the depletion of natural resources, the ballooning population, the shaky global economy. But looking ahead has to be done, and many people are doing it in many different ways – scientific, inventive, imaginative.
One approach which I find particularly interesting is that of the Transition Town Movement. This is a world-wide grassroots network of communities who recognize that rapid changes are taking place and who believe (sensibly) that it’s better to prepare for them than just to wait until they hit us. The movement includes thousands of towns in dozens of countries: the Transition Network website lists 75 communities in Canada that are either officially part of it or are seriously considering joining it.
The movement deals with all aspects of community life – food and agriculture, waste, recycling, energy, transportation, building design, and so on. There’s no one pattern that all the towns follow: each works out what it wants to do and what it can do in its circumstances.
Two concepts are crucial. One is that transition works better at the community level than on a larger scale. So it’s local, like so many other innovative approaches to the problems of the planet.
The other concept is resilience, and this is rapidly becoming a key word for people who are looking over the horizon. Resilience goes beyond sustainability. “Complex social systems must possess capacities for adaptation, social innovation, and creative transformation in order to be resilient in the face of both gradual and abrupt changes. In this sense, resilience in any system can be seen as the basis of its ongoing sustainability.” In other words, as both communities and individuals we have to be flexible and creative, aware of what’s happening and resourceful in adapting to it. We have to be able to deal with shocks and then to adjust. This resilience has to be planned for – it doesn’t just happen.
Resilience is not a last-ditch, emergency kind of thing. “Making a community more resilient, if viewed as the opportunity for an economic and social renaissance, for a new culture of enterprise and re-skilling, should lead to a healthier and happier community while reducing its vulnerability to risk and uncertainty. Becoming more resilient is a positive and enriching step forward; resilience is a historic opportunity for a far-reaching rethink.”
This rethinking involves not just drawing graphs that make projections on the basis of current trends but taking a creative leap forward to envisioning the kind of future that will be possible under the constraints that we’re likely to face. It’s proactive rather than reactive. It’s a way of counteracting the hopelessness that some people experience when they contemplate the way things are going. Resilience is not just hunkering down: it’s envisioning a community that could in fact be very enjoyable to live in.
The Transition Movement is only one of the inventive ways in which people are looking over the horizon. In Stratford, many individuals and groups are thinking along similar lines. What’s happening in areas such as local food and other community-based initiatives makes us a more resilient community.
And what does this have to do with the Market Square? The running title of these articles is “The Market Square, the Town, and the Planet.” The three levels – and all the others in between – are linked. What happens on the planet as a whole affects Stratford and affects the Market Square, which is the town’s core. What we do individually in this town – the way we use its facilities and spaces, the decisions that we make about its future – is one tiny part of what is happening on the planet.
My information about the Transition Movement comes from the Wikipedia article on “Transition Towns” and the “Transition Network” website, and from Rob Hopkins, The Transition Companion: Making your community more resilient in uncertain times. The first quotation about resilience comes from an article in Alternatives Journal, Volume 36, Number 2 (2010).
Brandis has lived in Stratford since 1996 and is a full-time writer. She is the author of a number of books – visit Marianne's website