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Page added on September 19, 2016
Urban Transition Cities Movement
Our Transition Initiative is called Urban Transition Cities Movement (UTCM). It is an intergenerational and multi-disciplinary movement that integrates informal, mediating, and formal service delivery units in a vertical and horizontal manner.
My first encounter with Transition Towns was in 2009 when I met Tina Clarke in Pittsburgh during a Transition Town Training. I became very interested in the model and connected to the twelve steps highlighted in the model and framework encompassed by Transition. Despite my affinity for the existing Transition Model, I perceived that its application in urban settings would require the adoption of cultural context and principals of diversity. Developing local talent, particularly people who have survived inexcusable disparities, to a point at which they could embrace the issues of Peak Oil and Climate Change constituted a paradigm shift for both them and the Transition Model. Transition Towns is a very powerful and thought provoking model, one that requires the establishment of a sense of self and well-being before it can be totally embraced. The Urban Transition Cities Movement is focused on this process, seeking to bridge the chasm of socioeconomic strata in the U.S.A. by exploring the issues of race, class, and economics through hands on, project-based learning that uses a co-design approach. The earth is in peril; 20 percent of the U.S. controls 93 percent of the country’s wealth; while 80 percent of the people hold just seven percent of the wealth. My hypothesis is simply that if the wealthiest 20 percent go net+, it would create a tipping point to reverse the issues of Peak Oil and Climate Change. Therefore, we must pursue a different strategy to achieve this goal and realize systemic change.
After my initial meeting in 2009, I was primarily trained by Tina Clarke and subsequently worked with her. I was introduced to and trained by Naresh Giangrande, Sophy Banks, and Carolyne Stayton. Since my initial experience in 2009, I’ve been seeking ways to facilitate the Transition Model’s evolution into a version more suitable for an urban setting. In 2012, when I was trained in the Thrive Model in Chicago, I sought permission from Naresh and Sophie to test an urban version that would inform, educate, and empower vulnerable people to become active change agents in the 21st Century Global Climate Change issue. In the spring of 2012, we launched the first version of Urban Transition Cities Movement; focusing on engaging people of color across vertical and horizontal systems. We had 37 people of color participate in our first effort, comprising local community leaders, stakeholders, non-profit leaders, small businesses, universities, governmental agencies, youth, and public officials.
I love that Transition is an interactive model, one that is capable of being nimble while maintaining depth and breadth. I love that it connects unlikely stakeholders to explore the world from multiple perspectives, all seeking to resolve Peal Oil and Climate Change issues. Moreover, I love the micro-economics of Transition and its ability to transcend race, ethnicity, class and economics when people examine the real risk at hand.
One aspect of Transition that is consistently pleasing is the ability to provide tangible experiences of rural and farm lands to city residents. For both city and rural participants, this experience alone creates the dynamic tension needed to see issues from multiple vantage points.
Having people of color co-facilitate is important in the urban setting. Trust is a slow process that requires grassroots capacity and a long-term commitment not always feasible for many Transition Town Trainers.
I’m always doing Transition; moreover, I am always seeking to push the movement to new levels. In 2010, we incorporated EcoDistricts into our Transition Towns effort. This shift allowed our effort to attract some of the best thinkers in Pittsburgh to join with Transition Towns, ultimately helping us create the Urban Green Growth Collaborative (UGGC). At its peak, the UGGC had over 1,500 members and over 70 active organizations working daily with one another to address sustainability issues through strategic and pragmatic planning and implementation processes. In 2014, this effort culminated with Larimer, one of the focus communities, receiving a $30 million Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) CHOICE Neighborhoods Award. The funds were specifically designated for building the first urban green sustainable community in the country.
Today, I continue to look for ways to push the model and its thinking. We are being influenced by Paul Hawken (Draw Down), Christine Mondor (EcoDistricts), 100 Resilient Cities, and Pittsburgh’s People, Planet, Performance, and Place (P4) effort. Our work has been supported by Living Cities, Greenbuild, and other sustainability efforts around the country and world, highlighting the capacity of building living structures that are co-designed by community stakeholders through authentic grassroots capacity building.
I would advise all new Transition stakeholders to suspend judgement of what they know and perceive about people and their differences. I would push them to explore Einstein’s perspective, “you can’t solve a people with the same energy that created it.” I interpret that to mean, we must promote collective genus though transparency and honoring differences. This requires intentional relationship building through project based learning that deepens everyone’s capacity to trust, build, explore, and transform.
74 Comments on "Urban Transition Cities Movement"
GregT on Tue, 20th Sep 2016 11:42 pm
“Just what are they up to.”
They’re doing everything that they can muster to make sure that Trump doesn’t get into the Whitehouse, because if he does, he’ll do the same to them in the US, that Putin did to them in Russia.
The Rise of Putin and The Fall of The Russian-Jewish Oligarchs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Cl8lSv9Is
GregT on Wed, 21st Sep 2016 12:08 am
Boat,
“I thought world collapse meant billions of deaths.”
As usual, you don’t think. Collapse will lead to more of the same that we are witnessing around the world already. Civil unrest, inequality, and much lower standards of living. Billions of deaths will be the result of population overshoot, loss of biodiversity, and climatic instability.
Boat on Wed, 21st Sep 2016 12:30 am
ape,
The world and the US went into a recession 8 years ago. The world as we know it didn’t collaspe causing billions of deaths and a mad max type scenerio.
“Boat speaking of NO facts, your little personal anecdote saying that someone said there was going to be a crash 3 years ago and there hasn’t, thus implying there won’t be, is not evidence either. It’s the faulty reasoning of a child or someone from Texas.”
That’s some stupid ass logic. A bunch of doomers including mac were drooling over economic doom from 3 years ago. They were all wrong and I was right. I bet money I would be right. No ape, no faulty reasoning on my end.
GregT on Wed, 21st Sep 2016 12:47 am
“The world and the US went into a recession 8 years ago.”
The “Great Recession” Boat. The one that we still cannot recover from, and never will. Not something to drool about, or in your case, to ignore. Something to pay attention to, and to prepare for.
Kenz300 on Wed, 21st Sep 2016 9:19 am
The top 1% want it all and the RepubliCON party will give it to them
What do RepubliCONS believe depends who is paying, follow the money, fossil fuels, oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, NRA, the top 1%.
Are RepubliCONS the real EVIL DOERS They want to end Social Security, Medicare and access to contraception.
RepubliCONS are the reason the middle class is shrinking. The RepubliCON elite want cheap labor. They are no friend of the middle class
Cloggie on Wed, 21st Sep 2016 9:53 am
Germany gets first French-built emission free train (hydrogen):
https://www.rt.com/news/360121-hydrail-train-germany-hydrogen/
Letters of intent have also been signed with four German lands for 60 hydrail trains already, and orders for between 40 and 70 more units are expected by the end of 2017, Railway Gazette reported.
The outlet also states that transport authorities in Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia have expressed interest in obtaining hydrails, while the developer claims countries including Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands want the trains as well.
The hydrail operates on electricity obtained from lithium ion batteries, powered by a fuel cell using a hydrogen tank stored on the train’s roof.
Range 600-800 km
The article doesn’t address the challenge where to get hydrogen, produced without CO2 emissions.
JGav on Wed, 21st Sep 2016 5:15 pm
Interesting that you wrote that in those terms,Kenz.
In French, the word ‘Con’ means (quite literally, from the Latin) cunt, or less literally but more usually – ass-hole,dick-head,fuck-tard etc. A con is a con.
ghung on Wed, 21st Sep 2016 5:46 pm
That comment didn’t sound typical of Kenz300’s posts. Methinks his bot has been hijacked.
Cloggie on Wed, 21st Sep 2016 5:58 pm
No, this is a classical kenz300, predictable like a Tibetian prayer wheel.
Apneaman on Wed, 21st Sep 2016 6:30 pm
Kenz300, on that middle class shrinking deal…….which POTUS signed off, on that NAFTA deal?
makati1 on Wed, 21st Sep 2016 7:59 pm
Ap, Kenz300 doesn’t understand that there is no left or right, conservative or liberal, democrat or republican difference where it really counts, behind the curtain. All the dumbed down Americans get to see is the latest teleprompter reader reading the newest propaganda. Most Americans can tell you the latest celebrity gossip or the names of their favorite team players, but not the name of their Representative or Senator. And forget American history. They do, if they ever even knew it.
Apneaman on Wed, 21st Sep 2016 9:13 pm
Competition, Evolution, Extinction
“Humans became unbounded when they became systematic and have served the insatiable desires of the limbic system as they have accessed the seemingly infinite supplies of fossil fuels. Mankind became a malignant cancer and continues to this day to consume everything at the most rapid rate possible.”
” Parents are having little conduits today in expectations that they will be fully employed, reducing resource and energy gradients in the future, instead of working down Cheetoh and Pepsi gradients in their basements. Stepping away from the virtual realities of their protective cocoons, they will emerge to find desolation and starvation.”
http://megacancer.com/2016/09/21/competition-evolution-extinction/
makati1 on Wed, 21st Sep 2016 10:14 pm
Ap, my farm partner here just lost his nephew of a few months because the nephew was born with non-correctable defects. The parents are upper middle class here and in their 30s with two previous children who are normal and healthy, ages 8 and 10, so it was not a dietary fault or lack of medical care prenatal or after the birth. A large amount of money and effort was spent to try to save him, but it was not possible.
I see more and more of this kind of birth in the near future as our pollution and all kinds of drug use catches up with us. The old diseases will return and the ability to fight them will diminish. The virus and bacteria will be an unseen war on humanity. We have imagined ourselves he masters of the universe and cannot cure a common cold. Interesting times ahead, yes?
Apneaman on Thu, 22nd Sep 2016 1:01 am
Sorry about your friend, Mak. Many will die from the end of antibiotics, but it will take some time to make a population dent. Our numbers are massive. The Indonesian tsunami a decade ago killed 250,000. Everyday 225,000 new humans come into the world – births minus deaths. That day in Indonesia was the only day in my lifetime there was no growth, or 25,000 negative human growth as an asshole economist would put it. Our immune systems still work. It will be something new our immune systems have never dealt with before or something old that has evolved beyond our immune systems ability to fight. Took less than 70 years for some bugs to evolve a workaround to our drugs. Ebola is very nasty. Imagine no organized globalized response of hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of of administrators, technicians, nurses, Dr,’s, ambulance drivers, etc. Many of the front line people were volunteers and dozens of them died to stop it. Everything I have read from the top people says a pandemic is a when not an if and there are many candidates. It will just be worse in a mega overpopulated world already falling apart.
“Gentlemen, it is the microbes who will have the last word.”
-Louis Pasteur
Ebola, avian flu and Zika: How to protect future generations from the next epidemic
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/author-sonia-shah-on-how-to-avoid-the-next-pandemic/article28970239/
Cloggie on Thu, 22nd Sep 2016 4:01 am
Nice element of transition: Swiss-made driverless shuttle bus:
http://www.ligiergroup.com/ligier-group/ez10-le-vehicule-autonome-100-electrique-ligier.html
Already driving in Holland, Japan and elsewhere.
Huge advantage: low cost on-demand transport (low-cost because no expensive driver), making private car ownership superfluous, lowering a societies energy budget, because of lower embedded energy budget.
Cloggie on Thu, 22nd Sep 2016 4:18 am
Additional information:
Max speed 50 kmh, range on a single charge 400 km, 6 seats, 4 standing places, no front or back side, so no turning problems. First prototype operational on campus university Lausanne, Switserland. During test periode 7000 people were transported without incidents. Motor 4 kw. Width 236 cm, length 320 cm. For the moment operates on fixed routes. Navigating is video based, while driving comparing route in memory without obstacles with actual situation.
French, not Swiss-made.
Davy on Thu, 22nd Sep 2016 6:38 am
I would not call a Swiss-made driverless shuttle bus “nice” as in this is good progress. Sure it is interesting and novel or IOW another titillation from a modern thrill. Yes I understand real people are expensive and not efficient. So I guess we need to eliminate humans. If eliminating humans is the unspoken motive why are we spitting out a couple of hundred thousand a day more than die? I know, it is we want other humans to be eliminated not the all-important “me”. The me generation is a dead generation. People need jobs and society needs structure. If you start eliminating jobs and structure you begin to have a hallow society. There is strength in community. We are destroying our communities just as our place in nature becomes precarious. I would call nice more like stupid.
A bus driver serves more of a purpose than the electronic counterpart. They add a human element to the commute. Real people give security. We find confidence in a warm body. Confidence is trust and trust is healthy. People can say hello and bye and find connection and community in a small way. Efficiency and adapted progress today is often times just destructive change in the name of a business plan and a vague idea of what is the right direction. Society has this vague idea technological change is good. I say it will kill us in multiple unintended ways. What is right today is often wrong. No, not as in good and bad but just wrong in the sense of what gives us long term happiness and survival. We are destroying ourselves one Swiss-made driverless bus at a time.
Cloggie on Thu, 22nd Sep 2016 7:07 am
“I would not call a Swiss-made driverless shuttle bus “nice” as in this is good progress. Sure it is interesting and novel or IOW another titillation from a modern thrill.”
You yourself have a car, meaning a need for transport. That car is not used most of the time. So you yourself are contributing to all these expletives: “collapse, dead generation, stupid, kill us, destroying ourselves”.
Again: a bus driver is nice but expensive, meaning that a bus can’t drive every minute you want to to every destination. A bus has a fixed timetable and drives, even if there are no passengers. This driverless concept eliminates that necessity of car ownership including the large amount of embedded energy that comes with a vehicle. The driverless small bus makes small remote communities of usually less affluent people viable, because they are no longer unattainable and the inhabitants no longer need a car.
Assume that the driverless little bus costs $40k and has an economic lifetime of 10 years. A driver will cost say $40k/year or $400k/10 year.
So the hardware costs is only 1/10 of the bus with driver. Furthermore, the driverless bus will only drive if there are passengers.
Huge advantages.
Davy on Thu, 22nd Sep 2016 7:58 am
Clog, the difference is I am using what you describe to leave it. I am using the status quo to leave it. I am doing this strategically and tactically. If I am embracing technology, efficiency, and innovation it is for reasons that may not be their intended purpose. I do not care at this point about if these are right or wrong because there are. A car is evil in my mind but I will use it to survive at this point. I am utilizing what I can to position myself for what is ahead. This is not a time to be particular about survival. Hubris and idealism in what is coming will get you dead. I am practicing relative sacrifice and preaching to the world it should do the same. You can do relative sacrifice for selfish or altruistic reasons. I do relative sacrifice for both reasons.
We are in a turning of a human age and the turning of an earth epoch. This is about decay not growth. It is about an earth ecosystems being destroyed and life on earth in an extinction event. This is not like what occurred post ice age with a huge expansion of life then the growth of human civilization. We are at the end of the line not the beginning. I am saying we need to embrace this great turning at every level. This great turning is about destructive change and we must embrace destructive change not contribute to it. Embracing destructive change is about localizing and shrinking our complexity. We can move towards the simplicity of community instead of technological separation of modernism.
We can downsize with dignity in everything we do. We do not need holidays and much of our leisure. We think we need many things but it is just more of the poison of modern habituation. A majority of our employment is useless in light of collapse. Of course we can’t get from here to there we are stuck with an obstacle course of collapse where failure is death. We have no place to hide and no choice but to see a die off and a social collapse. My point is in the mean time in the prelude to collapse those who embrace the new reality I speak of will be better place than those who are deceived by the thinking that got us here like your technological modernism. Those who are preaching more technology are taking the road of death. I am on the same road of death but I am letting you run ahead letting you think you are going to win a race that is really a race towards your death.
Apneaman on Thu, 22nd Sep 2016 9:50 am
Hope that Swiss bus is buoyant.
Greenland’s huge annual ice loss is even worse than thought
Ice cap is disappearing far more rapidly than previously estimated, and is part of a long-term trend, new research shows
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/21/greenlands-huge-annual-ice-loss-is-even-worse-than-thought
Apneaman on Thu, 22nd Sep 2016 9:53 am
Still too conservative in my estimation.
Do the math! Because climate sensitivity is logarithmic, 1.5 degrees target was already breached at 400 ppm – if you look at CO2 only (& assume ECS = 3C)
http://www.bitsofscience.org/do-the-math-climate-sensitivity-logarithmic-1-5-degrees-400-ppm-7237/
Sissyfuss on Thu, 22nd Sep 2016 1:18 pm
Driverless vehicles are the first salvo fired by an incipient AI. Next comes autonomic warfare and self-generating Iphones. Who needs humans? Certainly not the planet.
Apneaman on Thu, 22nd Sep 2016 2:18 pm
Sissyfuss, as long as they come out with a sandwich making, back massaging, housework doing, hot sex, wife robot, then I’m all for it.
Kenz300 on Fri, 23rd Sep 2016 6:55 am
Climate Change is real.
It will be the defining issue of our lives.
Wind and solar for clean energy production.
All electric vehicles for clean energy consumption.
Solar Cost Hits World’s New Low, Half the Price of Coal
http://www.ecowatch.com/solar-price-chile-1982242311.html