Transition Town Definition and Objectives

Transition = Resillience, Relocalisation, Regeneration

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There are three main strands to our work; increasing local resilience, reducing energy use and building a regenerative local economy through relocalisation, and the promotion of regenerative development:

Resilience - the ability of a system (an individual, an economy, a town or a city) to withstand shock from the outside. In Transition we go beyond this definition, instead seeing it is a desired state; the rebuilding of which could be hugely economically advantageous to our local communities.

Relocalisation - actively promotes the idea of going beyond the concept of ‘localism’ - the devolving of political power to the local level- towards 'localisation’; meeting of our core needs locally (food, building materials, energy...), which has huge potential for our local economies, while also reducing oil dependency and carbon emissions.

Regenerative development - development of Totnes for the public benefit of its citizens by reducing reliance on scarce resources including oil, thus meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to satisfy their own needs.

In practice, Transition works by inviting people to take ownership of the process; by not claiming to have all the answers but encouraging creativity, and by building networks with other organisations.  It is based on the model of ‘project support’; the role of Transition is to catalyse and support, rather than to hold and manage a wide range of projects. An essential part of the Transition method is visioning. We believe in a positive vision of the future and work to make it real.