Research Proposal Assessing & building urban community resilience & capacity for adaptation to climate change: an examination of the effectiveness of Transition Towns Colin J. Macgregor Background The Transition Town (TT) concept originally began as a permaculture student project in Kinsale, Ireland, in 2005, where the co-founder Rob Hopkins was employed at the local college of further education (Connors and McDonald, 2010). Kinsale was where the first TT group was established but the TT movement formally began in Totnes, England, in May 2006 when that town was declared the first ‘official’ Transition Town. The TT movement is a response to the recognition of the need for a radically different way of life implied by the depletion of readily available oil supplies coupled with the need to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, widely regarded as being responsible for climate change (Scott-Cato and Hillier, 2010). According to the Transition Network’s website, TransitionNetwork.org, there are now over 1,130 registered TT initiatives in more than 43 countries (Transition Network, 2013), although at the latest count there were 476 official TTs (654 are ‘mulling over’ the decision to join the network). According to Rob Hopkins, the TT movement is the fastest growing environmental movement in the global north (Hopkins, 2008). At its heart the TT movement is a quiet revolt against globalization, continual economic growth, exponential consumerism and perhaps even neo-liberal politics, mainly because these directly or indirectly rely on and advocate for high energy inputs. Working in a non-confrontational manner (Barry and Quilley, 2008), TT communities are seeking to build local resilience (from the impending social upheaval implied by peak oil) and adaptive capacity so that they may be less dependent upon top-down economics. The TT movement is a ‘grass roots’ response to the problem and it is embracing bottom-up, local economies instead. There is also a strong sense of political and economic empowerment within the movement. TTs are not waiting for government to identify and implement responses to peak oil and climate change, instead TTs are taking charge of their own destinies to develop pragmatic re-localisation and sustainability strategies that suit their localities (Barry and Quilley, 2008). Local food production and consumption (e.g. farmers markets, allotments), renewable energy, capacity building (e.g. community re-skilling), use of local alternative currencies (e.g. the Totnes pound), etc. are all areas currently receiving attention by TTs. While the TT movement grew extremely rapidly globally it is in its country of origin, the United Kingdom (UK), where there has been the most rapid response. At the last count (2013) there were 209 official TTs in the UK. The other two countries that have enthusiastically embraced the TT movement is the United States (US) – 119 official TTs, and Australia – 45 official TTs (Transition Network, 2013). The UK also has most of the longest established TTs. TransitionNetwork.org does not provide data on TT’s date of registration, however each TT is allocated a sequential number upon registration, effectively indicating which are the longer established e.g. Totnes is No.1. Of the first 100 registrations, 77 are in the UK, 9 are in Australia, and 5 are in the US. It is also notable that 6 of the 8 TTs in New Zealand also have registration numbers below 100. This data indicates that after the UK, the TT movement was embraced more widely in Australasia even before the US, despite the relatively large number of TTs currently registered in the US. Social scientists have carried out a considerable amount of research within the adoption area, especially within the environmental context. For example, in Australia, considerable research has examined the adoption of sustainable land management practices within the landcare movement, and more recently within natural resource management. While the rural/agricultural context of landcare and NRM is very different to that of urban TTs, in a diffusion and adoption sense at least there are similarities. Both are concerned with long-term sustainability, both are dealing with the perceived threat/s to sustainability, both require strategic and cooperative responses, and ultimately both require widespread behaviour change from all stakeholders. According to Scott-Cato and Hillier (2010) there has been little monitoring of TT’s activities, and it is unclear about how much effective activity has taken place within each TT community. Given the increasingly significant role cities and towns will have in the 21st century, the rapid growth of TTs in the developed world, and the apparent potential the movement has to pull together disparate urban communities for a common cause, a thorough examination of TTs could offer valuable insights about adoption of sustainable living in highly urbanized contexts. Research questions implied: Following extensive literature reviews and primary research on the adoption of sustainable land management practices (e.g. Macgregor and Fenton, 1999; Fenton et al., 2000; Haberkorn et al., 2001; Macgregor, 2001; Macgregor and Cary, 2002a; Macgregor and Cary, 2002b; Macgregor, 2003), Macgregor (2009) developed a generic framework for considering the drivers of change and adoption (Fig.1). Figure 1: Drivers of change for strategic adaptive management in sustainable development (Macgregor, 2009) Fig. 1 offers a basic research framework for examining the effectiveness of the TT movement. While the specific indicators implied by Fig. 1 will require adjustment to suit the TT context, the roles that community understanding, motivation and capacity have within an adaptive TT process (‘learning by doing’) are all crucial to the success of transition initiatives. Gaining insights of understanding, motivations and capacity are all valuable areas for research in TT communities but there are also more specific questions implied by the TT context as follows. Shared beliefs According to Hopkins (2008) envisioning, which is central to ‘understanding’, is extremely important to each TT initiative. A particular feature of the TT envisioning strategy is to draw attention to the contrast between high-energy, globalized, monochrome, mono-functional ‘clone-towns’, with those implied by TTs, where their micro-scape is characterized by an “organic patchwork of social, economic, ecological, production and consumption land uses [that are] woven together [to form] diverse, pedestrian friendly, community task-scapes” (Barry and Quilley, 2008). To what extent does the TT envisioning process contribute to the acceptance and adoption of the TT philosophy? There are other implied questions here also; to what extent does a positive belief in ecological and social justice contribute to the successful diffusion of the TT movement? To what extent do the social upheavals implied by peak oil and climate change shape and influence envisioning? To what extent does anti- globalisation, anti-consumption and ‘small is inevitable’ (Hopkins, 2008) contribute to envisioning? Desire to remain Desire to remain (sometimes generally referred to as ‘sense of place’) has been studied extensively in the social sciences. Many of the studies have considered its link and role in encouraging and supporting positive environmental attitudes and sustainability (e.g. Stedman 2002; Uzzell et al., 2002). Sense of place actually encompasses at least four variables. Place identity refers to one’s attitude to a place. Hummon (1992: 258) argued that this is “an important sign or locus of the self” implying that our sense of self is at least partly constructed by our attitude towards place. Sense of community is linked to the physical features of the built environment (Plas and Lewis, 1996) but as McMillan and Chavis (1986) argue, one might also anticipate receiving and providing resources from and to the community. Place attachment is a more emotional factor where the attachment to place provides a deeper meaning of experiencing close, local relationships with people (Fried, 2000). Finally, place dependence is goal-oriented (Stokols and Schumaker, 1981) e.g. how well the place provides for ones basic and higher needs and expectations. There are at least three questions that arise for TTs. To what extent do variables associated with sense of place (see ‘desire to remain’ in Fig. 1) support the TT movement? How is sense of place/community engendered in TTs? Is this, and how is this, being measured? Social capital The TT movement relies heavily on both formal and informal diffusion processes to spread the word and gain support. Formal processes within TT communities involve use of ‘open space’ technologies, use of video presentations and discussion sessions to facilitate social learning and sharing of ideas. How effective are these processes in building social capital within TTs? Social movement analysts also emphasize the role of informal networks. What are the characteristics of informal networks within TTs, how is this being engendered in TT communities, and how is the effectiveness of networks being measured (if at all)? ‘Green’ initiatives are often criticized for merely ‘preaching to the converted’ – typically the middle-class, well-educated professionals of a community. TT communities should successfully reach out and engage well beyond this cohort. How effective are formal and informal diffusion processes being in reaching out to and successfully engaging with the ‘late adopter’ and ‘laggard’ cohorts?