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Transition Towns and Toronto: From Oil Dependency to Urban Resilience

Sep 30
Wed 7:00 PM
Location
Toronto City Hall

100 Queen Street West
Committee Room #2, Second Flr
Toronto, ON

Estimated attendance
 40  people attended.
4.50 4.5013

Who organized?
peaknik

Transition Towns is now a globe-spanning movement that provides a framework for creatively developing local resilience as a solution to climate change and energy scarcity (peak oil). The first Transition Town (Transition Town Totnes, UK) began its work in 2006 and the Transition model has already been exported around the world, including to Dundas, Guelph, Peterborough, and Ottawa, Ontario. Based on the principles of permaculture, Transition towns offer relief from the stressful, negative messages surrounding climate change and energy scarcity by focusing on co-operative, healthful, community based solutions.

Andrew Knox is a Ph.D. Candidate in the University of Toronto's Chemical Environmental Engineering programme, focusing on domestic energy efficiency and renewable energy. He has recently returned from the UK where he worked as a renewable energy consultant for the Devon Association for Renewable Energy and was involved with Transition Town Totnes, the world's first Transition Town. His talk, "Transition Towns and Toronto: From Oil Dependency to Urban Resilience" will focus on the innovative aspects of Transition Towns and what the Transition Movement could offer Toronto.

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Talk about this Meetup

  • Posted Oct 2, 2009 11:17 AM
    peaknik
    Assistant Organizer
    Andrew's slide presentation can be viewed at http://www.slideshare.net/P... Contact me if you are interested in purchasing the Transition Handbook, and we'll inquire about a bulk order. Rose
  • Pre-Meetup comments below
  • jeffberg
    Posted Sep 28, 2009 9:56 AM
    jeffberg
    Assistant Organizer
    Andrew was an invaluable member of the Pledge to Green team in 2006, PCT's largest event to date. During that time he greatly impressed me with both his acuity as well as his organizational skills. I am thrilled to see the path that he has chosen professionally and look forward with great anticipation to his talk.
  • greg greene
    Posted Sep 17, 2009 9:28 AM
    greg greene
    transition towns are popping up all over the planet like mushrooms. there is tremendous energy and solid organizing; i am fascinated by the growing success of TT and hope to explore the success in our third END of SUBURBIA doc, ResilientCITY. the trick will be to see how the transition model can be adapted to large cities like Toronto with different class and race diversity (instead of more middle class, white, eco groups)

Who attended?

  • 40 attendees
    • “ Great speaker -- presented the material well, and handled potentially awkward questions from the audience with finesse. I was very glad to see him and Rose respond positively to the interest of the audience by scheduling another meeting on the topic. ”
    • “ I fully support and thank you for organizing these meetups on such a dire topic pertinent to all of our near-future interests. The presentation had some great info on movement organization, but I had anticipated more focus on concrete initiatives and their successes in failures in other transition towns. No doubt that planning book for government contains the supplement! My own concerns focus on the structure of an economy that is sustainable and stable, a topic which receives academic attention but which has few if any empirical examples at the macro or even medium scale. I was hoping there were towns which had some notable success mitigating environmental catastrophe. part of the difficulty in accomplishing this lies in the growth-dependency of capitalism - all the home and corporate retrofitting in the world won't mitigate *this* impending destruction. The presentation had precious little to say about the significance of the profit-seeking production system. ”
    • “ Nice to jam with Andrew and Greg and all the amazing members afterwards in the pub on issues of global importance. Can we bill the UN? Thanks to Andrew for getting us started thinking about Transition Towns, I was happy to sense a more of a passing interest in the group and something we'll revisit again in future meetups. Could be fun. Also nice surprise to run into Greg Greene (Director End of Suburbua) as he gathers material for his next doc on Transition Towns. ”
    • “ Thanks for organising this. The presentation was very good (although I knew most of it already, as I've read through the T.T. website several times and have the transition handbook). Would have liked more ideas & suggestions from the presenter, Andrew Knox, on how this can work for Toronto. But at least he's willing to keep working on this and to hold a follow-up meeting. And as the TT motto says: the ideas & drive should come from the community(ies). Looking forward to that, and the process that will hopefully follow! ”
    • “ Great intro. Looking forward to the next get together. ”
    • “ Great topic, it is good to have a positive approach to the problem. ”
    • “ It was good. I would like to see a second meeting using open technology so that people can find others with similar interests. I also think the cross pollination in the larger group is valuable. ”
    • “ Good presentation, inspiring ideas, excellent turnout and lots of questions, though some were a bit wordy and tedious. ”
    • “ vitally important ”
    • Jen