We have known for some time that peak oil would affect the way we live. This is especially true in the DFW metroplex where our infrastructure has never been conducive to mass transportion. An abundance of land has lead us down a road of mass sprawl that makes us even more dependent on fossil fuels. Some people would call this an “Oil Addicted Treadmill”.
These are easy headlines at $5.00 per gallon of gasoline, but we unfortunately have a limited memory when commodity prices begin to eas back to a lower point. Enter the Transition Town movement which seeks to capitlize on the time between now and future energy crunches. Randy Hopkins pushes the Transition Town idea worldwide and has written a book titled “Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependence to Local Resilience”. Randy’s idea is that if “we collectively plan and act early enough” we can create a lives which are “more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment. Hopkins has some essential litmus tests for how resiliant communities are:
- Local production of food.
- Locally manufactured goods
- Locally owned business
- Number employed locally
- Ratios of parking space versus land use.
The list continues on, but the ideas all remain the same. The objective of the Transition Town movement is to combine energy efficiency with a desire to improve the climate overall. If we were to face a protracted large scale energy shortage the natural transition would be a re-urbanization, suburban decay, and a localization of agriculture and manufacturing. The problem is that the natural transition would simply not be smooth one. Transition Town seeks to motivate proactive people for change before the need arises out of desperation.
I personally tire of all the “green” zombies out there. This however, is a natural, logical, and responsible step. The bottom line is that we have mismanaged growth since the Second World War, and that is very evident in cities like Fort Worth.
March 7th, 2009 at
One of the problems with the “green” movement is that everybody defines it their own way. The U.S. Green Building Council’s LEEDs program is a major started to universally defining it but there are still fringe items that can skew the numbers.
On sprawl - it’s too late to turn back the clock and undo some of the extreme examples we have seen. But since it’s happened and the infrastructure and housing units are in place we need to creative find a way to capitalize on it. There was a time that getting to the “city center” from 20 miles out was not practical or effective – now with road ways in place and the ability to use better mass transit systems there is no reason to go back to the theory that everyone needs to live close in. The DFW area has more then 7 different “city centers” (depending on how you define them) so where do you move if you want to live close in?
March 9th, 2009 at
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