Community resilience requires a look at economics

Transition has always been, to me, about community economic resilience. Even the types of things that don't appear to have anything to do with economic resilience at first sight, do. Growing your own food, for example, is a great way of making yourself resilient to dramatic changes in global food supply or prices. Reducing your energy demand increases your resilience to fluctuating energy prices.

But looking at this beyond a personal perspective, and as a community, what can we do together to make ourselves more resilient?

Many Transitioners have thought about this question ever since the movement began, and lots of great community projects have come out of it, but many of the root causes are still there. Consumerism (or producerism, as I think it should be called), greed and globalisation still seem to be going strong with little sign of abating.

In light of Occupy Norwich decamping from Hay Hill last week, but with the continued prevalence of their concerns within society, I have written this survey to see what concerns we in Norwich have, and what effects Norwich is feeling as a result of our global economic problems.

The idea is not just to gather data on what people think, but what social enterprises, campaigns or government policy (both local and national) may grow out of these concerns. We have the power to make the world what we want it to be, if we come together as communities to make it happen.

I hope that you will find the survey interesting, and be interested to know about the various campaigns that already exist to tackle the issues highlighted. One that I'm particularly interested in is the Mary Portas review for high street regeneration, which I'll talk about in a later post, but I hope that I will be able to find ways to progress professionally!

Please feel free to fill in the survey which is at http://www.simeonjackson.co.uk/2012/02/23/local-economics-survey/.

Images: Transition high street; Occupy Norwich's rebranding, using Norwich's motto "do different".