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Transition Town

Ed Thompson

Tot­nes is a mar­ket town at the head of the estu­ary of the River Dart in Devon, Eng­land. It dates back to AD 907 when its first castle was built, today the town, with a pop­u­la­tion of around 7,000 is a thriv­ing cen­ter for music, art, theater and nat­ural health. It has a siz­able alternative/new age com­munity, and is known as a place where one can live a bohemian life­style.
Tot­nes has become a Mecca for sus­tain­ab­il­ity stud­ies due to its estab­lish­ment as a pion­eer­ing Trans­ition Town. The Trans­ition Town concept emerged from work of agri­cul­ture designer Rob Hop­kins. He looked at across-the-board cre­at­ive adapt­a­tions in the realms of energy pro­duc­tion, health, edu­ca­tion, eco­nomy and agri­cul­ture as a ‘road map’ to a sus­tain­able future for the town. The idea has been adap­ted and expan­ded in Tot­nes, his home town, since 2005.
Trans­ition Town Tot­nes (T.T.T) has become a dynamic, community-led char­ity that is strength­en­ing the local eco­nomy, redu­cing the cost of liv­ing and pre­par­ing for a future with less oil and a chan­ging cli­mate.  They have a large local sup­port base and have con­trib­uted over £1 mil­lion to the local