Professor Bob Evans, from the Northumbria University in the UK, has joined the environmental planning programme at Waikato.   WELCOME BOB EVANS!

Transition Towns is a movement that began in the UK with the aim of changing urban development and urban lifestyles "from oil dependence to local resilience".  The movement is built on the assumption that the age of fossil fuels and everything that depends on oil is coming to an end, and that the way to the future is to become more reliant on local and regional networks and low-carbon technology.  The website for Transition Aotearoa (http://transitionaotearoa.org.nz/ ) brings people together "out of a desire to explore how we - and our communities - can respond to the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_M3B8h_KSk&feature=related

Transition towns is a grassroots movement of individuals and community groups that encourages action at the local and regional level to future-proof our towns and cities by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.  It is a positive response to the doom and gloom scenarios of post-peak oil and global warming.  It encourages individuals to work  with others co-operatively to develop the life skills and activities that will help us to live well in a post-carbon world.

These two video clips give an introduction.  The first is by Jo Duffs as a member of the Sustainable Hawkes Bay Trust and the second is by Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition movement.

Reflections contributed by Aggrey Thuo, PhD candidate, Department of Geography, Tourism and Environmental Planning.

Informal settlements are very important ‘transitional phenomenon’ and ‘conveyor belt’ that low-income people in most developing countries needs to survive in cities.  If there are no such settlements, then low-income people from the poverty stricken rural areas would never move/fit in to the city. Many may frown upon poor people migrating to the cities from the rural areas, but such attitude is misplaced. The comfort that cities offer should be treated as a common resource- or at least the greater opportunities- for every willing citizen to access.

I have been reading Peak Everything, by Richard Heinberg (2007, ISBN 978-1-905570-13-3).  It’s a thought-provoking and worthwhile read on how we can adjust to the post-carbon world.  Heinberg believes that, “everything in the post-hydrocarbon world will operate on a smaller scale.  There will be less of nearly everything to go around, and virtually every process of production and transport will occur more slowly’ (page 79). 

He suggests that an important element for adjusting to our post-hydrocarbon world is aesthetics.  Art ‘is part of the necessary process of adaptation’.  It provides ways for people not just to endure change, but to adjust and find fulfillment.

Thuo is a PhD candidate from Kenya who is doing research on the dynamics of urban expansion into the peri-urban and rural hinterland of Nairobi.  He has written his reflections on the role of cities for an article in the East African (http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/) a newspaper with its headquarters in Kenya. 

These are my personal reflections on an article in the Inquirer http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/editorial/view/20090608-209290/Saving-our-river and http://blogs.inquirer.net/notjustforprofit/2009/05/17/cleaning-up-the-pasig-river/about a cleanup of the Pasig River in Manila.   The Pasig River is our version of the Waikato River. It's Manila's longest, and also currently the dirtiest. It wasn't always dirty; it used to be the Mutya (Beautiful Muse) of Manila, a paramount of cleanliness and sparkling radiance. That was in the 1800s and early 1900s, before populations grew to exponential proportions. Now, the Pasig is a big sewer canal littered with shanties and garbage on its banks.

Hello Folks!

I was checking news from the Philippines today and I came across three articles that I found relevant to my review of our class in Environmental Planning Theory. This is the first of the three (http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view_article.php?article_id=209329 .  This article is about Baguio City, the Philippines' summer capital.