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''This page contains [[public domain]] content from [http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2008/09/25/of-resilient-communities-ecovillages/ Of Resilient Communities & Ecovillages], timboucher.com, Sep 25, 2008.''
''This page contains [[public domain]] content from [http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2008/09/25/of-resilient-communities-ecovillages/ Of Resilient Communities & Ecovillages], timboucher.com, Sep 25, 2008.''
==Notes==
<small><references/></small>


== See also ==
== See also ==

Revision as of 10:48, 30 August 2009

Resilient communities are capable of bouncing back from hard times and shocks. They do this by influencing and preparing for economic, social and environmental change. They do this both actively and also passively through the inherent design of the system.

When times are bad they can call upon the many resouces that make them a healthy community. Their social capital means that they have good information and communication networks, and a community that shares and helps as needed.

What is resilience?

The concept of resilience is distinct from the more-often-mentioned concept of sustainability. For example, plastics recycling is almost certainly better for the environment as a whole, but adds nearly no resilience to the community. However, developing other uses for waste plastics requiring minimal processing, which can be processed and used locally, does add resilience - for example compressed building blocks or insulating products.

The benefits of resilience to a community include:

  • Diversity of character and creative solutions responding to local circumstances
  • Meeting local needs even in the substantial absence of travel and transport

Resilience is a serious topic with important economic and social implications - it is not a fringe environmentalist idea. For example, see the writings of John Robb and Jeff Vail, whose websites portray them as military intelligence and geopolitical experts, with specialties in counter-terrorism and the like, acting as consultants and lecturers to government alphabet agencies. Each talks at length about resilient communities. Vail also uses the phrase, which he may have coined, the hamlet economy,[1] and describes it as “as a non-hierarchal network of self-sufficient but interacting nodes.”

Looking back

There was much in the past that we would never wish to return to: life was often miserable, debilitating and short, and in many ways there was a terrible lack of freedom, that today we would find strange, if not intolerable. Lives were shorter, and less "soft" as George Monbiot writes. We would not want to return to this - and yet, there is much that we can learn in the inventive and careful ways that society responded to its challenges.

Why local is important

The set of solutions that will work in one place may not work in other places, because of unique demographics and physical attributes.

This page contains public domain content from Of Resilient Communities & Ecovillages, timboucher.com, Sep 25, 2008.

Notes

  1. Re-Post: Hamlet Economy, Jeff Vail, July 28, 2008,

See also

External links

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