Economic crisis indicates critical need for relocalization

Well before the current economic crisis hit in full force, a few voices in the wilderness, mine included, spoke at length about the need to develop local resiliency and economic self-sufficiency to better weather significant economic downturns regionally, nationally, and globally. While it is presumptuous to suggest that local communities can develop complete insulation from the swings of the global economy, certainly they can minimize the impacts through localizing many community scale economic activities by supporting local food, establishing a strong buy local program, encouraging local entrepreneurship of sustainable businesses, creating local industries, and developing local alternative sources of energy. The establishment of a local currency like Berkshares or Totnes Pounds is a big step but as a relocalized economy develops and matures, it may offer the critical mass to give such a measure a fighting chance. Other methods of relocalization that keep dollars circulating locally include encouraging local cultural and arts activities to draw people away from their television screens and computer monitors. Perhaps a local film festival featuring local filmmakers would be a great draw on a cold winters night.

Local food programs are perhaps the easiest to implement beginning with backyards, vacant lots, and community or market gardens in both rural and urban areas. These activities can be supported by including in local zoning ordinances provisions that actually support small local farms, market gardens, and community gardens (but not industrial agriculture) instead of penalizing them or focusing on "protecting" housing developments from their odors, sights, and sounds. A municipal farmers market would also provide support by establishing a central location where farmers can market their produce. In regions with harsh winters, farmers markets can offer a variety of seasonal items, meats, dairy, and canned goods. Urban planners like myself can and should take the lead in promoting changes to zoning ordinances and facilitating the development of a central market through economic development incentives.

Buy local programs are beginning to emerge in communities across the U.S. Here in New England, towns like Concord, Ayer, and Groton, all in Massachusetts, are working with groups like BALLE to market local goods and services to....locals. Careful and sensitive support of these types of efforts within an economic development policy framework should reap lasting benefits and provide a much more visceral and connected form of public partnership than the traditional smokestack chasing economic development model ever did. Local businesses might actually begin to think that the city or town might have their best interests in mind.

Here in Ayer, MA, the idea has been circulated to consider the development of a small business incubator that includes a sustainable business model as a facet of entrepreneurial education and training. The Town already offers a green and sustainable business startup loan from the Industrial Development Finance Authority and the idea was that we could encourage new businesses to incorporate sustainable business principles and practices along the lines of the Natural Step for Business (Nattrass and Altomare, 1999). This is just one way in which local governments and grass roots organizations can encourage and facilitate entrepreneurship at the local level.

My hometown of Concord, MA is fortunate to posses several bakeries, small food markets, and two fish markets and butcher shops. Numerous small farms and farmstands surround this suburban community of 15,000 supplying everything from sweet corn, tomatoes, and strawberries to autumn pumpkins, gourds, and apples. They even offer seedlings for home gardeners and numerous pick-your-own opportunities for suburbanites who want to get their hands dirty. What Concord does not have anymore, as few American small to medium sized towns do, is small local industries supplying local goods. Most industrial output today consists of mass produced junk destined for the landfill within 3-20 months. Whether it be the crappy toy in the happy meal or the MP3 player that can't be repaired or upgraded, most of the stuff we purchase has a planned obsolescence designed to render the object useless or of no interest within mere months. Very few of these items will be worth passing along from generation to generation like the furniture, tools, toys, and clothing of even 75 years ago. Local communities need to begin re-establishing and supporting small businesses that produce items that have real and lasting value. These could initially include local woodworkers, glass shops, and stonemasons and later include metal shops, agricultural supply, and much more.

The development of local energy resources is complicated by the lack of coherent and reliable sources of information. Local communities and are bombarded by slick Enron-like corporate management types looking to sell complex energy solutions (often exclusively carbon-based) that municipalities are in no position to vet or comprehend without significant time investment. What is needed is for a non-profit to step up and create a complete set of local energy options that help address peak oil concerns and the issue of climate change as well. Rob Hopkins states very clearly in his Transition Handbook that the ultimate energy descent plan must adequately address both issues. This information resource (web site?) should provide energy use and conservation options, have an Angie's List type of collective rating system for contractors, have a discussion list of best practices and personal experiences to draw on, and a complete list of manufacturers, suppliers, contractors, and servicers that meet an acceptable green standard. The type of resilience solution that could ideally be devised for local communities could be a three tiered framework of regional, community, and site specific energy systems that could feed back into upper tiers with co-generation. In this sense, any disruption at a regional scale will be minimized locally. This is the type of thinking that we need to develop in regard to local planning, a redundancy that minimizes local dependency on the larger system--minimizing systemic helplessness. Note that dependency is a condition that our culture has come to rely on and promote to service government for votes and the corporatocracy for income through mass consumption. Energy independence is a crucial factor in moving local communities away from economic dependence and toward economic independence and self-sufficiency.

In the end, communities that continue to be reliant on the global economy for goods, services, and wages who have been hit hard by this most recent downturn should take notice and consider a focused relocalization program to begin disengaging from an economic model in which they currently have little or no control at the local level of the vicissitudes and volatility of the market. In addition, as each local economy and individual household begins to wean from the unsustainable consumption-based economic model, a much greater stability and sense of contentment will be the result. A much stronger sense of community will also come about.

Such a program is ideally originated through grass roots citizen action, perhaps by the establishment of a Local. The Transition Town model is one of several excellent models to consider on this path. And then the role of municipal government should be to facilitate and encourage the proposals generated by the Local but not co-opt the process. Keeping this process chiefly in the hands of citizen volunteers and away from government officials is encouraged initially. This should be an inspired process and not something that has to be imposed or legislated. Later when momentum has been generated and a critical mass reached, government action such as the establishment of Sustainability Commission (Eugene OR and Groton, MA) or Peak Oil Task Force (Portland, OR) can complement and feed off of the citizen energy and accomplishments.

Finally, Federal and State officials can be an important part of the process if they avoid any ruffled feathers over a programmatic focus where their voices are not central and in control. They can assist this process by removing barriers to relocalization and providing incentives, much like Richard Heinberg suggests in his compelling piece entitled, "The Green New Deal". If not, they will continue to be a part of the problem.

Suggested Resources

Hopkins, R. (2008), The Transition Handbook. White River Junction, VT, Chelsea Green

Lerch, D. (2007). Post Carbon Cities Guidebook. Sebastopol, CA, Post Carbon Press.

James, S. and Lahti, T. (2004). The Natural Step for Communities, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada, New Society Publishers.