‘Croissant’, other than the delicious pastry, is a good adjective to describe our current economic system. The warnings about the disastrous effects of exponential economic growth are not new: they have been out there for fifty years already, following the well-known 1972 report 'The limits to growth' (Meadows et al.).
Community currencies are alternative forms of money that coexist with national or official currencies to cover the needs of a specific group or local area that the conventional monetary system is not addressing.
On a hill covered with forests and Mediterranean bush, not far from Tunis (Tunisia), the Agricultural Development Group (GDA for its French acronym) Sidi Amor leads since 2006 a community development project around the valorization of the natural resources of the land: plants, stone, earth, water, and energy. Through multiple training activities, the actions for the conservation of nature by the association would act as a lever for the self growth and development of the members of the GDA - young people, men and women from surrounding urban areas, as well as local residents of the rural site.
What's the connection between sewing a tear in your pants and taking care of chickens together with your street neighbors? These two activities would be part of what the transition may look like, at the neighborhood level. If the socio-ecological transition refers to the process of profound changes in our production and consumption systems, as well as in social and political institutions and in our ways of life, the act of sewing may seem insignificant.
We’ve written about the commons a few times in the past, and this piece by Eula Biss is probably the best one. Although not directly related to cities, since she looks at the more traditional agricultural village-based commons, it’s an excellent explanation of the concept and its history, extremely useful as background for any discussion about other forms of commons.
