Villages

Please visit Transition Village Support or contact VV Convenor Ross Moster  ross@villagevancouver.ca if you're interested in starting a new Village.

At over 600,000 residents, Vancouver is a tad large to characterize as a village, let alone to organize "all as one" for Transition. This is even truer when we look at the Metropolitan region with its' 2.3 million residents.

By coming together with others, we can create neighbourhoods where we actually know our neighbours and we can create friendlier and healthier places to live. VV, as the Transition Town Hub for this area, provides resources for existing Neighbourhood Transiton Villages and helps new Villages to emerge in Vancouver. Outside of Vancouver, we help new Transition initiatives, hubs and villages get started. In turn, Villages and other initiatives collaborate with VV in numerous ways, including populating VV working groups and our steering committee. This reciprocity (which actually is really just all of us coming together to help one other in an effective way) allows us to develop resources that can be offered to everyone.

The very strength of Vancouver is its diversity, the unique cultures and built environments that define each neighbourhood. Transition will take different paths in different parts of town, reflecting the community assets available, the will of the convenors, and the need to organize on foot and bicycle--the most basic and sustainable modes of transportation.*

Transition in each Village often begins with potluck gatherings once a month, the creation of informal networks and the sharing of knowledge, resources, and even physical assets. It centres on rebuilding of the kinds of relationships that we lost as our cities grew larger and more impersonal. These relationships are the basis of the resilience of a culture in the face of change, and the foundation from which change can be managed.

Typically many activities have a food resiliency component, and each village functions, among other things, as a Neighbourhood Food Network. (VV is very active around food resiliency and functions in many ways as a large NFN, which includes providing various resources to neighbourhoods and neighbourhood Villages/NFN's.)

As of August 2011, the following Transition Villages have formed, or are forming, convened by the VV member(s) listed. If you are interested in finding out more about any of the following Transition Villages, please contact the listed convenors on their Member page by clicking on their name, or click on the Village name to go there. Once you are a member of Village Vancouver by registering on this site, you may request membership in any Village below. If you are interested in starting a new Village, please contact Ross Moster, the Transition Village working group convenor.

Bowen in Transition, contact Dave Pollard

Village Burnaby, convened by Matthew Stuart

Transition Cedar Cottage, convened by Leslie Kemp and Robin Macqueen

Dunbar Transition Village, convened by Ann Pacey and Shelby Tay

grandview woodland neighbourhood, convened by Cabot Lyford & Jordan Bober

Hastings Sunrise Village, convened by Megan Adam

Kitsilano Transition Village, convened by Ross Moster, co-convened by Mary Bennett

Main Street Neighbourhood, convened by Jason Mertz and Randy Chatterjee

Mountain View Village, convened by Sharole Taylor

Namaimo Renfrew Village, convened by Grant Watson

Village North Shore, convened by Kathryn Cholette

Transition Richmond, seeking a convenor/forming a core group

Transition Strathcona, seeking a convenor/forming a core group

Sunset Transition Village seeking a convenor/forming a core group

Transition UBC, convened by Justin Ritchie

West End Transition Village, seeking a convenor/forming a core group

New villages in the works: Boundary Bay, The Downtown East Side, Fairview, Kerrisdale.

A village is roughly a neighbourhood, and it may be smaller or larger depending entirely on who is organizing for Transition there and what feels appropriate geographically. VV members are sometimes attached to more distant neighbourhoods for any number of reasons, and we feel that so long as you can travel there in a sustainable way, you may apply to join.

*When discussing travel "by foot," I also want to include wheelchair or any other assistive device for personal mobility, just so long as it is the least carbon consuming of all options available to that person.

Further afield?  Some other "nearby" Transition Initiatives

Selected Transition Initiatives in BC and the Northwest US

Greater Victoria Transition Initiative 

Golden Ears Transition Initiative 

Transition Saltspring Island 

TT Powell River 

Transition Cowichan 

Alberni Valley TT Society 

Transition Nelson 

Transition Whatcom

Transition Portland

Seattle

Transition Network

Check out the 375 + other official Transition Town Initiatives and over 400 "Muller" initiatives across the globe, including Ottawa.