Using imagination to change cities (Podcast with Rob Hopkins and Noémie Cheval)
Channel: Metabolism of Cities
Date: 2022-09-07

📺 Welcome to the 58th episode of the Circular Metabolism Podcast: What if all Cities became Transition Towns with Rob Hopkins and Noémie Cheval 📺.

🏙️ On today’s episode I will ask you to use your untapped superpower. A superpower that could help us act against current ecological and social crises. A superpower that could increase our well-being by being more rooted and involved in our communities. A superpower that could shape future decarbonised, healthy and just societies. This superpower is imagination. And so, in this episode I would to ask you to use your imagination to envision a world where all cities, towns and villages have joined and applied principles from the Transition Movement. What would our lives and the environment look like ?  

🎓 To think about these questions, I will discuss with none other than the co-founder of the Transition Network and co- founder of Transition Town Totnes. He is a teacher of permaculture, an artist, a researcher, a podcaster, a brewery co-owner and an author of numerous books including The Transition Handbook – From oil dependency to local resilience and From What Is to What IF – Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future we want. I’m talking of course of Rob Hopkins. But WAIT there is more, today I have not one but two guests. On the side of Rob is Noémie Cheval. She is a member and co-founder of the Swiss Transition Hub or Réseau Transition Suisse Romande which supports numerous wonderful initiatives. Noémie is a trainer and is passionate about helping people and organisations in their quest of transitioning. I think that having these two perspectives will help all of us to understand the birth of the transition movement, its implementation to different contexts and foresee the future of the movement. 

🙏 Enjoy this episode and before you go, please help us improve our podcast by subscribing to your favourite app including Youtube, iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher and leave us a comment 📝 with your thoughts.

Chapters 

0:00 Teaser of the episode
0:57 Introduction of the episode
5:19 Introduction of Rob Hopkins
08:53 Introduction of Noémie Cheval
10:41 Definition of the Transition Movement
12:40 When do you call a Town, a Transition Town ?
17:40 What are some critical elements observed in the Transition Network ?
19:22 What does it mean to be involved in the Transition Movement ?
24:24 What are the key concepts at the core of Transition Towns
30:55 Why imagination is essential to change our cities
34:00 The involvment of academics in the Transition Movement
35:55 The importance of training
38:44 The importance of imaginaries for changing cities
44:44 How do we recreate times of imagination like the year 1968
55:07 What is all cities, towns and villages were Transition Towns ?
1:07:20 What is one message that you would like to get across ?

👋Hello everyone and Welcome to the Circular Metabolism podcast, the bi-weekly meeting where we have in-depth discussions with thinkers, researchers, activists, policy makers and practitioners to better understand the metabolism of our cities and how to reduce their environmental impact in a socially just and context-specific way. 

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#transition #robhopkins #transitiontowns #transitionnetwork #podcast
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