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. A village is generally a neighbourhood...and it may be smaller or larger depending  on who's organizing for Transition there, how neighbours wish to engage, and what feels appropriate geographically. Examples of potential neighbourhood village activities include potlucks, gardening together, starting a community seed library, lowering energy consumption, creating an emergency preparedness group, supporting local businesses and local, sustainably produced products - basically any activity neighbours engage in which helps build a more resilient community is fair game - and there are literally thousands of ways to go about this.  

VV, as the Transition Town Hub for the Lower mainland, 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 (For example, Village Surrey.) In turn, Villages and other initiatives collaborate with VV in numerous ways, including populating VV working groups and our Board of Directors. 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 (but not always) 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 community food resiliency component, and villages function, among other things, as Neighbourhood Food Networks or in collaboration with a VV NFN that covers more than one neighbourhood. For example, Kerrisdale, Kits, and West Pt. Grey Villages and Westside Neighbourhood Food Network.  VV is very active around food resiliency and (in addition to our other foci) functions as a large NFN, including providing various resources to neighbourhoods and neighbourhood Villages/NFN's.)

Current Villages (as of March 2018). 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 contact VB@villagevancouver.ca

East Van Village (Grandview Woodland, Hastings Sunrise, Cedar Cottage, Renfrew Collingwood, Strathcona) contact EVV@villagevancouver.ca

Fairview-False Creek South Village contact FFCSV@villagevancouver.ca

grandview woodland neighbourhood (Commercial Drive Village) contact CDV@villagevancuver.ca

Hastings Sunrise Village contact HSV@villagevancouver.ca

Inner City Village (Downtown Eastside and Strathcona) contact  ICV@villagevancouver.ca

Kerrisdale Transition Village contact KTV@villagevancouver.ca

Kitsilano Transition Village convened by Ross Moster

Main Street Neighbourhood  (Mt. Pleasant, Little Mountain/Riley Park, Douglas Park) contact MSN@villagevancouver.ca

Marpole Oakridge Transition Village contact MOTV@villagevancouver.ca

Village Surrey convened VS@villagevancouver.ca

West End Transition Village contact WETV@villagevancouver,ca

West Point GreyTransition Village contact WPGV@villagevancouver.ca

*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 470 + other official Transition Town Initiatives and over 700 "Muller" initiatives across the globe, including Ottawa.