It began as a classroom exercise at a college, exploring how the small town of Totnes, in England, might reorganise its way of life in a world where oil was no longer available — and from there, in 2006, a process of reorganising local communities was set in motion. The cornerstones of the proposal are: recovering knowledge and skills that belonged to the generations who came before the oil "binge"; learning and practising old and new ways of growing food, preserving it, caring for farm animals, saving energy, coordinating local resources and, above all, recreating the dense web of relationships that characterises every healthy ecosystem, both social and natural.

Read also: Rob Hopkins, local initiatives to start making change

The launch of this transition process came neither from the top down, nor from a small handful of "alternative young people", but from the enthusiasm and vision of Rob Hopkins. It quickly transformed into an organised, coherent and at the same time passionate movement that chose from the outset to involve local authorities and to honour the elders of the community — going against the grain of the current, unhealthy mentality focused on quantity rather than quality of life and, above all, as an alternative to the impossible goal of infinite growth, which is driving our societies towards degenerative processes comparable only to those under way in cancerous tissue.

Transition town uses the modern language of psychologists who today work in the most forward-thinking companies; the key word is resilience — the capacity of a system to adapt and survive even strongly traumatic external events. The more resilient the system, the greater the trauma it can overcome without degenerating. The problems that our urbanised societies may soon have to face include reduced energy availability, economic and financial crises, difficulties in food supply, and deficits in essential services. There is no catastrophism in making these observations — there is a cool and coherent assessment that, on the contrary, transforms these conclusions into joyful opportunities to ask how to reorganise one's own life and help one's children and grandchildren to live theirs well, in an era that is becoming aware of the limits of growth, of the circularity of processes in natural ecosystems, and therefore also of the considerable power each individual has to impact a system.

Every person's action matters and is precious, in the vision of Transition town; in communities in transition, community gardens spring up, buying groups form, time banks are established, a local currency is printed (for the time being, in England), solar panels are installed on the roofs of social housing and gardens are created in run-down areas of urban centres — alongside many other locally born projects drawing on participatory design technologies such as open space, which harness individual initiative and creativity in the service of the community.

Born in 2006, in just eight years the movement expanded strongly across nine countries, in Italy alone there are more than 30 towns in transition, including, as long-standing examples, Carimate (CO) and Sovico (MB). The movement draws on other forces active in this direction to promote "inner transition" as well — the change of mindset needed to build a sustainable future — among them the celebrated The work that reconnects by Joanna Macy, which translates the principles of ecopsychology into practical pathways for environmental and social activists. Joanna Macy is the author, together with ecopsychosynthesist Molly Young Brown, of the practical manual Coming back to life, recently translated into French under the title Ecopsychologie pratique et rituels pour la Terre (practical ecopsychology and rituals for the Earth). A valuable contribution to the current times of transition.