Towns in transition? The permaculture roots of future town-planning

Résumé En

Transition is now the priority for most urban and territorial strategies and policies, but the origins of the Transition network are still little known. Far from being yet another pressure group seeking to raise public awareness of the effects of climate change, its primary focus, by various means and at different levels, “is not on being against things, but on developing and promoting positive possibilities”1. This pro‑active approach is all the more unusual for being rooted in an alternative posture not so much on urban development as on agriculture. For permaculture – a contraction of permanent and agriculture –underpins Transition’s ethical stance (concern for habitats and the environment) and the methods (caring for rather than developing) it uses in planning projects for transition towns. At a time of recurrent crises it is instructive to see how permaculture underpins this approach to future town‑planning for it casts a new light on the art of (re‑)inhabiting the Earth, while facing up to the issueof the social and cultural acceptability of such an undertaking.