Paper short abstract:

‘Transition initiatives’ are news ways of living, presumably resulting from the ecological ideology or/and from present crisis and the anticipation and fear of a post-petroleum era. This paper draws on some Portuguese transition initiatives like the ITT Initiative TransitionTelheiras and the Paredes Transition and its bridging with foreigner ones, either from England and from Brazil.

Paper long abstract:

'Transition initiatives' are news ways of living, presumably resulting from the ecological ideology or/and from present crisis and the anticipation and fear of a post-petroleum era. One way or another, transition initiatives seem to be experiences by which people make a place by managing imaginaries of the future, even if with allusions to the past. After a period in which several experiences were basically rural, there are now several cases in which these imaginaries seem also to present bridges between life in traditional-rural communities and urban-industrial life. Some of the urban experiences could reveal news ways of dealing with one of the important innovations of twenty century urban life: the condominium. Condominiuns were created, in most countries, basically since 1950ies and they are news ways of managing the modern dichotomy between public and private space. Condominiuns introduced and expanded (particularly with the new closed condos of the 80ies and 90ies) the collective property. Although many social scientists and urbanists (as myself 10 years ago) were and still are quite critical towards new condominiuns, collective property in modern urban life was enhanced and even monumentalized as a result of them. Some initiatives of transition explore this idea of collective property and it is possible to ask if we are not facing a newest condominium paradigm?

This paper draws on some Portuguese transition initiatives like the ITT Initiative Transition Telheiras and the Paredes Transition and its bridging with foreigner ones, either from England and from Brazil.