I heard about Tony's letter to the Times yesterday (saying how Woolies stores should be turned into markets and hubs of local enterprise) because Rob Hopkins blogged about the Times article that discussed it.

Rob is the founder of the Transition Towns network --  an extraordinary, fast-growing global grassroots movement, of people who are coming together to make their communities more vibrant, more exciting, and more prosperous.

The original twin drivers behind Transition were climate change and peak oil: the realisation that over the next couple of decades we are going to have to shift from consuming about nine barrels of oil per person per year (in the UK) to about one. And the sooner we start this 'transition' the better.

But as I have been involved in the setting up of Transition Town Farnham over the past few months, I have come to realise that peak oil and climate change are just our excuses. The real reason this movement has captured the hearts as well as minds of people all around the world is because it is about rebuilding community. 

Now, I'm not going to rant on to you here about how lack of community has led to the credit crunch. You're members of Tomorrow's Company -- you know that already.

But I will say to you that whatever we think are the underlying issues -- peak oil, climate change, or credit crunch -- the solutions are all pointing us in the same direction: the need to rebuild local community, intertwined with the creation of real, local jobs. And that is what Rob was talking about in his blog.

The people in Transition Towns around the world achieve these goals in several ways. They grow more local food and set up local food networks and directories. They find ways to use less energy and to generate energy sustainably. They shift to low-carbon methods of transport and construction. And they (or rather I should say 'we') learn to take part in the 'Great Reskilling' that may one day enable me to fix, make and mend as many things as my parents could.

Transition Towns also strengthen their economies by introducing local currencies and by developing local ethical and sustainable businesses. (Perhaps this is where mymembership of Tomorrow's Company comes in.) And the Transition Training and Consulting organisation I am helping to found will also help existing businesses make the same transition.

Now, as my MBA professors taught me, it takes an average of seven years for a start-up business to break-even, and the Transition Movement is only two years old. But in those two years the Transition Movement has grown to over 900 towns and inner-city areas worldwide, all at various stages of development. And it has done so with virtually zero budget.

I cannot speak for the Transition Network as a whole. But if we in Transition Farnham could get access to the Woolworths store that has just closed in our town, we would:

• have a market in the front of the store, as Tony has suggested, selling local fruit, vegetables, meat, jams, honey, pickles,... from existing local farmers and suppliers, and from the new 'community agriculture' groups that are springing up
• sell locally-produced crafts -- for example there has been a pottery in Farnham since before Roman times
• run training, reskilling and other workshops
• transform the upstairs into a 'hub' that sells desk space and office services to people running start-up businesses
• rent the same space to people seeking to return to work, so they don't have to sit alone in their kitchens at home and can network with others in the samesituation and maybe form new businesses together
• link with the local University for the Creative Arts to form an incubator for a series of world-class creative businesses
• be a central meeting and networking point for raising awareness, outreach and making connections provide offices and staff to start-up and spin-off other transition projects such in food, energy, building, transport, and so on, each one a profitable, sustainable business