Why twin?

When towns or communities twin, it is usually for cultural reasons – to connect meaningfully into an experience of a culture very different from their own. 

While the culture exchange is part of Transition Twinning, I suggested it mainly because:

• There used to be a much closer, and deeply sustainable, relationship between the industrialised cities and their rural hinterlands before the rest of the world became everybody’s backyard. For real resilience, there is a need to reshape these relationships and find 21st century ways to reconnect the urban and rural.
   
• There will be increasing pressure for the rural areas to support city living which will, Peak All, move well beyond the ‘tourism and quality of life with a bit of farming thrown in’ paradigm that currently exists as the only real policy justification for the ‘countryside’. This is a transition that also needs to be carefully managed to avoid conflict, resentment and cultural disconnection. Meaningful economic and lifestyle substructures, most obviously around food, abundance and energy, but also around health, shelter and trade, need to be explored and envisioned now. I’m not expecting the Transition Twinning will ‘sort’ this, but it would be nice to start to talk about it!
   
• It would be interesting to me to see how Transition works at a different scale – our ‘captive audience’ is only 2,500 people and culturally very different from the urban setting. My sense is that it would work very differently (and more easily??? – but I would say that!) in the relative anonymity of the city, but there must be contextual challenges too.
   
• I know I would find it supportive to build a working and listening relationship with another, geographically close, Transition group to share inspiration, ideas, tea and occasional but not endless sympathy.

Jane Gray from Lets Live Local Moffat