I work as a DC Officer in Leicester and have been involved in my local Transition group for a year. We have a monthly internal training session and Transition did an introduction to the movement and the main issues behind it (peak oil and climate change). We will have another session (next May!!!) that will be a workshop on creating a new LDF for Leicester in preparation for when oil prices rocket. Hopefully they will not have done so by then. I believe the issue is highly relevant for planning. Assuming we can manage energy decline in a civilised manner (and I would go so far as to say all bets are off for the future of our civilisation at the moment) then I think we can say goodbye to the current 'regeneration' model (redeveloping former industrial areas for residential, focus on knowledge economy PLUS hypermobility with shipping goods from China, cheap motoring and budget flights) and say hello to local manufacturing, market gardens around cities and a large number of people moving to the countryside so they can be near to their place of work (farms). So far I have seen no engagement with this matter in the UK. The Post Carbon Institute has a section who are looking at planning and I recommend starting there for a planning perspective on energy descent. If anyone would like to start dialogue on this matter then I would like to talk to them. For a more general introduction the following websites are good: James Howard Kunstler (tends to focus more on planning related issues than other websites - his weekly analysis of current events is very good) Energy Bulletin Post Carbon Institute Club Orlov The Oil Drum Simmons & Co - Speeches and Papers section
