Economic resilience : including a case study of the global transition network

This paper explores the dynamic properties of organisms and ecosystems that make them so resilient and capable of adapting to changing circumstances, allowing them to maintain an overall condition of coherence, wholeness and health while living in balance within the resources of the planet. Key principles of resilient ecological systems are explored including: self-regulation; positive and negative feedback; diversity; scale and context; cooperation; emergence and novelty; and ecological tipping points. In contrast, market based economic systems can produce unstable growth with unintended destruction of cultural and species diversity and homogenisation of global life-styles. The paper re-examines fundamental economic principles using insights from biological evolution and ecosystem dynamics to establish a foundation for more resilient economies. This involves experimenting with different models in different communities to find patterns of sustainable production and exchange appropriate to local regions. Fundamental steps in this direction include the emergence of self-organising local communities based on creative experimentation, re-localisation of core sectors of the economy (food, energy, health and education), evolution of local currencies and banking practices that support local enterprise and investment in green technologies, stimulation of decentralised renewable energy networks and economic reform aligned with ecological principles. The Transition Network provides a case study of an international community based movement that has been experimenting with putting some of these principles into practice at the local level. The aim of the Transition Network is to support community led responses to peak oil and climate change, building resilience and well-being. The concept of ecological resilience and its application to local economy is hard wired into the values and emerging structure of the network of transition communities across the globe. The movement started in the UK in 2005 and there are now over 1000 Transition initiatives spanning 34 countries across the world. Many attribute the success and phenomenal growth of the Transition Network to its emerging holographic structure that mimics cell growth within living organisms. Growing a more resilient food system in the face of the twin challenges of natural resource scarcity and climate change is central to the Transition movement. A set of principles for a post carbon resilient food economy in the UK are offered. These include an 80% cut in carbon emission in the food sector by 2050, agricultural diversification, prioritization of farming methods that establish and enhance carbon sinks, phasing out of dependence on fossil fuels in food growing, processing and distribution, promoting access to nutritious and affordable food, as well as promoting greater access to land for growing food in urban and peri-urban areas. Practical examples of Transition related projects in the food sector are presented across the following themes: access to land, low carbon production methods, food distribution systems, health and community gardens and orchards, and collaborative ownership models

New communication practices on the radio and in the audiosphere

For the past decade or so, internet radio, podcasts, mobile sound apps, and digital libraries of audio content have enjoyed increasing popularity among researchers and receivers of culture. Radio, similarly to other traditional media, often experiments with the opportunities offered by the new media technologies enabling the emergence of new communicational practices. As a starting point, I consider the contemporary audiosphere, which constitutes the auditory part of the audio-visual culture, and the influence of technological changes on radio communications, artists, and receivers. I attempt to answer the question, what happens at genre fringes? What are the characteristic features of the emerging forms? How, when one is faced with new technology, the multimedia world, and virtual reality, can one reach a reflection on the fiction and non-fiction genres on the radio? The expansive character of new technologies is often the source of inspiration for that which is traditional, thus renewing the object of its study. The inclusion of new phenomena within the widely understood auditoriness has a rescuing nature for traditional forms, and, at the same time, offers new opportunities for creators, and thus an area of research for literary scientists, media scientists and literary critics

Collaborative and competitive strategies in the variability and resiliency of large-scale societies in Mesoamerica

Examinations of the variation and duration of past large-scale societies have long involved a conceptual struggle between efforts at generalization and the unraveling of specific trajectories. Although historical particulars are critical to understanding individual cases, there exist both scientific and policy rationales for drawing broader implications regarding the growing corpus of cross-cultural data germane to understanding variability in the constitution of human societies, past and present. Archaeologists have recently paid increased attention to successes and failures in communal-resource management over the long term, as articulated by the transdisciplinary theory on cooperation and collective action. In this article, we consider frameworks that have been traditionally employed in studies of the rise, diversity, and fall of large-scale preindustrial aggregations. We suggest that a comparative theoretical perspective that foregrounds collective-action problems, unaligned individual and group interests, and the social mechanisms that promote or hamper cooperation advances our understanding of variability in these early cooperative arrangements. We apply such a perspective to an examination of cities from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica to demonstrate tendencies for more collective systems to be larger and longer lasting than less collective ones, likely reflecting greater resiliency in the face of the ecological and cultural perturbations specific to the region and era

Economic Impacts of GO TO 2040

The economy of the Chicago metropolitan region has reached a critical juncture. On the one hand, Chicagoland is currently a highly successful global region with extraordinary assets and outputs. The region successfully made the transition in the 1980s and 1990s from a primarily industrial to a knowledge and service-based economy. It has high levels of human capital, with strong concentrations in information-sector industries and knowledge-based functional clusters -- a headquarters region with thriving finance, business services, law, IT and emerging bioscience, advanced manufacturing and similar high-growth sectors. It combines multiple deep areas of specialization, providing the resilience that comes from economic diversity. It is home to the abundant quality-of-life amenities that flow from business and household prosperity.On the other hand, beneath this static portrait of our strengths lie disturbing signs of a potential loss of momentum. Trends in the last decade reveal slowing rates, compared to other regions, of growth in productivity and gross metropolitan product. Trends in innovation, new firm creation and employment are comparably lagging. The region also faces emerging challenges with respect to both spatial efficiency and governance.In this context, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) has just released GO TO 2040, its comprehensive, long-term plan for the Chicago metropolitan area. The plan contains recommendations aimed at shaping a wide range of regional characteristics over the next 30 years, during which time more than 2 million new residents are anticipated. Among the chief goals of GO TO 2040 are increasing the region's long-term economic prosperity, sustaining a high quality of life for the region's current and future residents and making the most effective use of public investments. To this end, the plan addresses a broad scope of interrelated issues which, in aggregate, will shape the long-term physical, economic, institutional and social character of the region.This report by RW Ventures, LLC is an independent assessment of the plan from a purely economic perspective, addressing the impacts that GO TO 2040's recommendations can be expected to have on the future of the regional economy. The assessment begins by describing how implementation of GO TO 2040's recommendations would affect the economic landscape of the region; reviews economic research and practice about the factors that influence regional economic growth; and, given both of these, articulates and illustrates the likely economic impacts that will flow from implementation of the plan. In the course of reviewing the economic implications of the plan, the assessment also provides recommendations of further steps, as the plan is implemented, for increasing its positive impact on economic growth

Transferring and creating technological knowledge in interfirm R&D relationships: The initiation and evolution of interfirm learning.

In this study, we examine the initiation and evolution of interfirm learning in interfirm R&D relationships. Based on in-depth case studies, we suggest that the process of learning in interfirm R&D relationships consists of different challenges: 1) initiating technological knowledge transfer, 2) continuing technological knowledge transfer, and 3) moving towards the joint creation of new technological knowledge. Our findings identify conditions needed to initiate knowledge transfer: the presence of legal knowledge transfer clauses, overlapping skills and equipment, fragile trust and organizational similarity. The continuance of knowledge exchange implies complementary modes of collaborating characterized by sharing technologies which are oriented towards different applications. Joint knowledge creation implies convergence on the level of applications which only becomes feasible when prior knowledge exchange processes have generated resilient levels of trust. These observations point to the relevance of conceiving and organizing interfirm R&D relationships in a timephased, differentiated manner.Applications; Case studies; Convergence; Exchange; Interfirm learning; Interfirm R&D; Knowledge; Knowledge creation; Knowledge transfer; Learning; Processes; R&D; Similarity; Studies; Technology; Trust;

A new paradigm for SpeckNets:inspiration from fungal colonies

In this position paper, we propose the development of a new biologically inspired paradigm based on fungal colonies, for the application to pervasive adaptive systems. Fungal colonies have a number of properties that make them an excellent candidate for inspiration for engineered systems. Here we propose the application of such inspiration to a speckled computing platform. We argue that properties from fungal colonies map well to properties and requirements for controlling SpeckNets and suggest that an existing mathematical model of a fungal colony can developed into a new computational paradigm