Lots start with a Goldrush of some sort, a Klondike moment. Coal or Iron or the Railways or Wool, or some mix of such materials with a timely input of human genius.
That boom wanes or moves on. What is left is a honeycomb of redundant buildings, peopled by memories. Life goes on as a mutually supportive set of habitual rituals.
Others are planned.
Nucleations were a key part of the feudal fabric that the Normans established. The classic village, with it's pub, church and Green, is Norman in plan. Before then, a village was often a scattering of dwellings, each with its own precious plots in between, and no obvious centre.
Their strategy for supplying the string of castles that proclaimed their power was to lay out an enclosed townstead and invite loyal victuallers to settle there.
That often meant excluding the local populace.
Towns such as Aberystwyth and Newport, Pembs, which I only pick out as I know them both well, are still more markedly exotic and English than their hinterlands.
Other designed towns more recently were planned to absorb the overspill of people from degraded city precincts.
It seems strange to base a movement to return us to a more resilient, local supply economy on such a motley bunch of remaindered buildings.
True Transition should surely stem from Earth based initiatives, not towns.
The Norman infrastructure was not limited to towns. The Domesday Book was essentially a stocktake of taxable assets. From this reckoning, existing settlements were allotted distinct parcels of land sufficient for their needs and to pay a tithe to the Church, and meet taxation demands from the Crown.
These are still evident, as present-day parishes.
Obviously some have been lost and others have become urbanised.
But the basic structure is still valid as the basis for a network of ecoparishes.
These could be presided over by the ecological equivalent of a parish priest, whose initial aim would be to ensure the parish has a secure base supply of food, fuel and water. From this, a strategy to make tradable produce could grow. The autonomy of the parish leader would help his patch develop a distinct set of tradegoods.
Parishes could be monitored and taxed for their emissions and rewarded for maintaining ecological reserves.
Ideas and problems could be shared with other parishes through Internet networking.
Rural and urban parishes could 'twin', providing a ready market for one, and a refuge and sense of connection to the Earth to the other.
I have been bouncing this idea around in my head for more than a decade, and it won't leave me. I like the idea of a priestlike status for the leader, both to restore a local distinctiveness, and to bypass the petty wrangling that beset local politics.
Democracy is not a cure all. In some arenas it results in the torpor of the norm.
But the principal appeal is in it giving status and true worth to rural communities after generations of being seen as straw-sucking clod hoppers. The pastoral myth is over. Lets start the pastoral reality
Ooh Aarh.
No comments:
Post a Comment