Suburban downsizing - Frugality, sustainability and social media mash up...

1 August 2009 - Posted by Peter Salmon - 0 Comments

We’re seeing a very real adaptation at the local community level. Social media, localisation and the recessions are creating some remarkable changes in community interaction. Transition towns and Suburban downsizing are becoming popular movements in changing times.

As challenging and uncertainty increase, people are turning to each other to remedy the inadequacies of current social and state systems, using enabling technology to help reconnect with their communities. And connection is key. In a recent European poll of 8,000 households in UK, France, Germany and Spain, broadband was the last thing to be dropped in hard economic times. 

Increasing connection is leading to transitional thinking and new services with different value propositions. As Tyler Cowen recently wrote in Fast Company “online you can literally create your own economy”. He goes on to argue that we consume huge amounts of unmeasured value online everyday, that social media is “becoming more fun than a trip to the store”. This he calls ‘Human capital dividend’ or the online productivity we as web consumers have in being part of the conversation, linking with communities and sharing new ideas.

As a result a new type of frugal green economy is emerging. Take for example http://www.veggietrader.com An online trading  platform in the USA where home gardeners with a surplus can trade and sell their produce within their local communities. A trademe for the home gardener that within a month had enrolled over 1,800 members.

Keep looking for more social network driven solutions like a Zip-car type platform for home deliveries and perhaps even greater peer to peer micro finance, as people build more trusted and stable financial relationships that traditional governments and banks won’t or can’t deliver.

Tags: Suburban downsizing, Social media