Ronald Beavers, Author at Transition Towns

Things to do in Auckland

Ronald Beavers 6 September 202126 October 2021

New Zealand is a beautiful place with diverse cultures and rich history. Auckland is a major city in the north of New Zealand’s north island. You can visit the most expensive places or take a free walk at the local market and town. Still, the experience is unfathomable and one of the bests. As you walk down the street food stalls, the smell of different cultures captivates your attention, making you feel at home and more.

The religious visit to the Buddhist temples

You may visit a Buddhist temple, take a risky stroll through a night market full of gourmet delights, or be treated to a diverse collection of art. Discover nature in the numerous walks or even take a sailing instruction in the Hauraki Gulf’s beautiful seas. You may learn about Auckland’s history by visiting the Howick Historical Village, or you can learn about the city’s current by looking at the people’s varied cultures, art, and cuisine.

Auckland War Memorial Museum

The Auckland War Memorial Museum and the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, two of the country’s most excellent museums and cultural institutions, are located in New Zealand’s most populated city. The Auckland Sky Tower is one of the city’s family-friendly attractions. The Auckland Zoo and the Tiritiri Matangi Open Sanctuary. The magnificent vistas of Waiheke Island, Mount Eden, and Rangitoto Island will appeal to nature enthusiasts. Travelers will visit renowned Kiwi sites such as the Waitomo Glow-worm Caves and the Hobbiton Movie Set within a few hours outside of the city.

Sky tower casino

The 1,000-foot-high Sky Tower in the Southern Hemisphere provides breath-taking views and bungee jumping. Table games such as Blackjack, Baccarat, Jai Sai, and Roulette and over 1,200 slot and gaming machines are available at the casinos. SkyCity Auckland is more of an experience than a casino. This restaurant has fantastic haute cuisine demonstrations and highly inventive dishes that leave you dumbfounded while you dine. The ambiance is to die for, and the décor is beautiful! They offer a bar where you may order a broad range of drinks.

This is the place to go if you want to have a premium entertainment and eating experience. This location is the one-stop destination for nonstop fun and excitement, with 1700 gaming machines and 130 games. The team takes pleasure in offering excellent service to its customers. SkyCity Auckland is the place to visit for a spectacular perspective of the city!

Explore the streets

Auckland street has much more to offer than drinks and clubs. It is an exploration of the shopping gigs or the opening bar to the nightlife. one of the popular streets in Auckland is Aotea Square, which is one of the elegant spots of the city selling handmade goods. Another attraction to the place is The Viaduct. it is known as the Americas’ cup yacht of Auckland.

So, what more are you waiting for? Experience all this exclusively at Auckland now.

Transition Town In Auckland

Ronald Beavers 24 August 202126 October 2021

When the Transition network began in 2007, only a few towns embraced the Transition concept; currently, New Zealand has roughly 65 Transition Towns. Let us have a look at the journey of transition town in Auckland and its current state.

How did the transition movement start?

The notion was born during an innovative ecological course taught by English conservationist Rob Hopkins at an Irish secondary institute in County Cork in 2004. He moved to Totnes, Devon, a small market town, a year later to co-found the world’s first Transition Town. There are currently over 1200 Transition organizations in over 40 countries, so it isn’t simply a British trend.

Four main assumptions of transition towns:

Life with substantially reduced energy use is unavoidable; it’s better to plan ahead of time than be caught off guard.

The communities are currently unprepared to withstand the catastrophic energy shocks that will follow peak oil and climate change.

The communities must act as a group and move quickly.

The communities can develop modes of living that are more linked, more meaningful, and respect the biological constraints of our planet by releasing the collective brain of those around them to imaginatively and actively design our energy downfall.

Transition towns in other countries

A Transition group in Brixton, London, has funded £130,000 to build England’s first internal society power station atop a council estate, with 82kW of solar panels. Likewise, a Transition community in Derbyshire has established a food center, making it possible to sell food grown in back yards as an option to stores.

Issues in New Zealand

New Zealand’s population is steadily expanding. We can see that Auckland has long been renowned as New Zealand’s most populated city if we look closely. With the changing climate and the increased export and import of international items, the city’s role has faded. It is also known that New Zealand does not have its own power source and must rely on power cables borrowed from other governments.

As a result, Auckland people have taken a positive step. They have begun to participate in and become a part of the transition towns’ initiatives.

The growing trend of transition towns in Auckland

Residents of Auckland have begun to improve the environment and the economy after noticing the problems that people in the country face. Auckland’s transitional towns have been manufacturing and employing local products and using less transportation for a better lifestyle. These neighborhoods have started partnering with schools to help the city move toward a more sustainable future by participating in environmental projects and emphasizing reusing rather than waste. Such communities have decided to run various activities to raise public awareness about the world’s deteriorating ecological problems. These towns’ actions demonstrate that the program will be effective in the future.

Transition town communities are leading people to believe that, although the world’s climate has transformed, we are now staring back at climate change rather than forward to it.

Shops You Should Visit While In Auckland

Ronald Beavers 14 August 20216 April 2022

It is true that if you visit Auckland, you will go out shopping. There are numerous shopping stores and areas in Auckland where you may go and buy everything you want. We’ve put up a list of each category you’ll need throughout your time in Auckland.

Ponsonby

If you want to visit clothing shops and concept stores, Ponsonby is the place to go. Ponsonby is a multi-brand store that promotes global labels as well as extremely simple local items. Simple designs with feminine touches are the focus of the designs. So, what are you waiting for, ladies?

Shelter

If you’re a designer searching for some inspiration, this is the place to go. Look through the shelves for new and well-known labels. While you’re browsing the collection, stop by the cafe for a drink. Choose from a variety of candles and kiwi scents from a nearby perfumery called Curionoir, which only produces a small number of perfumes at a time. So, if you’re lucky, you might come upon a unique fragrance to brag about!

Takapuna

If you prefer a more comfortable shopping experience, come to Takapuna, located on the city’s North Shore. Beaches surround this place, making your shopping experience both peaceful and scenic. The store includes everything you could want, from clothing to food, as well as a beauty spa and a hair salon. You will be able to select from a wide range of colorful and unusual Kiwi clothing. So don’t put it off any longer and visit the store for a fun yet relaxing shopping experience!

Royal Jewellery Studio

If you enjoy wearing or designing jewelry, don’t miss out on visiting Royal Jewellery Studio. A studio in a recreated theatre will provide you with a variety of ancient designs. The studio sells designs created by a local jeweler who adds Maori koru motifs into their work. These motifs are made by hammering silver and gold rings. So pay a visit to the store and take home an authentic piece of jewelry.

Natalie Chan

This store on Parnell Road welcomes those who enjoy accessorizing themselves in various ways. Using the right and unique accessories can really make a difference in one’s clothing style. Natalie Chan’s fresh and creative works have a lot to offer. Stop by to see her retro-inspired pearl and feather designs. We’re confident you’ll leave with your hands stuffed with her products.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Are you tired of looking at your house in the same way you always have? Do you wish to furnish your home with classical and unique items? Visit Flotsam & Jetsam for a perfect thrift shopping experience. Choose from a wide range of décor items to help you redecorate your home. With designs from the 1950s, the location has a lot to offer. To give a classic touch to your home, look for vintage lamps and tapestry cushions. When you visit the store, you will struggle to leave!

Six Steps to Community Engagement

Ronald Beavers 2 June 201026 October 2021

This presentation came as a bonus to the work I was doing for the Waiheke Community Supported Agriculture project. As I attempted to find an effective way to communicate the “How” of that project, I found I had stumbled upon a model that could be applied to any community project.

Ever since coming across the Transition Towns work and seeing how the 12 steps in the transition towns work to keep a local initiative on track, I quickly noticed that the same 12 steps could apply to an individual project. The six steps suggested here have distilled and simplified this even further, and you can watch and listen to this 5 minute video and then read the transcript, with embedded links.

Your comments are welcome.

Here is the transcript of the slideshow.

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12 Steps to creating a Waiheke CSA
Submitted by James Samuel on 21 July 2009 – 12:10pm
12 Steps Community Supported Agriculture csa waiheke Waiheke Island
Transition Towns has a 12 step framework, which I have adapted here to see if could be useful as a guide for how we might bring the Waiheke CSA into fully operational existence, and meeting its vision of “Waiheke Well Fed”.

My additions are in italics. Your comments are welcome.

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12 Steps: Step 12 – Create an Energy Descent Plan
Submitted by James Samuel on 23 July 2008 – 8:52pm
12 Steps Step 12
Each subgroup will have been focusing on practical actions to increase community resilience and reduce the carbon footprint.

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12 Steps: Step 11 – Let it go where it wants to go…
Submitted by James Samuel on 23 July 2008 – 8:51pm
12 Steps Step 11
Although you may start out developing your Transition Town process with a clear idea of where it will go, it will inevitably go elsewhere. If you try and hold onto a rigid vision, it will begin to s ap your energy and appear to stall. Your role is not to come up with all the answers, but to act as a catalyst for the community to design their own transition.

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12 Steps: Step 10 – Honour the Elders
Submitted by James Samuel on 23 July 2008 – 8:50pm
12 Steps Step 10
For those of us born in the 1960s when the cheap oil party was in full swing, it is very hard to picture a life with less oil. Every year of my life (the oil crises of the 70s excepted) has been underpinned by more energy than the previous years.

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12 Steps: Step 9 – Build a bridge to local government
Submitted by James Samuel on 23 July 2008 – 8:49pm
12 Steps Step 9
Whatever the degree of groundswell your Transition Town initiative manages to generate, however many practical projects you’ve initiated and however wonderful your Energy Descent Plan is, you will not progress too far unless you have cultivated a positive and productive relationship with your local authority. Whether it is planning issues, funding issues or providing connections, you need them on board. Contrary to your expectations, you may well find that you are pushing against an open door.

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12 Steps: Step 8 – Facilitate the great reskilling
Submitted by James Samuel on 23 July 2008 – 8:41pm
12 Steps Step 8
If we are to respond to peak oil and climate change by moving to a lower energy future and relocalising our communities, then we’ll need many of the skills that our grandparents took for granted. One of the most useful things a Transition Town project can do is to reverse the “great deskilling” of the last 40 years by offering training in a range of some of these skills.

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12 Steps: Step 7 – Develop visible practical manifestations of the project
Submitted by James Samuel on 23 July 2008 – 8:33pm
12 Steps Step 7
It is essential that you avoid any sense that your project is just a talking shop where people sit around and draw up wish lists. Your project needs, from an early stage, to begin to create practical, high visibility manifestations in your community. These will significantly enhance people’s perceptions of the project and also their willingness to participate.

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12 Steps: Step 6 – Use Open Space
Submitted by James Samuel on 23 July 2008 – 8:31pm
12 Steps Step 6
We’ve found Open Space Technology to be a highly effective approach to running meetings for Transition Town initiatives.

In theory it ought not to work. A large group of people comes together to explore a particular topic or issue, with no agenda, no timetable, no obvious coordinator and no minute takers.

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12 Steps: Step 5 – Form Sub Groups
Submitted by James Samuel on 23 July 2008 – 8:28pm
12 Steps Step 5
Part of the process of developing an Energy Descent Action Plan is tapping into the collective genius of the community. Crucial for this is to set up a number of smaller groups to focus on specific aspects of the process. Each of these groups will develop their own ways of working and their own activities, but will all fall under the umbrella of the project as a whole.