John Robb is a strategist and theorist of modern warfare.  His book, Brave New War, is the best introduction I know of to small group warfare, the way technology has enabled ad hoc groups like Al Quaeda and others to wage war against superpowers like the USA.

In the last few years, Robb has changed his focus to the concept of resilience.  Looking at the failure of international, national, and regional governmental, economic, and social systems to confront the challenges of climate change and institutionalized as well as ad hoc criminality, he has started an initiative to relocalize our basic systems of survival as  we watch the slow decline and collapse of the overarching social machinery that currently exists.

The solution is to build resilience, is to build resilience at the local level… You take control of the things you can have influence over, the things in front of you, the things that are human scale…. and strangely, when you start looking at building resilience, building local viable communities, it solves all the problems at the global level, economically, environmentally, and in terms of quality of life…

Here is his lecture at the recent NYC Maker Faire.  The video starts about 8 minutes in and his description of a resilient community ends around 15:40 when he begins to take questions.  These seven or eight minutes are a useful introduction to a reasonable way forward.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/g…

On Monday January 30th, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) held a public meeting at Suffolk University, halfway between the State House and City Hall, to change the Boston zoning laws to allow for agriculture throughout the city, making it easier for local residents to grow and sell fresh, healthy, foods in Boston and the greater Boston Metropolitan Area.  Nearly 300 people attended.  Boston currently has about 150 community gardens serving 3000 gardeners, the highest per capita of any US city.  Now the city is trying to figure out how to change zoning to increase urban agriculture beyond gardening and household use into businesses and economic development.

Mayor Menino, the newly appointed chair of the food policy task force for the US Conference of Mayors, opened the meeting and the keynote address was given by Will Allen, Founder and CEO of Growing Power Inc. (http://www.growingpower.org), non-profit based in Milwaukee, WI which also does work in Chicago, Detroit, Ghana, and around the world.  Growing Power addresses social justice and food access issues through building local agriculture and farm-based businesses and Mr. Allen won the 2008 McArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant for his work on urban farming and sustainable food production.  Growing Power has grown an underutilized 2-acre lot into a farm that produces enough produce, eggs, honey, fish and other meats to feed more than 10,000 local residents and employs more than 100 people on 20 farms, 13 farmstands, and a year round CSA.