025 Transition City

Building a Transition City 

Year: 2019

Type: Architecture, Community
Location: West Jackson, Mississippi
Collaborator: Cooperation Jackson, Students from the Spitzer School of architecture

Cooperation Jackson is an emerging network of worker cooperatives and solidarity economy institutions, based in Jackson, Mississippi. The Cooperation envisions a new form of living, through their Ewing Street EcoVillage Coop Pilot Project which will serve as a cornerstone for Cooperation Jackson’s larger vision of a Transition City. A Transition City is a city based on broad participatory democratic structures, locally based socialized production, and energy democracy to improve the overall quality of life and the sustainability of our environment. 

Cooperation Jackson is at the beginning stages of planning a residential development that will provide housing to the community but also produce housing through worker owned co-ops. Their pilot – the EWING STREET ECO VILLAGE PROJECT aspires to be socially sustainable and ecologically responsible. This meant going beyond the question of housing to integrate the production of food and communal activity into the Ewing street.