Transition Design helped chart a path to long-term solutions for water shortage in Ojai, California.
The Ojai Water Security project was a community-led initiative that applied the Transition Design approach to explore the long-term challenges of ensuring water security for the region. Two workshops were held in 2017, bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders, including residents, business owners, local government officials, farmers, and environmentalists. The goal was to help participants develop a shared understanding of the complexity of the issue, acknowledge the decades-long transition required to achieve water security, and identify opportunities for collaboration.
Workshops and Stakeholder Engagement
Each stakeholder group worked independently to map the problem from their perspective, articulate their concerns, and envision an ideal long-term future. Although groups initially struggled to agree on how to define the problem or its potential solutions, a key insight emerged: their visions for the future were remarkably similar. By engaging in backcasting exercises and presenting their future scenarios, participants began to recognize common ground, which fostered empathy and trust among groups that often held conflicting perspectives.
Outcomes and Systemic Insights
The mapping exercises revealed areas of alignment—what Transition Design refers to as “low-hanging fruit”—where work could begin immediately. They also identified the greatest barriers to resolution, highlighting systemic obstacles that would require long-term collaboration. The workshops demonstrated how Transition Design can support communities in articulating wicked problems, facilitating stakeholder collaboration, and laying a foundation for future projects, funding efforts, and long-term solutions that have broad stakeholder support.