| Sense in the City Issue 11, October,2006 Page 1 |
| Sense in the City Issue 11, October,2006 Page 1 |
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City Wellbeing Indicators Well Served by the Integral Framework: Recommendation to WUF3 October, 2006, © Marilyn Hamilton PhD CGA Introduction At the World Urban Forum 3 (WUF3) in Vancouver in June 2006, the World Bank, UN-Habitat and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities presented their report on the current state of development of city indicators (From Now to Nanjing). They divulged the plethora of indicators they had identified, related to objective and interobjective data and they even argued in favour of a new set of indicators related to subjective wellbeing. However, none of their frameworks offered the possibility of merging and comparing the subjective/intersubjective data with objective/interobjective data. And none of their data analysis approaches had derived a set of meta-indicators that would enable them to do so. The Integral Framework offers the power and flexibility of providing a basis for comprehensively developing and measuring the wellbeing of all human systems in the urban (and rural) setting. The Integral Framework has the capacity to integrate multiple databases, benchmarks, values and intentions into a system that transcends and includes both subjective/intersubjective and objective/interobjective data.
Why Do We Need Meta-Frameworks for City Indicators? When a developer, governance authority, or elected official makes a promise to citizens, he/she relies on others (the local municipal manager, officials and technical and administrative staff) to implement the promise. Often with the greatest commitment and resources available, goals do not turn into the intended results. Integral Geographer, Brian Eddy’s (2005) research has shown how people 'think' about regions and places, and what we 'say' about them (i.e. whether things are good, bad, or otherwise) - depends in part, on what 'boundaries' we use to define them - both physically in the exterior world, conceptually in our mental models, and existentially in our values, worldviews and projections of reality. Eddy’s research suggests that many sustainability and development issues are a continuation of 'boundary-conflicts' among projections of various levels of consciousness and cultural development. Eddy notes that, “These cognitive and existential boundary conflicts manifest in the exterior world in a variety of complex ways - so much so that only an integral approach can begin to adequately address issues of sustainability with development in geopolitical contexts at different scales of interaction.” This important insight, combined with 20 years professional experience in working with a vast array of geoinformation, allows Eddy to assess well being, sustainability and development on regional to global scales. Policy, strategy or planning, gives rise to management and organizational structures, infrastructures and service provision, all of which have a positive or negative impact on the economy, environment, culture, social structure as well as on worldviews and behaviours of people. These can be measured with a variety of methods through quantitative and qualitative measurements and converted into indicators using appropriate frameworks. At the same time in order to evaluate and benchmark local development it is necessary to measure also the effectiveness and efficiency of service provision, management structures, policies etc against objectives and outcomes (performance indicators, outcome mapping, etc.. Given the complexity of the measured reality and the large number of possible economic, environmental, socio-cultural indicators at local and regional level, a limited number of key- or meta-indicators have to be developed and chosen as well as internal and external benchmarks. From these meta-indicators and the results from benchmarking, policy recommendation can be drawn up. As outlined below the use of the integral approach would ideally give rise to indicators, benchmarks and policy recommendations that point to a more integral view of the situation in the communities and cities in any given region. This comprehensive information on the state of community and city development can facilitate trend analysis and make the interconnectedness tangible for the different economic, socio-cultural and environmental phenomena arising from the implementation of sectoral policies. What is the Integral Framework? "Integral" means "inclusive, balanced, comprehensive." Integral proposes that everyone is right some of the time!! However, the Integral approach recognizes that all “rightness” is partial and therefore offers only piecemeal approaches to complex problems that are ineffective. Partial and fragmented approaches need to be replaced by solutions that are more comprehensive, systematic, and encompassing—in other words “integral”. This premise applies to both individual issues of meaning and transformation or increasingly complex social problems such as unemployment, over-population, housing, ecology, and education. The integral framework is a type of comprehensive map of human capacities[1] created by an extensive cross-cultural comparison of human capacities. By learning to use this map any researcher, practitioner or decision-maker can fairly easily adopt a more comprehensive, effective, and integrally informed approach to specific problems and their solutions—from business to politics, from health to education, psychology to ecology An integral framework utilizes four quadrants as lenses to examine individual, social and environmental phenomena. The quadrants are grounded in all human experience and action. Figure 1 shows the multiple dimensions of individual, family and social systems. These dimensions have been investigated through analysis, implementation and evaluation in hundreds of paradigms, methodologies and forms of inquiry such as:
Upper Left/Subjective (aesthetic):
phenomenology, psychotherapy, meditation, emotional
intelligence, personal transformation Figure 1: Integral Framework [2]
(It should also be noted that all major human languages recognize the integral, with first-, second-, and third-person perspectives (for example the pronouns: I, you/we, it, its/those). These four basic dimensions of reality show up in human knowledge systems as aesthetics or fine arts, humanities, natural sciences and hard sciences.) Thus, the Integral approach attempts to identify all of the important variables that are contributing to any situation in each of the four Quadrants How Does the Integral Framework Recognize Complexity? An Integral framework can reflect multiple levels of complexity in living systems at all the scales in the following human systems:
The key point to recognize with human systems (such as workplaces, communities and cities) is that they tend to be holonic and fractal and as they develop they tend to become increasingly: • supportive of individual diversity, traits & behaviour (Upper Right: actions) • empowering of individual and group intentions & development (Upper and Lower Left: experience) • economically connected, with potentials to become increasingly effective and efficient (Lower Right: productive actions) • mutuality-seeking thus broadening moral, cultural and relationship span (Lower Left: relational experiences) • self-generating, self-renewing and innovative • encompassing of a longer time horizon • impactful over a longer time span • able to act locally while influencing a progressively larger spatial horizon • impactful of a larger and more spatially distributed population • interconnected in their capacities (within the local landscape and to distant places) Thus more complex levels of organization/community/city transcend and include less complex levels of organization/community/city. Moreover these shifts are measurable and comparable across the quadrants. The Integral framework makes possible the Integral Scorecard (discussed below) and recognizes the fractal nature of scaled development of communities and cities in the way that it rolls up data vertically and relates data horizontally across all quadrants. Thus the Integral model is often referred to as AQAL (all quadrants, all levels). (Wilber, 1996, 2000; Hamilton, 2005, 2006a, 2006b) How Does the Integral Model Reframe the Frameworks ? The Integral Model reframes most of the models used to present and measure the relationships of economics, social and environmental factors within sustainability (Hamilton 2006a). Firstly the Integral Model recontexts the traditional sustainability model by placing the social and economic factors within the context of the environment as in Figure 2. This basically allows us to see the relationship of the I/WE cultural social experiences in relationship to the IT/ITS economic actions. Furthermore we can see that they are BOTH governed by the larger context of the environmental life conditions. The direction of growth and complexity for both human experiences and human actions is outward from the centre of the quadrants – as shown by the arrows. Figure 2: Integral Sustainability Framework
What are the Benefits of the Integral Framework ? An Integral approach recognizes the plurality of developmental capacities of all individual and collective stakeholders. This plurality can be described in many layers (3, 4, 8, etc.), but one of the most concise recognizes the four levels of development (or complexity) represented by the Traditional, Modern, Post-Modern and Integral perspectives. As Figure 3 shows these levels of complexity are present in all four quadrants . In creating an Integral Scorecard all these four quadrants and levels can be honoured and incorporated into measures of sustainability. At the same time no indicator needs to be abandonned or omitted – instead all of the indicators can be situated within the framework to show more or less detail (granularity) depending on the scale of observation. Each of these developmental levels has its own patterns of worldviews, values, healthy expressions and unhealthy resistances to supporting sustainability or wellbeing as shown in Table 1. As a result each has its own set of measures. An Integral Scorekeeper would recognize the value of each measure because he/she would relate them to the appropriate: habitats; systematic structures; rational, scientific, economies; diverse cultures and peoples; and complex, systemic, adaptive,dynamics. In doing so he/she would be able to see the patterns related to the healthy expressions of sustainability and as well as the unhealthy blocks to sustainabiblity.Figure 3: Levels of Development in Four Quadrants
Table 1: Integral Approach to Frameworks for Measuring Sustainable Well Being at Key levels of Complexity [3]
Prototype of an Integral Scorecard – Tracking Integral Indicators for Wellbeing, Vital Signs and Emergency Response[4] Once indicators are organized by a Four Quadrant, Four Level Integral Framework, then a system to practically select target goals and collect relevant data must be designed. This will enable not only tracking of key sustainability indicators, but also management and ownership of the data. That is the role of the Integral Scorecard. The Integral Scorecard tracks the assignment and achievement of target indicators corresponding to levels of emerging capacity/complexity. Users of the Integral Scorecard collect data from existing databases and/or self-assess against standards and best practices as determined by local data experts. In the process users become data owners, responsible for understanding their measure(s). Together (and with Integral Scorecard Coaches) they can learn and understand the standards they are setting and meeting relevant to their habitat, culture, economy and worldview. All such measures, standards and practices can be related to the four levels of complexity discussed above: Traditional, Modern, Post-modern and Integral.The Integral Scorecard can be implemented as a web portal delivered thorough a web browser or through IBM’s Websphere or Workplace environment.The Integral Scorecard provides a knowledge base for storing and retrieving measures and interventions for each quadrant that can be used on-the-job, when needed.A prototype of the Municipal Home Page (Figure 4) shows an overview of municipal indicators (Figure 5) for:
Figure 4: Prototype Municipal
Home Page Progress for compliance and strategy execution for a business unit or team can be seen at a glance in a traffic light display (see Figure 5).
Figure 5: Prototype Municipal
Traffic Light Display A personal view shows any manager and/or data owner everything they are accountable for – personal and business transformation measures, outcomes and actions. At the same time a whole system view gives an instant reading of Vital Signs – allowing for immediate and/or emergency response to any given situation; eg. fire, flood, pollution, pandemic. On the more detailed day-to-day use, a journaling feature ensures that there is an audit trail for key compliance and strategy execution decisions. Charts show progress of key measures, for example, overall status for compliance and/or risk assessment; or traditional financial, customer or efficiency measures. How Does the Integral Framework Contribute to Effective Glocal Development and Monitoring?The Integral approach helps the governance authority, elected official, NGO/NFP or private contractor to understand how to optimize success of development processes and projects, by taking into account cultural (beliefs, values) and economic (action and object oriented) boundary issues. From the more technical side, an integral approach creates a scalable framework to measure and evaluate the progress of community/city development both qualitatively and quantitatively at the individual, family, workplace, community, and local municipal level, thereby covering social, economic, and environmental aspects. Ultimately its purpose is to improve the quality of life of the people in the development area and its surroundings. An integral approach recognizes the plurality of worldviews of all community stakeholders (including the facilitator’s). This plurality can be described in many ways, but one of the most concise recognizes the complexities of the Traditional, Modern, Post-Modern and Integral perspectives. In creating an integral evaluation design, the perspectives of four quadrants and four capacity levels can be honoured and incorporated into the principles of healthy communities/cities. If the WUF City Indicators Project used the Integral model for measuring progress, monitoring policy and evaluating results, they would have a framework that: v speaks a common language that can express and translate between countries, cities, cultures, methodologies, lenses, frameworks and indicators for multiple users v integrally informs processes and methodologies to collect data from all quadrants and all levels (AQAL) v integrates quantitative and qualitative data v greatly facilitates the creation of a framework for the multiple maps and sources of data present at the different stakeholders and participants v helps to find the most appropriate indicators for health while making sure that all key-perspectives (quadrants and levels) are taken into account v facilitates the development of early warning Vital Signs Monitors for off-target outcomes v identifies a balanced range of stakeholders who can significantly contribute to community quality of life definition, implementation and management v mediates and translates between multiple interests of many community stakeholders who would benefit from a Wellbeing Index as well as provide crucial data if involved appropriately v moves beyond "one size fits all" approaches and develops the capacities of professional community managers who can manage with appropriate flexibility v assists policy and decision-makers to become more balanced and comprehensive in their decisions v enables benchmark comparisons amongst stakeholder groups and multiple jurisdictions ReferencesBeck, D., Cowan, C., (1996) Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change. London. Blackwell. Brown, B. (2005) Theory and Practice of Integral Sustainable Development –Part1: Quadrants and the Practitioner, AQAL Journal, Spring 2005, Vol. 1, No. 2 Brown, B. (2005) Theory and Practice of Integral Sustainable Development –Part2: Values, Developmental Levels and Natural Design, AQAL Journal, Spring 2005, Vol. 1, No. 2 Brown, B. (2005) Theory and Practice of Integral Sustainable Development –Part3:Current Initiatives and Applications, AQAL Journal, Spring 2005, Vol. 1, No. 2 Eddy, B. (2005) personal communication Hamilton, M. (2005) The Quest: 4 Questions That Release the Potential of Your City. Canadian Institute of Planners, 2005 Conference. www.integralcity.com Hamilton, M. (2006a) Integral Framework for Sustainable Planning: A Prototype for Emergent Well Being. World Planners Congress Hamilton, M. (2006b) Integral Metamap Creates Common Language for Urban Change. Journal of Change Management, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 276-306 Hargens, S. (2004) Integral Ecology: The What, Who and How of Environmental Phenomena. Integral Institute, Integral Ecology and Sustainability Conference Integral International Development Center. (2006). Integral International Development Invitation. Integral University. Wilber, K., (1996) Sex, Ecology and Spirituality. Boston. Shambhala Publications Inc. Wilber, K., (2000) A Theory of Everything. Boston. Shambhala Publications Inc. World Urban Forum3, (2006) From Now to Nanjing , A paper presented by the World Bank at the Third World Urban Forum, June 22, 2006. Authored by Daniel Hoornweg, Fernanda Nunez, Mila Freire, and Natalie Palugyai, The World Bank; Eduardo Wills Herrera PhD, Universidad de los Andes; and Maria Villaveces (with comments from Roger Blais), the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. [1] Integral Institute http://www.integralinstitute.org/approach.htm [2] Adapted from Brown, B. (2005) Theory and Practice of Integral Sustainable Development – An Overview, part 1: quadrants and the Practitioner, AQAL Journal, Spring 2005, Vol. 1, No. 2 [3] Adapted from Brown, B. (2005) Theory and Practice of Integral Sustainable Development – An Overview, part 2:Values, Developmental Levels and Natural Design, AQAL Journal, Spring 2005, Vol. 1, No. 2
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