Y2K … 911 … Hurricane Sandy … What do they have in common?

How did each of these events trigger evolutionary intelligences?  From the perspective of Integral City each of these events posed a global pain point that was/is matched by a glocal care response.

Y2K was the computer software bug that threatened infrastructure communication breakdown on a scale of complexity not previously imagined. It was prevented by a massive global response that virtually rendered the bug not only impotent, but signalled a global cause for celebration as the calendar clicked into January 1, 2000.  Preparing for Y2K created a body of capacity building resources that brought Integral City into the City Caring Conversation.

911 was a terrorist assault on core infrastructure of the world’s most iconic and complex city: New York. The long-term effects of the cultural roots of this catastrophe are still circling the globe. But the local response, remedy and repair to the 911 attack, spawned the greatest outbreak of caring at a city scale in modern history. And it became the focus for so much of the work that was readied for Y2K but not needed until 911 heightened our awareness that Communities and Cities who Care have the capacity to rapidly respond and evolve into new ways of being and becoming together.

Hurricane Sandy has reminded us that Nature is not outside of the cities we care for. Our cities are every bit an evolutionary reality of nature as she is alive as us at every scale – from individual, to family, to organization, to community/neighbourhood to city. All the practices we developed because of Y2K, 911 – and all the other global challenges from Hurricane Katrina, to the Japanese earthquake, to the Gulf Oil Leak ++++ – remind us that cities who develop their caring capacity for self, others and place, are cities who develop their carrying capacity – for good times and bad.

Now we can see why it was so important to call together all the city intelligences for the Integral City 2.0 Online Conference in September, 2012. When we connected those intelligences together in the one month intensive eLaboratory, we could see that if you want to move beyond the survivablity of your city, and improve the thrivability of your city, these 12 intelligences amplify city caring capacity. We could hear through the 60 voices of experts, designers and practitioners – all leaders who reveal the city as the Human Hive – the natural system created by the human species, the power of the Master Code to enable daily life and local and global wellbeing:

  • Care for yourself
  • Care for each other
  • Care for this place (on all scales up to the planetary level)