Make no small plans for they do not have the power to move human souls!

One person can dream a Vision that empowers his/her soul. But to dream a Vision that attracts the souls of others is a necessary step in the whole approach to evolving an Integral City. Many cities market their unique attractions for living, working or recreating. But few cities imagine a Vision of themselves as integral contributors to the great values chain of a Planet of Cities.

We live in a time, where every city needs a Vision of the unique value it offers not just internally to its city-zens and stakeholders, but externally to our Planet of Cities.

Appreciative Inquiry is one methodology that helps a group move through 4 key stages in a creation cycle, with a strong emphasis on Visioning:

  1. Discover – who cares about the city and will explore our common intentions, interests, skills, capacities?
  2. Dream – what Vision can we imagine that we can create together?
  3. Design – how will our dream manifest in the world?
  4. Deliver – how can we build our design?

The first 4 steps in our Practical Guide for Applying Integral City Theory have really been unpacking the Discovery Stage 1 of the Appreciative Inquiry model. Now that we have completed an Analysis, discovered our Assumptions, made sense of the city with integrally informed Information and shifted our Perspectives – we are finally ready to Dream Together.

Without a vision – a Dream – people perish. Why? Because they lack a destination to focus their capacities. When we embrace the four quadrants of an Integral Vision we open gateways for a whole flood of ideas, actions, relationships and systems. We create the re-sourceful pool from which Design can spring forth – and we even psycho-activate it!

Dreaming, visioning and imagining our city, enacts the stream of development that will move our network of connections, to communities of practise and ultimately emerge a meshwork  of the capacities that we need to Deliver our Vision – to make the Dream of an Integral City into a reality that serves the Planet.