The Integral City Framework reveals fractal patterns of Gaia. It is built on Universal patterns and principles. So, when we discover it, we are blessed with the opportunity to explore what is the Integral City Framework (ICF) good for?

ICF is especially good for “wicked” problems – where the interconnections and non-linearities of Life contained in the city need to be embraced with Care, Context and Complex Capacity.

This embrace contains multiple levels of plurality and interconnections that have “natural” habits of structuring, restructuring and self-organizing. And the impulse behind these dynamics is always the Impulse of Life. The Evolutionary Impulse.

The Evolutionary Impulse extends itself into ever-greater expansion of space, time and moral influence. This creates for humans the conditions for leadership in an ecology of Life.

The Evolutionary Impulse has emerged for Gaia, Intelligences, given itself 4 Voices (with infinite numbers of variations), designed ways of knowing, revealed the Truth, Beauty and Goodness that penetrate all Life Systems including the systems of cities and Gaia’s planetary system of cities.

To design a City of Peace we need to honour Gaia’s Motherhood … that as a Living System she has birthed all the realms of mineral, vegetable and animal – the geo-bio – noetic realms out of which we as human systems have evolved.  And now she is birthing the reflective specialities that gives her capacities for exploring consciousness through us, with us, as us.

Gaia seeks Peace for her realms as a natural condition. It is a Peace emerging from the Ecology of existence – complex and adaptive; naturally holarchic where levels of complexity are nested in and co-existent with other expressions of complexity.

Gaia contains all the relationships amongst her realms that must honour Peace. Gaia’s Principles ask that all her Creations honour the Life of Others to Co-Exist, within a dynamically balanced ecosystem, without endangering the great Chain of Being that manifests as an interconnected and entangled Systems of Life. If Gaia’s creations cannot enact this Principle of Co-Existence, then she honours her learning about an “experiment that didn’t work” and releases those elements and resources back into the greater Gaian system for new life to emerge.

Indeed, this is not only our Gaian heritage but our heritage from the Universe. We are all ONE and within the Great Unity we may express diversity in any way – as long as it honours the ONEness at the same time as our uniqueness. It is how we have emerged from the stars through the long evolutionary line of the Cosmosphere, Bioshere, Nooshpere into the Anthroposphere.

This year at Pyeongang Global Peace Forum 2020 (PPF2020) at the edge of the DMZ we are standing on an experiment of Peace. Achieved out of the cauldron of a war of differences but seeking an Ecology of Honour. For if we are to accept Peace as a possibility it begins with honouring ourselves and all others – that we each have gifts and capacities to bring to an experience of Peace through finding our service to the Ecology of Peace.

Since cities are the most complex systems yet created by humans, it is natural that we should long for, seek and co-create Cities of Peace. Places which we not only Make for Peace – Placemaking … but places that we Care for Peace.

As I have studied the patterns of cities through the lens of biomimicry – through our cousins the honey bee – I have re-discovered the natural and powerful Code of Care – that I call the Master Code of Care. In our cities we must Care for Self, Care for Others, Care for Place and Care for Planet.

This 4-part practice of Care is an Integral Yoga. It enables Peace both in a horizontal plane and also Peace on a vertical plane.

Integral City would propose that of all its frameworks, maps and Practices, the Master Code of Care is the impulse that energizes all or our Possibilities for Peace.

It arises from the ONEness. It is a practice of Unity with Diversity.

It is the ultimate answer to “What is an Integral City good for?”. If we are to have Cities of Peace, they must be at their heart be able and willing to practise the Master Code of Care. This will be our core and/or uber Intelligence to serve Gaia as her Reflective Organs of Peace.

This blog series inquires into Peace and what is a City of Peace?