This newsletter is published quarterly using a cycle of perspectives on the Integral City viewed from: Planet, People, Place and Power. The theme of this issue is Place.

Fundamentally, I consider that Placecaring and Placemaking are inextricably interlinked into a whole. But, the way that I have learned to hold that whole, is through keeping in mind what I have come to call the Master Code of the Integral City. The Master Code simply says:

Care for Yourself.

Care for Each Other.

Care for this Place.

Care for this Planet.

In this Master Code context, I am using the word “Place” to represent the city and “Planet” to represent the Planet of Cities … When we can care like this simultaneously with all 4 Voices, in all situations in the city, then we will have mastered and integrated the wholeness that is Place and the functions that enable the well-being of Gaia’s Reflective Organ.

Hamilton, M. (2017). Integral City Inquiry & Action: Designing Impact for the Human Hive. Tucson, AZ: Integral Publishers, p. xxvii-xxviii

Scroll to end of newsletter to access Free Resources.

Integral City: 11 Way Stations for Unity and Peace

How can Integral City celebrate UN Unity-Peace (UP) Week? We imagine 11 waystations that Integral City visits during the 11 days of pilgrimage with the themes from the Unity Week Caravan of Peace. Here is a brief itinerary for each day (for the full itinerary click here) …

  1. Integral City imagines a Planet of Integral Cities connected in service to Gaia as her unified Reflective Organ System (GRO). As GRO an Integral City is in Unity with all life on the planet – acting locally, feeling globally, and thinking Kosmically.
  2. As a Planet of Integral Cities, we imagine Interdependence with all life systems. This interdependence is fractal within individual life in cities and life in the eco-region and all life on Earth.
  3. An Integral City exists in fractal relationship to its Environment. The environment forms the living, bio-psycho-cultural-social ecology that flows through the city, surrounds it and co-defines its structures, infrastructures and dynamics.
  4. An Integral City depends on and only thrives when there is Economic Justice. Economic Justice can be symbolized by the goal of wellbeing for the Human Hive that regenerates sustainability and resilience.
  5. The Integral City seeks Health for all as an outcome of co-creating the conditions for optimum wellbeing for all life. The wellbeing of the human hive arises from caring for self, others, place and planet. This is the Master Code of Care – which is the Code of Life for health, wholeness, and healing in the Integral City.
  6. In the Integral City Children and Youth are valued as the new generation whose quality of life depends on the Master Code of Care that is translated into life conditions that support the development and emergence of the greatest human potential for each person – as well as the collectives that emerge from our relationships.
  7. In the Integral City Women and Men play life-giving, life-sustaining and life-generating roles. They use the capacities of the feminine/masculine (consciousness) and female/male (biology) to partner each other and co-parent children and youth. Women and men bring a whole spectrum of “genderness” to learn and offer an interconnected GPS of 12 Intelligences, translating them into capacities that serve relationships in the human hive, that enable us to thrive as a living, evolutionary, integral/whole system.
  8. The Integral City ensures the Rights of humans in all its systems are counter-balanced with human Responsibilities so that the Master Code of Care – Care for Self, Others, Place, Planet – are co-manifested and coherent. Rights never outweigh responsibilities, so that Life in all its forms can exist in a thriving interconnected ecology as the Integral City.
  9. Freedom in the Integral City is reflected in the balancing of rights and responsibilities. To be free in the Integral City is always to be aware of the context of the Intelligences of the Human Hive. The Integral City GPS gives us sightings of freedom based on our 12 Intelligences.
  10. In the Integral City, Disarmament starts with individuals knowing they are safe, cared for and have the freedom to realize their highest human potential without infringing on others to do the same.
  11. An Integral City is by definition a City of Peace. A City of Peace is designed so that each individual and collective can realize its greatest human potential within the context of the Master Code of Care. A City of Peace is a City of Spirit where the involutionary and evolutionary forces flow through all scales of human life in the city so that the natural outcome is Beauty, Truth and Goodness (Map 5). As a City of Peace, an Integral City is naturally a City of Unity, connected to the Source of Life – where all human systems can Think Kosmically, Feel Globally and Act Locally – which emerges a Planet of Integral Cities of Peace able to serve Gaia as her Reflective Organs in a quantum universe.

To read the full editorial and itinerary Click Here.

Join us in the Unity-Peace Week and Weekend – click here for Free Registration.

Find our special events (see below) in the UP Cities & Eco-regions Convergence Room – Click here.

Integral City Announces New Course

with New Learning Partner, Ubiquity University

Integral City is proud to announce our new partnership with Ubiquity University to deliver our flagship course Beyond Resilient: Integral City Inquiry, Action, Impact. (BR).

This course – delivered online starting ***January, 2021*** (new dates) , is for Catalysts who seek new ways:

  • to work with multiple groups and organizations to engage inquiry and action for reinventing today’s cities for the future.
  • to interact in-depth with the 4+1 Voices of the Integral City to prototype strategic possibilities.
  • to learn new solutions, tools and guiding principles to enable the emergence of sustainability and resilience for the future of cities now.
  • to discover the unique contributions that you make to the aliveness of the Human Hive.

Beyond Resilient (delivered online) enables Practitioners, Catalysts and Meshworkers to build capacitating scaffolds so that cities work for everyone. Participants grow their leadership to serve the city to thrive within the Master Code of Care: Caring for Self, Others, Place, Planet.

This course explores the city as the Human Hive and co-creates the conditions for you to catalyze and explore all the Voices who inhabit your spheres of influence – including family, neighbourhood, workplaces, recreation zones, communities, city, and eco-regions.

You will have the opportunity to experiment with new designs for the challenges you face in your city environments. And you will gain experience with a set of five maps and an evolutionary compass to discover new solutions to the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) problems that plague the cities of today. You will leave the course with new tools and a set of guiding principles we call the Master Code to enable the emergence of sustainability, resilience and regeneration for the future of cities now.

Faculty are Marilyn Hamilton & Beth Sanders.

Click here for Details and Registration.

Lifemaps Provides Route to Pandemic Lockdown Decompression

Integral City colleague, Ellen van Dongen has developed a transformation game called Lifemaps. An Integral City Team are facilitating Lifemaps experiences in 3 European locations for the Caravan of Unity and Peace that is taking as a virtual journey around Europe  (see their website with full Calendar of events – click here https://caravanofunity.eu/.)

People involved in the CCE Unity Caravan are living in cities all over Europe and beyond. This version of the Lifemaps game is for 4 participants, working with table posters and stickers. It is designed to be played in the cities where the team is located. The stickers and the game process are based upon Integral City wisdom and practices.

Integral City envisions the city as the human hive, in which people are living together, guided by the Master Code: Taking care of self, others, place and planet.

After the example of the bee hive, there are 4 archetypal voices in the city/community/county: Citizens, Civic Managers, Civil Society and Business/Innovators.

The game offers  a process to bring these 4 voices to the table, orientate themselves on the guidance of the Master Code and work together towards a common higher goal.

The participants in a workshop each represent one of the voices. For each voice a realistic map is created, visualizing the current situation as well as the (near) future. Resonating with the voice participants are representing, they tell each other the story on their maps. Connections become clear, between the invisible aspects of consciousness and culture and the visible aspects of relationships, behaviour, services and systems. Opportunities for co-creation and improvement show themselves. A dialogue follows as to how to work together in service of the goal.

Due to the current situation in the world, the games will take place respecting social distancing rules of different cities. For that reason, most of the games will be in online format. The Integral City Team includes Ellen van Dongen, Patrizzia Rocha, Rasa Kvaukaite, Julian Baller and Marilyn Hamilton.

[The Lifemaps process was featured in the Urban Hub 20: Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World – you can download a free version if you click on this blog.]

Book Review: The Future Has Other Plans

As we experience the viscissitudes of the pandemic, lockdown, tentative re-emergence and the uncertainties of our VUCA world, many of us have turned to the wild places we have access to – or more likely longed to visit. Even in earlier times, we might not have given much thought to the worldviews and strategies that govern these places of refuge and peace.  The Future Has Other Plans, describes the world of heritage management – both built and natural –  in a skilful, highly readable integral context.

This book has been dedicated to “heritage managers who sensed there was a better way to plan but weren’t sure how to get there.” However, it could be a very useful guide for other kinds of planning professionals who might count themselves in the private sector as developers or in the public sector as civic managers or city planners or as managers in civil society/third sector.

The authors McCool and Kohl have structured their book to give the reader a logical but satisfying path through the realities of both natural and cultural heritage projects. The authors use a mixed metaphor of a (Scharmer-style) U path down the left-hand side of an iceberg of challenges, shipwrecks and messy problems through the shift-point at the bottom of the iceberg U and up the right-hand side into the light of a new paradigm reframing practices toward an holistic/integrally-informed approach to planning.”

(Kohl, J. and McCool, S.F. (2016) The Future Has Other Plans: Planning Holistically to Conserve Natural and Cultural Heritage. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. )

To read the full Book Review Click Here.

Upcoming Integral City & Constellation Events with Place Purpose

September 10, 2020, Caravan of Unity, Co-Creating Europe.Marilyn Hamilton leads Subtle Activism Meditation – to Create Islands of Calm. Click here to participate.

September YouTube date tbd,  The Integral Stage, as part of a series called “Eutopia: Visions of a Planetary Wisdom Civilization.” Bruce Alderman from  JFK University. Marilyn Hamilton speaks on the Future of Flourishing Human Habitats.

September 4-25, 2020, Exploring Nourishing Relationship of City with its Region – Perspectives, Explorations & Practices – in India *4 Fridays in September, 4:30 to 6:30 pm IST*  (4-11-18-25 September 2020). Jointly organised by –Lalit Kishor Bhati*, Architect-Urban Planner, Coordinator Auroville Integral Sustainability Institute & Dr. Christoph Woiwode, Visiting Faculty, Indo German Center for Sustainability, IGCS, IIT Madras.  Registration Link – http://bit.ly/city_region_regform

September 11 – 21, 2020 Co-Creating Europe, Caravan of Unity Online. Click here for calendar of events.

September 13, 2020 Lifemaps Master Code of Care brings the Caravan of Unity & Peace to Findhorn Scotland to discover how to bring the 4 Voices of the Human Hive into coherent response to pandemic/lockdown. Click here to learn more.

September 11 – 21, 2020 World Unity/Peace Week co-designed with Anne-Marie Vorhooeve and The Hague Centre for Innovation, Governance, Emergence. Find the 8 days of UP global programs/events/celebrations – click here.

See and participate with special Integral City contributions  in the Cities & Eco-regions Convergence Room – click here.

September 16 to December 2, 2020, Beyond Resilient: Integral City Inquiry, Action, Impact – online course with Ubiquity University – see details above. Beth Sanders co-facilitates with Marilyn Hamilton.

September 17, 2020, 8-9:30pm CEST. cChange webinar, “You Matter More Than You Think”. Marilyn Hamilton will be joining Karen O’Brien in her 3rd webinar based on her new book You Matter More Than You Think. We have been invited to share our use of Fractals in Integral City frameworks. Click here to find out more details about the book and register for the webinar.

October 10, 2020 for 11 days. Conscious Evolution Summit 2020: Transform Your Life and Rise as a New Human. Get the details about the Summit, see all the transforming speakers/interviews and listen to trailer from Marilyn Hamilton interview – click here.  

October 10, 2020, 11am BST,  The Coaching Conclave Online Webinar (India’s biggest coaching conference now online). Marilyn Hamilton speaks on “How to Coach the Human Hive Mind: Practise, Catalyze, Meshwork with 4 Voices of Integral City”. Click here for details and registration.

November 27-29, 2020. Beyond Smart Online: Integral City Practices, Tools & Maps. This 3-day course online (each daily session is 90 – 120 minutes) introduces “practitioners” to just the basics of the Integral City model. You will learn the framework of practices, tools and maps that reveal the common patterns that impact the lives of individuals, organizations and communities within your city. This short course explores three powerful images animating Integral City systems – the integral map, the meshwork and the human hive. You will learn from your own situations and each other how the toolkit guides you beyond models for Urban Ecovillages and Traditional, Smart and Resilient Cities. Delivered with Findhorn College. Pieter Wackers co-facilitates with Marilyn Hamilton.  Click here for Details and Registration.

MORE INFO
Keep abreast of our Integral City Events on the Mighty Network – just click here.

Join Marilyn Hamilton/Integral City monthly for our free zoom Views from the Balcony – 8am BST –  2nd Wednesday of month: Sept. 16, Oct. 14, Nov. 18, Dec. 16.

Or join Beth Sanders/Nest City monthly for our free zoom Street Corner Visiting – – 8pm BST – 4th Tuesday of the Month. September 22 is the next visit.

Urban Hub 21: Coming of Age – Dare to Dream

This is the 21st volume of the Integral Urban Hub series on Thriveable Cities. As such publisher, Paul van Schaik of Integral Mentors has called it Coming of Age. The Urban Hub series showcases ideas, theories, tools, stories and dreams as part of an Integral Methodological Pluralism, covering these ideas within an Integral Framework. Views from perspectives of culture, systems, consciousness, psychology & value- systems –and behaviour . Paul says, “At the start of planning this volume Covid19 followed by BLM struck and we paused to think how to proceed. Dare to Dream emerged as an appropriate framing. We know that utopias are unrealistic dreams although they may guide us to more constructive stories. Being aware that the only way to proceed is to ‘Transcend the failed narrative but to include what is good and needed in the old narrative. The future must be broader and more ‘conscious’ than the present. It must also take, as far as is possible, everyone with it. Covid19 & BLM has shown, if nothing else, that if we don’t take, by leadership and co-creation, everyone with us, improvements will never take hold and become mere wishful thinking.”

Urban Hub 20 – Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World 

is the twentieth book in the series from Integral Urban Hub and IntegralMENTORS.  For this 20:20 vision of our VUCA world Marilyn Hamilton, author of the Integral City Book Series, has been inspired by the pioneer of city planning and sociology Patrick Geddes. His Outlook Tower, Camera Obscura and Summer Schools renewed old Edinburgh. We hope that the results of this highly readable and informative volume can renew and regenerate cities today. Together we have imagined how an Integral City Meshwork enables us to respond in a wholistic way to the life conditions of our VUCA world. Read about the Contents here.

Listen to an Interview about the book here.

Here are 3 ways to access the book:

SlideShare: FREE Download https://www.slideshare.net/PauljvsSS/urban-hub20-accelerating-citychangein-a-vuca-world-thriveable-cities

ISSUU: Free Online Flipbook https://issuu.com/home/published/urbanhub20-vuca3

Amazon: Order Hard Copy 

Celebrating Our Cities as Places of Peace in the Coming Quarter of 2020

The city breathing in and out, And it’s rising. It’s moving everything. And it’s focusing. It’s collecting people to grow. More and more it reflects and splashes. The whole world’s peoples are helping the city be more than just a city. RBryce, PS 1, 4th grade. Poet’s House.

September 21 marks the start of what Integral City calls the Place Quarter (from September 21 to December 21 ). We have published this newsletter before this quarter officially starts, because so many events are exploding onto the horizon in early September and we wanted you to know. What excites you about what is emerging through the urban lenses of Unity and Peace? What excites you about new opportunities in our places that raise the energy of new possibilities and partnerships?  What might lie beyond our many calls to convergence? How can we discover the keys to cooperation and collaboration and move our species into its next natural evolutionary stage, recalibrating competition as a healthy, regenerative energy in our ecology of human systems?  Visit us on our Integral City Website and Blog or post a comment about your city interests on our Mighty Network.

Meshful Blessings of this Season Celebrating Place in our Planet of Cities …

Marilyn Hamilton and the Integral City Constellation Corps Team

PS Here are some FREE resources for uplifting Integral City Places:

  1.  Integral City Series of  New Talking Books – to listen/download click here:

    1. Introductions to Book 1, Book 2, Book 3

    2. Talking Book 2 (all 16 chapters) Integral City Inquiry & Action: Designing Impact for the Human HiveIntegral City 

  2. Video links from Humanity Rising Summit – Marilyn Hamilton Panelist and/or Moderator

    1. Day 20 Whole Systems Changehttps://ubiverse.org/documents/humanity-rising-day-20—recording

    2. Day 56 Healthy Human Habitats https://ubiverse.org/documents/humanity-rising-day-56—recording

    3. Day 67 Regenerative Economicshttps://ubiverse.org/documents/humanity-rising-day-67—recording

  3. Graphic eBook Urban Hub 21: Coming of Age – Dare to Dream

  4. Links to Free Events

    1. Weaving Lab – Learning Lab July 30, Developing Capacities for Weaving Living Systems 

    2. Gaurav Arora, XMonks Founder, Coaching Conclave Curator – Interview with Marilyn Hamilton

    3. Lifemaps – Caravan of Unity/Peace

    4. Conscious Evolution Summit 10/10/2020

  5. Integral City Blogs 

    1. Listening to the Spirit of Cities – What is needed to make visible a Global Network of Integral Cities and Eco-regions?
    2. Humanity Rising: Imagine Thriving Human Hives as Gaia’s Reflective Organs (infographic).
    3. Views from the Balcony – the SCUWED Un-Normal – July 15, 2020
    4. Integral City: 11 Way Stations for Unity and Peace
    5. Summit with Conscious Evolution
    6. Book Review: The Future Has Other Plans: Planning Holistically to Conserve Natural and Cultural Heritage

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

7. Newsletters Past Issues 2020 and 2019