Futures Lab Russia, July 2021, invited Integral City to imagine cities in 100 years. This series of blogs comprises the lecture that was offered by Marilyn Hamilton PhD, Founder of Integral Cities.

Figure 4: Human Systems to the Powers of 10 (McCaffrey et al)

Powers of 10 Framework

Gaia Continues: Mark McCaffrey has been studying the scale of human systems in relation to climate change impact. He and colleagues created the Powers of 10 framework to use the ten orders of magnitude between a single individual and everyone else on the planet as a framework (Figure 4). Their research showed that the “sweet spot” for climate change effectiveness was cities of 50,000 to 100, 000 (this is an echo of Aurobindo – in the 1920’s – who suggested 50,000 was the optimal size of a city.)

I, Gaia notice that this image and pattern is a fractal of your (Hamilton’s) Map 2 of the Integral City – where McCaffrey’s  holarchy is nested human habitats (whereas Map 2 is a holarchy of organizations within any given city).

Mark and colleagues noticed that the holarchy was a framework for scaling social transformation and could be expressed as an elegant Fibonacci image as in Figure 5. Perhaps one of the considerations we will have moving into the Planet of Integral Cities that you and I  imagine is that we will have to do some work to “right size” cities? Perhaps, we can use the powers of 10 to start up ecovillages, and target the size of new cities to be in the 50 – 100, 000 population range? (Or recalibrate cities into Community Action Networks CAN’s (Adnan, The Politics of Waking Up, 2021)?)

Figure 5: Framework for Scaling Social Transformation  (McCaffrey et al)

This blog series considers the factors that will contribute to the evolution of Gaia’s Human Hives in the next hundred years.

Gaia Mentors Schooling for a Planet of Integral Cities 2121 (1) Big Challenges

Gaia Mentors Schooling for a Planet of Integral Cities 2121 (2) Imagine Gaia Thrives

Gaia Mentors Schooling for a Planet of Integral Cities 2121 (3) Alive Cities Evolve

Gaia Mentors Schooling for a Planet of Integral Cities 2121 (4) World Threats

Gaia Mentors Schooling for a Planet of Integral Cities 2121 (5) Population Growth

Gaia Mentors Schooling for a Planet of Integral Cities 2121 (6) Powers of 10

Gaia Mentors Schooling for a Planet of Integral Cities 2121 (7) Demographics Evolve

Gaia Mentors Schooling for a Planet of Integral Cities 2121 (8) Nature Economy

Gaia Mentors Schooling for a Planet of Integral Cities 2121 (9) Systems Reframe

Gaia Mentors Schooling for a Planet of Integral Cities 2121 (10) Development

Gaia Mentors Schooling for a Planet of Integral Cities 2121 (11) New Cities

Gaia Mentors Schooling for a Planet of Integral Cities 2121 (12) Conclusion

Wisdom of Living Systems from Elisabet Sahtouris

Vandana Shiva Guides us to Earth Democracy

Donut Economics Energizes a Planet of Integral Cities

Choose Earth Now

PDF with References of lecture “Gaia Mentors Schooling for a Planet of Integral Cities”