In prior blogs, Integral City has explored how the city is broken and how it can be healed.

In the Guardian (Feb. 19, 2025) Bernie Sanders is setting out to walk the land as he proposes critical dimensions of healing for the brokenness in America. Because most Americans live in cities, Sanders is essentially offering changes that would heal the brokenness in American cities. He sets out what he believes American people want (based on frequent polling) and we weave his propositions into the frameworks that bring aliveness to the Integral City.

Sanders’ strategic manifesto states:

  • Healthcare is a human right and must be available to all regardless of income.
  • Every worker in America is entitled to earn a decent income. We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage and make it easier for workers to join unions.
  • We must have the best public educational system in the world, from childcare to vocational training, to graduate school – available to all.
  • We must address the housing crisis and build the millions of units of low-income and affordable housing that we desperately need.
  • We must create millions of good paying jobs as we lead the world in combating the existential threat of climate change.
  • We must abolish all forms of bigotry.

These wants can generally be reflected as needs that underlie wellbeing in the cities of America. Their absence indicates the multiple forms of brokenness that has brought American cities into crisis. Let’s consider the merits of each of Sander’s wants and how each reflects a need that if met would build capacity for cities to face the meta-crises that is their dangerous reality.

  1. The need for universal healthcare should be a natural outcome of understanding and managing the city with the intelligences of biomimicry (as a human hive). Such an approach assumes the whole city must be healthy in order to sustain itself and the ecoregion in which it is situated. “Health” and “wholeness” come from the same roots as “holy” and “whole” – and underline the relationship between individuals and their connections to various collectives and the whole (Map 2) – that human endeavour is cross-connected across all scales (family, neighbourhood, workplace, community, city, ecoregion, planet) – and the health (or dis-ease) at one scale impacts all other scales. So it should be obvious and natural that healthcare for each person is not merely a just condition of life, but a logical condition for the health of
  2. The majority of Americans live in cities so Sanders proposition that “Every worker in America is entitled to earn a decent income” lies at the heart of a healthy economy for the city. Working to earn an income is a result of implementing Gaia’s Code of Care – for self, others, place, planet. The need for income reflects the resources that can be accessed, shared and generated by caring for each other – in very practical ways that result in the economic flow of resources to generate products and services through the creation of jobs for mutual benefit. Sanders goes on to state: “We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage and make it easier for workers to join unions”. Thus he envisions the city economy would naturally enable sustainable livelihoods and relations for individuals amidst their workforce collectives.
  3. Sanders follows up the healthcare and work wants with the assumption that, “We must have the best public educational system in the world, from childcare to vocational training, to graduate school – available to all.” Such an intention reflects the natural need to build capacity for the humans in the “hive” to perform and contribute to the health and life of all. This assumes that there is a natural path of human development that is a lifelong learning journey – that naturally equips citizens to self-manage, relate to others and live in ways that make possible not just sustainable living but regenerative practices and flourishing life conditions. If there is any way that cities can be positively competitive it is to create education systems that not only serve the learning needs within the city but can be continuously improved by learning from other cities. (This holarchic kind of competition is natural and is practised by natural species (like bees) to continuously improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their service to their ecosystems.)
  4. Housing for all is Sanders’ next proposition, wanting to “ address the housing crisis and build the millions of units of low-income and affordable housing that” are desperately needed. We could view the lack of sufficient housing in American cities as being a key source of insecurity. Such conditions fragment human relationships as families cannot raise children in safe conditions – and that in turn impacts health, education and working opportunities. To create safe and affordable housing asks the 4 Voices of the city (citizens, civic managers, business/innovators, third sector) to work together to allocate the resources to make this possible. The building program can generate educational opportunities (from trades training), business success (supplying material and services) and jobs with wages that in turn support a healthy lifestyle. In the lifecycle flow of generations living in cities the weaving of housing into the economy and job market will generate the resources to maintain vibrant conditions for strong education and healthcare.
  5. Sanders brings forward not just the threat of climate change as a condition that city life demands a response. But he proposes that the climate change offers opportunities to create new jobs. Once again this mimics biomimicry – where the beehive not only sets a goal to sustain itself for the current year, but also creates the conditions for renewing energy resources for next year (by pollinating the plants in their ecoregion). A climate change strategy would not only support the development and evolution of the city but it would also strengthen resilience. Cities need to survive, adapt to life conditions (like changing climate) and generate the capacity to prevent life threatening conditions and learn to create life enhancing ways that enable cities to serve life in their ecoregions and ultimately the whole planet. This will naturally develop new jobs and reconnect cities to the natural ecosystems of their bioregions.
  6. Lastly Sanders turns to the mutual trust and respect that is needed for cities to flourish – without bigotry. This would be the natural result of living Gaia’s Code of Care – where individuals care for themselves, so they can care for others, so together they can care for their places (cities) and altogether they can care for the planet. Living without bigotry means loving and accepting all beings exactly as they are (and effectively living a Manifesto where mutual trust and respect means that no ones wants/needs are expressed in a way that prevent the wants/needs of others to be met). This may sound utopian but ultimately it is how every healthy ecosystem evolves beyond aggressive competition into cooperation and collaboration so the whole ecosystem can flourish.

Conclusion

When we consider what Sanders proposes from the “neutral zone” of his political independence in America – we suggest that the worldview enabling his proposals to become reality in America’s cities would:

  • practise Gaia’s Master Code of Care (MCC) to expand the city’s circles of compassion
  • embrace wholeness (within the unitive life of the planet)
  • nurture human/city security as an ecology of peace
  • integrate 4 ways of knowing through multiple intelligences (subjective, intersubjective, objective, interobjective)
  • invite the 4 Voices as a living system to continuously learn (Citizens/Producers, Business-Innovators/Diversity Generators, Resource Allocators/Civic Managers, Inner Judges/3rd Sector)
  • support the development of the natural stages of complexity beyond competition into the stages of cooperation and collaboration.

But the question I ask myself is: “Can American cities wait for this worldview to materialize before Sanders’ vision is realized?” Probably not – but I rather suspect if one or more cities set out to implement Sanders vision, they would discover this worldview in the process. This path is likely made by walking it (as Sanders commits to do by reaching out across America to connect with people on their city streets, in their work places and in their city neighbourhoods).