Almere NL, a city of 190,000 is getting ready for a "scale jump" to double in size by 2030. Seeking guidelines to renew and transform itself, in 2008, it invited Cradle to Cradle authors William McDonough and Michael Braungart to craft principles by which the city could grow sustainably in balance with its unique polder environment and [...]
Last week Almere Netherlands was the location of my learning and the focus of my attention. Attending the fifth Centre for Human Emergence, NL, fifth Spiral Dynamics Integral Confab, Almere was featured in case studies to explore the city with Integral City related lenses. Almere was created as a New Town, 30 years ago, using [...]
STOCKHOLM, March 28, 2011 − The South Korean district Songpa wins the Globe Sustainable City Award 2011 for excellent sustainable urban development. The Globe Sustainable City Award is now presented for the third year. The aim of the City Award is to recognize cities and municipalities, which excel in sustainable, urban development, and to set a [...]
As a follow up to my blog on the Systems and Resilience Cycles for the Restoration of Sendai, Integral City Spiritual Advisor, Terry Patten blogs a much needed set of practices for dealing with the News - good, bad and otherwise. Terry says: "The news so far during 2011 has been particularly electrifying: Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, [...]
How do you integrate five of the resilience models that I have used in Integral City? How can they help us understand how to respond, repair and restore the city as a living system in disasters like we have seen this year in Brisbane, Christchurch and Sendai? Integral City(p. 43) illustrates the four stages of the resilience cycle as they progress through [...]
This is An Open Letter to Three Women Imagineers of the Integral Age On The Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day Dear Drs. Hazel Henderson, Barbara Marx Hubbard and Jean Houston I claimed I was never a feminist in the 60’s or 70’s. That’s because I didn’t see myself as an activist [...]
Jan Inglis has just released a video that helps us to understand the impasse we face related to decision making and climate change. Jan's Summary of the Video: Underlying the climate change crisis is a crisis in our collective ability to make decisions that support sustainable systemic responses. This 37 minute video highlights the connection [...]
Globe Forum has announced the 2011 Nominees for the Sustainable City Award Criteria This award focuses on a holistic approach to Sustainability in cities and integrates different types of resources or capital for a better future in cities around the world. The Conceptual approach is to use the different types of capital below: Environmental Capital [...]
The weak signals that diasporas emit into and outside of systems reported earlier this week is the subject of a new book. Parag Khanna, a Distinguished Visitor at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto has just released "How to Run the World". Excerpts in today's National Post read: "In the Middle [...]
The watch continues as events unfold in North African and the Middle Eastern cities and countries. We wonder whether and how autocracies in these places may be superseded by autocracy, theocracy or even democracy? Each country is different so most informed observers don't expect that a single solution will emerge across all countries. From the outside of this area, all we can see [...]