Forbes has just published an interesting list of the 10 Best Places to Live. Below is how they describe their criteria and selection process. It is interesting to contemplate whether "Best Places" can measure up to "most sustainable places". It strikes me that these are beautiful and inspiring places, and I wonder if they are economically [...]
May Greetings, Integral City-zens and Friends of Integral City Today's Integral City Sparkie for the City Mind: A city which can merely feed, clothe and shelter its citizens lacks the intelligence to sustain itself, because the intelligence for sustainability comes from a commitment to learning about self, others and our shared life conditions. Hamilton, M., 2008, [...]
Listening to Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen on their webcasted dialogue last week prompted ponderings on the three faces of God in the city. The Third Face of God -- represented as the face of the third person -- the God we see in the other as we walk the streets of the city. This is [...]
Thanks to Amy Hartman and Don Beck for passing along a very clear message from a New Orleans Catholic School who has a whole system meshwork for educating kids. Check it out here at Principal Moran's of Archbisop Rummel HighSchool. The fervour of the Principal's message affirms the values of healthy Blue, while designing the school's [...]
I just finished a final edit on the last Imagine Abbotsford Dialogue -- to be reported in The Abbotsford News May 14, 2009. This dialogue was on the Health and Community of Abbotsford. One Policy Maker from the Fraser Valley Health Authority remarked that the community gains greater health benefits by investing in kids than [...]
I just followed a link to a beautiful musical creation. This is a very purple song to the core -- or maybe this way, produced by a mobile recording studio that spanned the globe -- maybe it's Turquoise??? The producer has recorded very talented buskers and a host of back-up musicians from around the world, [...]
Mayors need a framework appropriately complex to respond to the emergence of zoonotic diseases (ie. diseases that cross over from animal populations into human populations) (Sapient Circle, 2004). These threats make demands on emergency response systems that are not merely complicated, but are complex. This means that the interconnections of animal and human health systems, through diseases such as SARS, West Nile Disease, BSE, E-Coli and Avian Influenza, create exponential levels of complexity. It appears that zoonotic bio-emergencies are more dynamic and subject to sudden jumps in severity, than non-bio-emergencies, because the underlying viral/biological elements are capable of learning or adapting to their human environments/life conditions. Thus they require complex non-linear approaches to develop successful response strategies.
I've been watching the series on New York produced by Ric Burns (released through PBS but available as a DVD). It is an impressive revelation of the city's 400 years of history. Last week I watched the episode exploring the massive infrastructure creations of Robert Moses including his hundred of miles of turnpikes that decimated [...]
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil is an intriguing film of an unintended case study. It chronicles the radical life condition change that was triggered in Cuba by the break up of the Soviet empire and Cuba’s loss of Soviet support, markets and imports in 1990-92. This was further exacerbated by the [...]
Flow is the story of water (rights) being privatized by Big Biz – esp. Suez, Vivendi and Nestlé (interestingly enough all European). These companies are all portrayed as vulture captilalists who are buying up water properties around the world and privatizing water as a commodity that is being re-sold at prices higher than oil. [...]