by Guest Blogger, Graeme Taylor Graeme writes: At this time, most climate researchers are only using a limited range of futures approaches: for example, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) future scenarios have been developed primarily with empirical predictive methods that extrapolate trends. These seriously underestimate the risk of nonlinear developments and critical failures. This article [...]
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 People. International developer Gail Hochachka proposes that people’s feelings, beliefs and worldviews affect how they are ready and willing to participate in sustainable behaviors (2005, p. 1). Moreover, she [...]
Humans and the cities we have created are permanently locked into a never-ending learning cycle, to create ever more complex adaptations to protect increasingly more complex cities. In the Integral City 2.0 Online Conference (2012), five critical threats to human populations in cities were identified: climate, energy, water, food and finance (Hamilton et al., 2013; [...]
Emergent Intelligence is the intelligence that drives resilience. This gives the city the qualities of aliveness: it not only survives, but it adapts and regenerates. This intelligence enables the city to emerge as the bio-psycho-cultural-social behaviors, intentions, relationships and systems of its citizens interact with the environment they co-create as well as the eco-regional environment [...]
I spent last week at Royal Roads University delivering the first Residency of the Sustainability Graduate Certificate. Ten students from across Canada provided a rigorous proving ground for the Integral City approach to sustainability. Using the Integral City Compass to prove the design with three leverage points, here is what we did. Integral City Compass [...]
November Greetings, Integral City-zens and Friends of Integral City Today's Integral City Sparkie for the City Brain : … a tension in favor of the values and behavior that are most coherent with the current life conditions will tend to be maintained. The flip side of this behavior is that the dominant culture will protect itself against [...]
I have been watching the outcome (or not?) of the recent Australian election with some interest. I have been thinking about swarming (as in what can we learn from the bees when they swarm?). My bee sources (books, articles, movies) tell me that the swarming process is a kind of hive decision. That when it [...]
This article published early in December 2009, reveals the biases of the voting blocks at Copenhagen, based on their emissions, GDP and % of world population. The spectrum of intelligences hidden inside these numbers does not reveal who the complex thinkers are in each block -- those people who can think at a geo-centric level and [...]
This is just in from State of World Forum Leaders on Brazilian commitment to gold standard of climate change: BRAZIL AS CLIMATE LEADER – DO THE MATH As the world prepares for Copenhagen, there is a vacuum in climate leadership, which Brazil has just filled. The combination of its commitment to reduce Amazonian deforestation by [...]
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 [...]