This blog is the third prologue for a keynote at the FreshOutlook Feb. 27, 2012 Building SustainABLE Communities Conference. Integral City is a new paradigm for looking at cities that reveals its bio-psycho-cultural-structural evolutionary intelligences. These twelve intelligences cluster into five capacities and are organized into an Integral City Compass that provides direction and alignment [...]
Integral City 2.0 innovation systems are emerging because conscious capitalists, governments, students and citizens are aligning strategies for leaders, organizations and governance systems to transform entire cities from resistant holdouts to resilient human hives. Humans as Gaia’s most "reflective organ" have located 50% of our species' brain trust in the world’s cities. We are starting to see the shape of Integral [...]
How would we approach the built design for Integral City 2.0? Could we find a designer with the depths of consciousness, design repertoire, cultural acuity and systemic prowess to imagine Integral City 2.0 designs? I propose a likely candidate would be Architect, Mark DeKay to lead us with the wisdom of Integral Sustainable Design. In [...]
There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen If City 2.0 is to support more life-giving options for behaviours, intentions, cultures and systems, City Economics 2.0 will have to emerge as an integral part of the whole. A pessimist would say we have been witnessing the disintegration of the old economy in [...]
Energy, information and matter tracking technology is revealing behavioral secrets of the Human Hive. Three of the best examples I've found are: Britain from Above - this BBC series explores explores the evolution of Britain's infrastructure development from agriculture to transportation, communication to education, and cities to rural redevelopment across the ages. Mesh Cities - a new website whose [...]
Integral City Developers #occupy the positive 1% who generate diversity to overcome the blockages and barriers in city systems. They #occupy development opportunities grand enough to attract others but where the economic risk is designed to reward purpose, priority, profit, people and planet. Developers #occupy the Integral City Voice with visions, inspiring pictures and projects that call forth [...]
Who #occupies the Voice of the Civic Manager? When everyone else is speaking at #occupy city square, who's ears are occupied by the Civic Manager's words? The voice of the Civic Manager speaks for senior leaders in city hall, the healthcare system, the justice system, the school system, and the library system. The Civic Manager calls forth conditions for the Integral City to run effectively across [...]
The wise evolution of cultural affinities and loyalties is something nations must pay careful attention to, warns Ayaan Hirst Ali in a National Post article documenting her personal history. In fact it appears from her advice that it is a maxim that cities must understand in order to evolve governance that works in their post-modern pluralistic [...]
How do you engage Collective Shadow? How do you design a process for sustainability leaders to address the shadow of self, of the group and of the planet? That was a question that we asked ourselves during the Embody Integral Sustainability inquiry during August 2011 at Venwoude, Netherlands. Behind our questions we found support from [...]
Congratulations to Barrett Brown who just defended his dissertation on Leadership for Sustainability. Barrett designed an integral methodology to study integrally-informed leaders working in sustainability. His Findings differentiate amongst leaders who work on the system (Strategists), with the system (Alchemists) and as the system (Ironists). This research illuminates the path of both consciousness and action as [...]