Meshworking intelligences contribute to research, planning and management in the city. Meshworkers and meshweavers can create the conditions for aligning purposes, priorities, people and planet. They can engage individuals, groups and sectors as stakeholders from each of the integral quadrants and focus on issues and purposes (like Millennium Development Goals). Meshworkers can help these stakeholders to "connect the dots" [...]
Because communities and cities are emergents and artefacts of human life, they are outcomes of the brains that have created them. The meshworks in them seem to be fractal patterns that emerge at all scales of human systems. We can better understand how cities work and evolve by recognizing that their communities reflect evolving capacities to [...]
Meshworking intelligence creates a "meshwork" by weaving together the best of two operating systems — one that self-organizes, and one that replicates hierarchical structures. The resulting meshwork creates and aligns complex responsive structures and systems that flex and flow. Meshworking intelligences are triggered in the brain by dissonance (ie. constraints) in the environment. The brain's capability of [...]
Effective and authentic inquiry is often a process that we need to relearn many times. What makes a good question? The kinds of questions we want to ask for generative inquiry have the qualities of being: Personal (Tell us a time when you experience an emotional response to your neighbourhood?) Open (Start the question with What, [...]
Inquiry is so much more productive for the wellbeing of the city, than prescriptions for health, because it opens the doors of innovation and generativity. For a truly vibrant city, each inquiry question reveals a whole system of values all of which must be healthy, in order for the whole city to be healthy. The [...]
Inquiry intelligence asks key questions that reveal the meta-wisdom of the city. The questions are simple and can be addressed to both individuals and groups. What is important to you? What's working in your life, family, community, school, health system, city? What's not working in your life, family, community, school, health system, city? What is [...]
Emergent Intelligence in the city enables survival, adaptation and regeneration of the whole human system. Last week I was exploring how designers apply Emergent Intelligence in Arnhem, NL working with Alliander and Freedom Lab to explore Energetic City 2050. Over the next six months, three teams are exploring how people in the city could generate their [...]
Could it be that we are witnessing an inflection point in the global awareness and embrace of sustainability? Sean Esborn-Hargens one of the leaders at the forefront of developing the whole field of Integral Ecology engages the nested voices of Self, Other and the World in ways that are shifting the whole understanding of ecology. Like [...]
Two years ago this blog suggested that Cuba offered a great case study for Cities Under Peak Oil conditions. Subsequent to that blog Jim Garrison interviewed me for Integral Life about my book Integral City. We talked about The New Cuban Revolution: how the fairly surprising case study of Havana, Cuba offered insights to the sustainability discussion. After the fall of [...]
Are economics and technological factors sufficient to incubate innovation and sustainability? At least they are a start to consider the importance of cities to organizational success. That was a recent focus of Greenbiz forum where the growing recognition that the wellbeing of cities is an underlying condition for the success of organizations. Drawing from a [...]