A domesticated cousin to the apis melifera honey bee, is raising questions about how life conditions - including those created by humans - can offer a species the opportunity to expand its territory because of its natural but transplanted capacities. It is a good example of unintended consequences, and may prove to us (yet again) that resilience [...]
A few days ago a trusted colleague, John Steiner, sent me an email thread that told the story of an interesting Japanese invention - a machine that converts plastic into oil. You can see a video for yourself if you click here. This machine answers a question I have harboured for years, and that is: if plastic [...]
One of the things I like about the Holland America cruises is the ship's log they give at the end of the voyage. It is an interesting accountability document for key resources, especially water and fuel. My recent cruise on the MS Rotterdam used 120 tons/day of fuel to travel a toal of 3529 nautical [...]
When you are looking for weak signals about the toughness of economic times look to see how business keeps the revenues flowing. I just returned from a floating city holiday aka a cruise. The travel industry has been hit in so many ways from terrorist threats, biological invasions and economic down cycles it is interesting [...]
Globe Forum Dublin ...cities are very much social-ecological systems. Cities represent the hopes and dreams of the people that live in them and they also represent perhaps the best hope for reversing large-scale ecological decline, social breakdowns and economic stagnation. Each session though had its own flavour.... The final speaker was the blue-sky thinker, Dr [...]
Further to the Australian Federal Elections reported here in September. And the US Elections completed two weeks ago, I am noticing more action in the human hive, that says Resource Allocators and Inner Judges are busy trying to decide what to do next. The US Elections brought similar results to those in Australia -- very [...]
At the World Planners Congress (WPC), in June, 2006 I witnessed a notable public paradigm shift when Planning Leaders from around the world issued a position paper on the New Urban Planning (Farmer et al., 2006). In 2006, the authors stated that New Urban Planning was smart planning because it is a responsive learning system. [...]
Marilyn Hamilton talks to host John Schmidt of Avastone Consulting re Integral City on Zoomd Radio. Click here for the link. We talked about the Integral City as the Human Hive - and how that enables Leadership, Relationships and Resilience. Examples that were used included New Orleans and Burning Man. Listen to the broadcast or download it [...]
October Greetings, Integral City-zens and Friends of Integral City Today's Integral City Sparkie for the City Heart: When the energy from battles [in the city] has transformed relationships, and inquiry has born fruit, the cadence shifts to one of creativity. A creative rhythm is characterized by the flex and flow of cool jazz, where the performance of [...]
September Greetings, Integral City-zens and Friends of Integral City Today's Integral City Sparkie for the City Body: When we reframe the city, from being merely the built environment outside of us, to the built environment as simply an extension of us, our relationship with the “objective” city becomes ever so much more personal. Hamilton, M., 2008, Integral [...]