Integral City nominates Paris as City of the Year 2015. Paris is the city featured on the cover of the Integral City book. Integral City :Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive The City of the Year is a new – but natural award for us to make. We have recognized the importance of [...]
Is it amazing that 195 nations were able to draft an agreement for Climate Change in Paris last week? Euphoria, celebrations and emotional highs marked the conclusion of the gathering. COP21 had been a long time coming with holdouts, recriminations and resistances marking its predecessor gatherings and the planning for this event. But I wonder [...]
Are metaphors useful when real life intrudes on their original power as a pattern framer? Colony Collapse Disorder For instance (almost a decade ago) when I coined the term “Human Hive” as a metaphor for the living, evolutionary human system of the city, it predated many life events that have since occurred. Perhaps [...]
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 [...]
Pope Francis is calling for an ecological reframing for the faithful in his sweeping new encyclical on the environment. In “Laudato Si,” or “Be Praised” (or “Praised Be,”). He addresses issues that individuals must take responsibility for, as well as larger collectives - including cities. Pope Francis warns of harming nature, the costs of industrial pollution, resource [...]
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; [...]
What does the US-China handshake on climate change mean for our Planet of Cities? When Eagle Shakes Hands with the Dragon On the one hand it should give them confidence that they are the seed beds of global change – for it is cities who took the initiative on the climate file. While [...]
Civic Managers gained the most empathy from the other voices of the ITC2013 Learning Lhabitat . In the closing circle, Cityzens in particular, were heard to declare, "I never realized the role of Civic Manager was so challenging. I have a whole new respect for Civic Managers." Civic Managers Managing City Systems Here is [...]
We are starting a new set of Integral City learning (ad)ventures. We call them Learning Lhabitats. Learning Laboratories and Habitats are being designed for people who sense a new Integrator Role is emerging in cities. They know MUCH change is needed and MANY voices are clamouring for attention. Those concerns lead to key questions, city [...]
Systems thinking is fundamental to understanding systems. So to understand systems, let's start with exploring, what are systems? (1) Systems are evolutionary structures. They are characterized by boundaries that contain system elements. Those elements have evolved across deep time, from the Big Bang until now. The basic evolutionary strata that we can point to on [...]