Is information in your city easy to come by? or is it difficult to make sense of your city because information is scarce or misaligned? Information in the Integral City is critical to the city's functioning, wellbeing and thriving. But when we are overwhelmed by electronic news blasts it can be difficult to know what [...]
Assumptions in the city arise not only from the four voices of the city - but from the worldviews being expressed in those voices. Worldviews emerge from the beliefs of what is important around here and how those values are translated by the city's voices. In the most basic ego-centric way, assumptions are implicit - [...]
Navigating intelligence allows us to scan the environment and make decisions about our course corrections using Integral Vital Signs Monitors (IVSM). An IVSM is a reporting system whose design is based on an integral framework. It utilizes life-sustaining indicators and communicates its results in a universal language. An IVSM system mines existing databases, gathers new data [...]
Navigating intelligence monitors and discloses the wellbeing or general condition of the city. Many city information officers are now developing versions of vital signs monitor for monitoring and reporting the health of the city. From an eco-regional perspective the indicators should track what Jared Diamond noted every society must pay attention to for long-term survival: [...]
The four quadrant perspectival map of reality (bio-psycho-cultural-social) can be shape-shifted into a nested holarchy of city holons. This scalar fractal map shows the relationship amongst the micro, meso and macro human systems at multiple levels of scale from the individual to the family/group, organization, sector, community, city, eco-region and the world. Integral intelligence looks at [...]
Living intelligence relates to the aliveness of each citizen through each of their lifecycle stages and the aliveness of the city through its lifecycle stages. These interlocking lifecycles are powerful fractal relationships that impact how each person, organization and community contribute to the wellbeing of the city. At each of these scales we go through [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
2011 may be the tipping point that globally shifted all the Pillars of Sustainability. By year-end each leans as precariously as four Towers of Pisa. First we watched the Environmental Pillar reign tsunami terror on the city of Sendai, followed by the infrastructural meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear plants, sending shock waves throughout the worldwide energy sector. Before we caught our breath [...]
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 [...]