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 [...]
Structural Intelligences arise from the collective of living holons of which each of us is a part, as well as the structures and infrastructures our Human Hives create to sustain that life. These structures are now embodied in our economics, energy systems, communications technology, city public works, and social organizations. As such these structural intelligences [...]
The essential structural and infrastructural systems of the city exist to support the direct and indirect survival of its citizen bodies, relationships and exchanges. Even as cities become increasingly adept at creating built solutions to meet human demands, they seem to be disconnecting from the ultimate infrastructure on which their systems depend – namely [...]
Structural (or building) intelligence represents the “ Its” space of the human hive. This intelligence connects us to the time-space realities of the city, that we see, feel, hear, smell, touch and taste. It gives us the capacity to structure and systematize our environment to sustain our complex adaptive life systems. City structures are made [...]
Last month I visited Leon Mexico where I met the Citizen's Observatory and together we all met the Mixteca indigenous peoples who have moved to the city. The Mixteca have created their own urban culture (beside the railway tracks) from the strength of the stories they bring from their traditional ways. Their stories of daily life, spiritual practice, making [...]