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. Communities and cities who care have the capaocity to rapidly respond and evolve into new ways of being and becoming together. Research is showing that [...]
Right-sizing cities is not just a matter of looking at the internal conditions for the quality of life of city inhabitants or their myriad organizations. Right-sizing cities is a matter of right-sizing our cities in relationship to the eco-region that they are situated in. Just as bees right-size their hives because of the [...]
This is a question I am often asked when I speak about Integral City. I have given it a lot of thought over the years. My first impulse was to remember why the honey bee hive is about 50,000 bees (in the natural state – and up to 70,000 or so in domestic [...]
“People need stories more than food to stay alive.” (Barry Lopez) That observation has always been one of my favourite insights into the depths of human nature. When I review the epic voyage to 10 cities (BC Canada: Delta, Vancouver, Mission, Abbotsford; Scotland: Findhorn, Edinburgh; India: Auroville, Chennai, Agra, Delhi) in the last six [...]
Dr. Marilyn Hamilton offered a lecture to Dr. Sheeba Chander's class in the Architecture & City Planning Program at Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science in Chennai, India, on October 30, 2019. Here is a picture of the class and the key images we used to illustrate how the honey bee offers lessons in [...]
Integral City identifies 4 Voices of the City: Citizens, Civil Society, Civic Managers and Business/Innovators. Each of these Voices has organizational forms, but some are more developed than others. The organizational voices of Civic Managers and Business/Innovators are commonly expressed through their public and private institutions both of which have decades of practices and [...]
Marilyn Hamilton (as Founder of Integral City Meshworks) was honoured to form a trio with panelists, Peter Harper (an expert on climate change and its causes) and Albert Bates (an expert and elder of the Ecovillage Movement and intense sustainability practices like biochar) at the GEN Day 2 focus on Ecology. Capturing our core [...]
In early March I had an opportunity to explore the question, “Are Cities Evolving as Gaia’s Reflective Organs?” My audience was an erudite gathering of the online 3 Horizons University (3Huni for short). I proposed to explore the case for the evolution of cities, not as a bane on the Earth, but as a [...]
One of the most beautiful opportunities that Durant offers is that it is what the astrophysicists (who are looking for earth-like planets in the universe) call a “Goldilocks” size. Durant is just the right size to be able to work with the whole city system in the room – not too big and not [...]
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 Planet. The design for this Integral City prototype [of sustainable community development] places emphasis on the development of the people skills in sustainable communities because this [...]