The patterns embedded in human systems have evolved for hundreds of thousands of years. Indeed, as living systems, the patterns have emerged from the 4 billion years that Life has vibrated on the dance floor of the Planet, as single cell microbes to multi-organ persons. These patterns emerge from expressing the simple rules [...]
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 [...]
How can I shift my perspective of the city when I am not aware of the perspective I hold? A shift in perspective assumes that a change in my view occurs. Unpacking such a shift requires the answers to some basic questions: What is my current perspective? Why would I change it? How can I [...]
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 [...]
How can we apply Integral City theory or frameworks to my city? This is a question I am often asked. At the What Next Integral Conference, Roger Walsh offered some helpful suggestions for applying Integral Theory in general. These are also a useful approach to engaging Integral City practices. 1. Step 1 is to offer an [...]
The Integral City 2.0 Online Conference gathered 60 visionary thought leaders, designers and practitioners, with 600 participants from 6 continents, to inquire into how to design a new operating system for the city. The 12-day Conference allowed exploration of each of the 12 intelligences from the book, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, [...]
Dr. Ichak Adizes asks if we are falling apart faster? He charts the dissonance that exists in our individual physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual sub-systems. Dr. Adizes observes that our physical maturity is way ahead of our emotional and spiritual maturity. And while we can learn all the way into old age, that choice is [...]
Why Not Just Privatize the Government? Why not privatize city government? Jane Jacobs described two moral syndromes necessary for a human social system to survive – one called Guardian and the other called Commercial. She argued that mixing their ethics created “monstrous hybrids” that were immoral and subversive to life. Reframing these syndromes from an [...]
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 [...]
Integral Intelligence arises because the city, is a whole system, with multiple simultaneous realities that reflect - how people act, how people think, how people relate and how people create/produce. Integral Intelligences can be mapped into the four quadrants explored by the AQAL model developed by Ken Wilber. The four quadrants are a beautiful fractal [...]