As the city becomes more complex individuals, organizations, and community systems interconnect and interplay. Life and death and the health of the city are very much reflected in healthy alignment of the many systems that make up the whole city system (or holarchy). These different scales of city systems co-exist at different stages of their [...]
Emergent Intelligence helps us not only see the city as a whole but to design it as a whole. This gives us a chance to tap into our human hive mind – a mind that transcends and includes our individual minds. This condition arises because each person is massively interdependent on a living collective system [...]
Integral City eLaboratory: Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive “Humans are Gaia’s reflective organ.” James Lovelock Now that 50% of humanity lives in the city - each person is like a cell in Gaia’s reflective organ. 40 cities in the world produce 30% of its wealth … Gaia’s cities belong to a system of [...]
This blog is the third prologue for a keynote at the FreshOutlook Feb. 27, 2012 Building SustainABLE Communities Conference. Integral City is a new paradigm for looking at cities that reveals its bio-psycho-cultural-structural evolutionary intelligences. These twelve intelligences cluster into five capacities and are organized into an Integral City Compass that provides direction and alignment [...]
This blog is a first prologue for a keynote at the FreshOutlook Feb. 27, 2012 Building SustainABLE Communities Conference. Meshworking is an intelligence of the human hive (Hamilton, 2008) that creates a "meshwork" by weaving together the best of two operating systems — one that self-organizes, and one that replicates hierarchical structures. From an Integral City perspective this [...]
Designing healthcare systems that serve the wellbeing of Integral City 2.0 begins with remembering "health" comes from the same root as the word "whole". Healthcare in the human hive is based on the principles of Life and Evolution . Wholistic healthcare systems are rooted in natural science and embody values and cultural intentions. Principles that contribute to appropriate [...]
The Integral City 2.0 embraces and develops human systems. It draws on the frameworks of complex human development of Ken Wilber, Don Beck, Clare Graves and Ervin Laszlo; living systems theory of James Grier Miller; ecological sustainability of William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel; resilience models of C.S. Holling et al; and bio-social-evolutionist dynamics of Jared Diamond [...]
An Integral City is a complex adaptive human system that concentrates habitat for humans like a bee hive does for bees. As a natural system it faces all the same issues, factors and challenges that affect the concentration of life anywhere: sustaining flows of information, matter and energy for the survival of human life. Serving [...]
Energy, information and matter tracking technology is revealing behavioral secrets of the Human Hive. Three of the best examples I've found are: Britain from Above - this BBC series explores explores the evolution of Britain's infrastructure development from agriculture to transportation, communication to education, and cities to rural redevelopment across the ages. Mesh Cities - a new website whose [...]
Metropolitan World Atlas (MWA)by Arjen van Susteren gives us a glimpse of what an atlas of Integral City acupuncture points might look like. MWA identifies 101 metroplitan areas of the world which include the world's 50 largest cities, 25 largest seaports, 30 largest airports, 30 largest telecom ports and 12 other metropolitan areas. The atlas [...]