Map 4 conveys the stages of structural organizational change in the city. Living human systems in the city are constantly adapting to life conditions. Adaptations arise from both external causes (like geo-climatic incidents) and from internal causes (like bio-psycho-cultural-social triggers such as economic shifts).

Map 4 makes visible how the city’s (Map 1, Lower Right) organizational structures evolve over time. (They also act as proxies for the commensurate Upper Right neural structures developing in individual brains as in Maps 1 and 3.) Map 4’s trajectory of structural change, actually has no assumptions or guarantees of an ever-upward shift – the direction of change to more or less complex systems depends on the capacities of the individuals and groups (reflected in Map 3) to adapt to the challenge(s) (Beck & Cowan, 1996; Graves, 1981, 2005; Hamilton, 2008a).

Click here to find out about all the Integral City Maps:

• Map 1

• Map 2

• Map 3

• Map 4

• Map 5