Marilyn Hamilton's Blog, page 26
January 18, 2021
Cities Rising for a Regenerative World: Governing with Life-cycle Patterns
This was a weeklong program January 11 – 15 convened by Integral City, Nest City, Ubiquity University and Humanity Rising ChatAction Group
OverviewInspired by HR’s week of Bouncing Beyond to a Regenerative World convened in October 2020 by Ubiquity U and U International Cooperation and partners, this Cities Rising Week focuses on human systems at the scale of the city. We view “city” as the human habitat (or human hive) at scales from village to megalopolis and our definition of city embraces the ecoregion where it is located and that constrains it. We intend our inquiry to complement the exploration of Bouncing Beyond to a Regenerative World, by providing the context and contribution cities can make to a Regenerative World.
Prior to the 2020 year of the pandemic, cities had become the habitats where more than 50% of humanity live – in the developed world more than 90%. This week will reframe cities from the bricks and mortar infrastructures of the visible city into a human system with consciousness, culture, behaviors and structures. This is the Integral City – a fractal that lies on the trajectory of living human systems, stretching from the individual, to the collective, to the city, to the planet Gaia (person, people, place, planet). This way of looking at the city assumes that it is a complex adaptive living system, evolutionary in its nature and integrative in its potential to serve the wellbeing of Gaia.
If we have learned anything in 2020, it is at the scale of the city where humans make life and death decisions and where people have the opportunities to thrive or waste. The overriding purpose of this week is to inquire how people serve the wellbeing of the city and how the city serves the wellbeing of people, while together we serve the wellbeing of Gaia.
Theme for the WeekThe overarching theme of the Cities week is to help you experience your city/community as a dynamic living system. This week-long exploration will offer a variety of lenses, tools and practices—and opportunities for you to reflect—that will enable you to best serve your city/community so that it can best serve you and together we can all serve the wellbeing of our planet, Gaia.
About this session:Discover and explore the governing principles and structures that best support the local conditions of your city/community functions.
Click here is the link for Humanity Rising Day 161.
Humanity Rising convened Cities Rising for Regenerative World, co-hosted by Marilyn Hamilton & Beth Sanders Jan 11-15, 2021.
Here are the Ubiverse links for all 5 days with recordings:
AQtivating Cities at Scale https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-159 Cities as Complex Living Adaptive Systems https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-160 Governance as Life Cycle Patterns https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-161 Practising Mutual Agency https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-162 Integrating Coherence for Regenerativity https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-163 The Reflective Practitioners who Participated included: Jim Garrison, Ubiquity University Marilyn Hamilton , Founder Integral City Meshworks, Findhorn Ecovillage ScotlandBeth Sanders, Founder Nest City, Edmonton, CanadaHani Quan, Life Coach, Social Entrepreneur, CanadaJorge Garza, Future Cities, McConnell Foundation Hugo Araujo, Founder 7Vortex, Mexico, BelgiumTaina Ketola, Public Sector Specialist, FinlandAndres Malave, Cultural Consultant, Nantes, FranceMark McCaffrey, Founder Co-Focal ECOS, Author Climate Smart & Energy Wise, Initiator Powers of 10 Framework , ItalyStanley Nyoni, The Natural Step Consultant Africa, Sweden Paddy Pampallis, Integral Africa: The Coaching CentreRaji Jayasinghe, Ubiquity U Youth Initiatives, Sri Lanka Luis Camargo, Biomimicry Expert, Colombia Katerina Zalamova, Smart Cities ExpertLev Gordon, Co-Founder of Living Cities Russia Association Mira Michelle Jones, Founder The Sacred Female Rising Institute, ShamanSoni Dasmohapatra, Consultant, CanadaKeren Tang, Public Health Professional, Participatory City, McConnell FoundationTaisa Mattos, Global Ecovillage Network, BrazilIndra Adnan, Journalist, Founder Alternative UKShweta Srisastav, Design Researcher, Architect, Sustainability Consultant, India & Netherlands Julian Baller, ED Co-Creating EuropeYene Assegid, International Coach, Ghana, Africa Vandana Shiva, Author Earth Democracy, IndiaRanjani Balasubramanian, Faculty Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology ( LeNS Labs for Sustainability; UNESCO Chair for Culture, Habitat and Sustainable Development), Bangalore, IndiaLin Zhang, Systemic Innovation Coach at Thrive Together Ltd (T2L) and Co-founder & CEO at The Natural Step China, Shanghai ChinaYou can find extended bios for each speaker at this link.You can find additional resources at this link.
Cities Rising for a Regenerative World: Living in Cities as Complex Adaptive Systems
This was a weeklong program January 11 – 15 convened by Integral City, Nest City, Ubiquity University and Humanity Rising ChatAction Group
OverviewInspired by HR’s week of Bouncing Beyond to a Regenerative World convened in October 2020 by Ubiquity U and U International Cooperation and partners, this Cities Rising Week focuses on human systems at the scale of the city. We view “city” as the human habitat (or human hive) at scales from village to megalopolis and our definition of city embraces the ecoregion where it is located and that constrains it. We intend our inquiry to complement the exploration of Bouncing Beyond to a Regenerative World, by providing the context and contribution cities can make to a Regenerative World.
Prior to the 2020 year of the pandemic, cities had become the habitats where more than 50% of humanity live – in the developed world more than 90%. This week will reframe cities from the bricks and mortar infrastructures of the visible city into a human system with consciousness, culture, behaviors and structures. This is the Integral City – a fractal that lies on the trajectory of living human systems, stretching from the individual, to the collective, to the city, to the planet Gaia (person, people, place, planet). This way of looking at the city assumes that it is a complex adaptive living system, evolutionary in its nature and integrative in its potential to serve the wellbeing of Gaia.
If we have learned anything in 2020, it is at the scale of the city where humans make life and death decisions and where people have the opportunities to thrive or waste. The overriding purpose of this week is to inquire how people serve the wellbeing of the city and how the city serves the wellbeing of people, while together we serve the wellbeing of Gaia.
Theme for the WeekThe overarching theme of the Cities week is to help you experience your city/community as a dynamic living system. This week-long exploration will offer a variety of lenses, tools and practices—and opportunities for you to reflect—that will enable you to best serve your city/community so that it can best serve you and together we can all serve the wellbeing of our planet, Gaia.
About this session:Experience your city /community as a living system of complex, adaptive dynamics.
Click here is the link for Humanity Rising Day 160.
Humanity Rising convened Cities Rising for Regenerative World, co-hosted by Marilyn Hamilton & Beth Sanders Jan 11-15, 2021.
Here are the Ubiverse links for all 5 days with recordings:
AQtivating Cities at Scale https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-159 Cities as Complex Living Adaptive Systems https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-160 Governance as Life Cycle Patterns https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-161 Practising Mutual Agency https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-162 Integrating Coherence for Regenerativity https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-163 The Reflective Practitioners who Participated included: Jim Garrison, Ubiquity University Marilyn Hamilton , Founder Integral City Meshworks, Findhorn Ecovillage ScotlandBeth Sanders, Founder Nest City, Edmonton, CanadaHani Quan, Life Coach, Social Entrepreneur, CanadaJorge Garza, Future Cities, McConnell Foundation Hugo Araujo, Founder 7Vortex, Mexico, BelgiumTaina Ketola, Public Sector Specialist, FinlandAndres Malave, Cultural Consultant, Nantes, FranceMark McCaffrey, Founder Co-Focal ECOS, Author Climate Smart & Energy Wise, Initiator Powers of 10 Framework , ItalyStanley Nyoni, The Natural Step Consultant Africa, Sweden Paddy Pampallis, Integral Africa: The Coaching CentreRaji Jayasinghe, Ubiquity U Youth Initiatives, Sri Lanka Luis Camargo, Biomimicry Expert, Colombia Katerina Zalamova, Smart Cities ExpertLev Gordon, Co-Founder of Living Cities Russia Association Mira Michelle Jones, Founder The Sacred Female Rising Institute, ShamanSoni Dasmohapatra, Consultant, CanadaKeren Tang, Public Health Professional, Participatory City, McConnell FoundationTaisa Mattos, Global Ecovillage Network, BrazilIndra Adnan, Journalist, Founder Alternative UKShweta Srisastav, Design Researcher, Architect, Sustainability Consultant, India & Netherlands Julian Baller, ED Co-Creating EuropeYene Assegid, International Coach, Ghana, Africa Vandana Shiva, Author Earth Democracy, IndiaRanjani Balasubramanian, Faculty Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology ( LeNS Labs for Sustainability; UNESCO Chair for Culture, Habitat and Sustainable Development), Bangalore, IndiaLin Zhang, Systemic Innovation Coach at Thrive Together Ltd (T2L) and Co-founder & CEO at The Natural Step China, Shanghai ChinaYou can find extended bios for each speaker at this link.You can find additional resources at this link.Cities Rising for a Regenerative World: AQtivating cities at scale
This was a weeklong program January 11 – 15 convened by Integral City, Nest City, Ubiquity University and Humanity Rising ChatAction Group
OverviewInspired by HR’s week of Bouncing Beyond to a Regenerative World convened in October 2020 by Ubiquity U and U International Cooperation and partners, this Cities Rising Week focuses on human systems at the scale of the city. We view “city” as the human habitat (or human hive) at scales from village to megalopolis and our definition of city embraces the ecoregion where it is located and that constrains it. We intend our inquiry to complement the exploration of Bouncing Beyond to a Regenerative World, by providing the context and contribution cities can make to a Regenerative World.
Prior to the 2020 year of the pandemic, cities had become the habitats where more than 50% of humanity live – in the developed world more than 90%. This week will reframe cities from the bricks and mortar infrastructures of the visible city into a human system with consciousness, culture, behaviors and structures. This is the Integral City – a fractal that lies on the trajectory of living human systems, stretching from the individual, to the collective, to the city, to the planet Gaia (person, people, place, planet). This way of looking at the city assumes that it is a complex adaptive living system, evolutionary in its nature and integrative in its potential to serve the wellbeing of Gaia.
If we have learned anything in 2020, it is at the scale of the city where humans make life and death decisions and where people have the opportunities to thrive or waste. The overriding purpose of this week is to inquire how people serve the wellbeing of the city and how the city serves the wellbeing of people, while together we serve the wellbeing of Gaia.
Theme for the WeekThe overarching theme of the Cities week is to help you experience your city/community as a dynamic living system. This week-long exploration will offer a variety of lenses, tools and practices—and opportunities for you to reflect—that will enable you to best serve your city/community so that it can best serve you and together we can all serve the wellbeing of our planet, Gaia.
About this session:Notice your relationship with your city/community and your learning edges.
Click here is the link for Humanity Rising Day 159.
Humanity Rising convened Cities Rising for Regenerative World, co-hosted by Marilyn Hamilton & Beth Sanders Jan 11-15, 2021.
Here are the Ubiverse links for all 5 days with recordings:
AQtivating Cities at Scale https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-159 Cities as Complex Living Adaptive Systems https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-160 Governance as Life Cycle Patterns https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-161 Practising Mutual Agency https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-162 Integrating Coherence for Regenerativity https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-rising-day-163 The Reflective Practitioners who Participated included: Jim Garrison, Ubiquity University Marilyn Hamilton , Founder Integral City Meshworks, Findhorn Ecovillage ScotlandBeth Sanders, Founder Nest City, Edmonton, CanadaHani Quan, Life Coach, Social Entrepreneur, CanadaJorge Garza, Future Cities, McConnell Foundation Hugo Araujo, Founder 7Vortex, Mexico, BelgiumTaina Ketola, Public Sector Specialist, FinlandAndres Malave, Cultural Consultant, Nantes, FranceMark McCaffrey, Founder Co-Focal ECOS, Author Climate Smart & Energy Wise, Initiator Powers of 10 Framework , ItalyStanley Nyoni, The Natural Step Consultant Africa, Sweden Paddy Pampallis, Integral Africa: The Coaching CentreRaji Jayasinghe, Ubiquity U Youth Initiatives, Sri Lanka Luis Camargo, Biomimicry Expert, Colombia Katerina Zalamova, Smart Cities ExpertLev Gordon, Co-Founder of Living Cities Russia Association Mira Michelle Jones, Founder The Sacred Female Rising Institute, ShamanSoni Dasmohapatra, Consultant, CanadaKeren Tang, Public Health Professional, Participatory City, McConnell FoundationTaisa Mattos, Global Ecovillage Network, BrazilIndra Adnan, Journalist, Founder Alternative UKShweta Srisastav, Design Researcher, Architect, Sustainability Consultant, India & Netherlands Julian Baller, ED Co-Creating EuropeYene Assegid, International Coach, Ghana, Africa Vandana Shiva, Author Earth Democracy, IndiaRanjani Balasubramanian, Faculty Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology ( LeNS Labs for Sustainability; UNESCO Chair for Culture, Habitat and Sustainable Development), Bangalore, IndiaLin Zhang, Systemic Innovation Coach at Thrive Together Ltd (T2L) and Co-founder & CEO at The Natural Step China, Shanghai ChinaYou can find extended bios for each speaker at this link.You can find additional resources at this link.December 19, 2020
Metablog 2020
Here is the Integral City 2020 Meta Blog. It connects the 4 Voices of the Integral City to the Planet, People, Place and Power that energized us in 2020.
It follows the traditions of:
Integral City Meta Blog 2019
Integral City Meta Blog 2018
Integral City Meta Blog 2017
Integral City Meta Blog 2016
Integral City Meta Blog 2015
Integral City Meta Blog 2014
Integral City Meta Blog 2013
1. Equinox/Solstice Newsletters – Integral City Reflective Organ
Integral City Reflective Organ – March 2020: Superordinate Goal in a VUCA World
Integral City Reflective Organ – June 2020: Lockdown Wakes Up the Human Heart
Integral City Reflective Organ – September 2020: Places of Unity, Peace & Partnership
Integral City Reflective Organ – December 2020: Cities Waking Up, Growing Up
2. City of the Year 2020: Edmonton, Canada
Read about the City of the year award here.
3. Meshworker of the Year 2020: Ellen van Dongen, Lifemaps
Read the full story of Meshworker of the Year 2020 here.
4. Integral City Blogs
Cities Need You to be an Island of Calm in Sea of Turbulence
Learn How to Resonate Your City Voice With All City Voices
Lifemaps – Waking Up the Human Hive in Europe Caravan of Unity
How Integral City frameworks can strengthen our immune systems as the best biomimicry defence against the pandemic.
Breakdown Deepens, Divine Remix Stalls in the City
Movers/Shakers/Makers/Carers Who are Making Our Intelligences Visible to Us
4 + 1 Voices Generate Antibodies of Care in the Pandemic City
Master Code Multiplies More Antibodies of Care in the Pandemic City
5. Blogs
Conference Papers, Lectures, Notes
Integral City: Evolving Gaia’s Organs of Peace
Organizational Power: Power Over – Power With – Power As
Humanity Rising: Imagine Thriving Human Hives as Gaia’s Reflective Organs
Summit with Conscious Evolution 2020
Humanity Rising. Ubiquity University. Integral City. Join our Circles of Care
Integral City Frameworks and Concepts into Practice
How is the Integral City Framework Good For Evolving Cities of Peace?
Enacting our Knowing, Doing and Being – In Service in a VUCA World
Optimizing & Optimistic Resources for Integral City Practitioners
Reframing 10 Urban Injustices: With Master Code of Care
Space to Resolve Gaia’s Quadrivium of Traumas
Integral City GPS Wakes Up All Paths
Healing Process, Unity & Peace… Towards Regeneration
Sans Peur – Without Fear
Riding the Wave of Death & Dying to Wellbeing
Integral City: 11 Way Stations for Unity and Peace
The Future Has Other Plans: Planning Holistically to Conserve Natural and Cultural Heritage
How Can We Create Cities of Peace When We Have Disturbed Gaia’s Peace?
Inner Cities
Our Evolutionary Journey to the Master Code of Care for a City of Peace
Coming Home to Ourselves – Praxis-making
Co-Creative Integrities – Ethos-making
Listening to the Spirit of Cities …What is Needed to Make Visible a Global Network of integral Cities and Eco-regions?
VUCA World and Cities Facing the Pandemic
VUCA World – Contact or Contract?
Is Superordinate Goal the Gift of Covid19?
Covid19 Lessons for Right-Sizing Cities
Views from the Balcony – The SCUWED Un-Normal – July 15, 2020
Are the Cities Being What They Are Meant to Be?
What is the Right Size of the Human Hive?
What is the Right Size of our Cities?
Right-Sizing Cities: How Does Gaia Reflect on Size?
Urban Hub 20: Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World: Thriveable Cities
In Pursuit of Ecological Wisdom: Inter-Subjective According in the Noosphere?
Place, Placemaking and Placemakers: Poetic Agency in Communion
Telling We-Stories to Our Future: A Poiesis of Sophrosynes? Urban Hub 20 – See What’s Inside
Urban Hub 20 Imagines the Human Hive in a VUCA World
News Flash – Urban Hub 20: Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
I am care: AMERICA
Quarantine Lockdown Calming Practices Reflections
This blog series explores calming practices and resources from the four quadrants of reality used in the Findhorn Community during the pandemic months of 2020. They include:
All Quadrants – Finding a Road to Calm Through the Quadrants in Findhorn
Upper Left Intentional – Islands of Calm – a Findhorn Meditation for VUCA Times
Lower Left Cultural – Phoenix Rising as Findhorn Community Spirit When Life Conditions Challenge Life
Lower Right Systems/Structures – Findhorn’s Web of Structures and Infrastructures of Care
Upper Right Behavioral – The Flash of the Phoenix Tail – Responses to Findhorn Lockdown Policies
Fay Blackburn Lived the Master Code of Care
How Can We Influence City Development in Creative Economy? Interview with Marilyn Hamilton for Civic Forum of Regions of the 60 th Parallel
This blog series explores Regenerativity as:
an Act
a Relationship and
an Evolutionary Pattern.
6. Videos
This collection of videos features Integral City founder Marilyn Hamilton speaking about various aspects of the Integral City.
Lecture by Marilyn Hamilton on Eutopias – for JFK University, Bruce ALderman Eutopia seres.
Humanity Rising Summit 2020 – Marilyn Hamilton Panelist and/or Moderator.
Day 20 Whole Systems Change
Day 56 Healthy Human Habitats
Day 67 Regenerative Economics
Weaving Labs – Learning Lab Capacities to Weave Living Systems
Integral Europe Conference 2020 – Marilyn Hamilton – Accelerating Integral City Transformation in VUCA Times
Password for all video’s: WeMakeTheCity1!
After movie: https://vimeo.com/344647596
Oleg: https://vimeo.com/344652468
Marilyn: https://vimeo.com/344653330
Discussion: https://vimeo.com/344653036
7. Podcast
Interviews
Listen/watch to interviews with Marilyn Hamilton about Integral City issues, frameworks and applications.
Interview with Anatoly Bayalev (English/Russian) about Urban Hub 2.0: Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World – Click here
Interview with Gaurav Arora, Founder of XMonks and Curator Coaching Conclave India 2020 (August, 2020) – Click here
Interview with Daniel Christian Wahl about Regenerativity & Integral City (January 6, 2020) – Click here Summary and Click Podcast Here
December 18, 2020
Reflective Organ Newsletter December Solstice 2020 – Cities Waking Up, Growing Up
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 Power.
Healthy caring becomes imbued with belonging and attachment that is experienced as deep love and spiritual connection to self, others, city and planet as inextricably interlinked. This array of deep care may be the source of the experience of Oneness that is shared by all faith systems (Weaver,2017). I summarize this depth of care in the Master Code: caring for self, others, place, planet (Hamilton, 2008, 2017). For the first time in history humans (like my granddaughter) have the opportunity to practice this kind of care simultaneously at all levels, which in itself is reflexive and reflective as one level of care mirrors the other levels of care. Furthermore, this kind of care reveals the Goodness, Truth and Beauty of spiritual depth and blossoms into a creativity that permeates all the co-existing realities of the city.
Hamilton, M. 2018. Integral City 3.7: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives. Minneapolis, MN: Amaranth Press, LLC p. xxix
Scroll to end of newsletter to access Free Resources.
Waking Up, Growing Up: Integral Cities Rise, Respond, RegenerateWake up the Human Hive!!
For more than two decades, I and the Integral City endeavour have been in pursuit of Waking up the Human Hive. Waking Up to what? To the reality that Human Hives – cities, human habitats at all scales – must become conscious of their consciousness and caring of their cultures in service to Gaia’s wellbeing.
Adding the perspectives and realities of consciousness and culture to behaviours and structures, has been a way for Integral City to point out what to city watchers, what we have been missing when we observe our most complex human systems yet created. Cities are not just spaces built of bricks and mortar. Cities are not just infrastructures and communication corridors. Cities are not just cross-roads where human bodies intersect and interact en masse.
Cities have aliveness that is revealed when we listen to the ring of their city spirits and the Voices of the interconnected, intertwined beings who live in relationship to one another.
If we grant that cities are fractals of the individual human (and we are in turn fractals of Gaia, Earth herself) it may be time to celebrate a coming of age.
2020 marks a turning point in the life of the human species. Our shared experience of the covid19 pandemic has made us aware that it is past time to Wake Up – it is now time to Grow Up.
The childhood era of Waking Up humans and their hives has just been catalysed by a microbial virus – shapeshifting our species-hood like the rush of hormones that precipitates puberty in the individual human.
Covid19 has forced us to do whatever it takes to survive – even if that means cutting ourselves off from direct physical contact with each other, our city environments and our eco-region contexts. We have spent a year with the opportunity to sit in the corner, reflect in the mirror, daydream on the couch and consider what really matters. As we enter the teenage-hood of our species, we long to get out and connect with the wider world.
Just like teenagers, we are feeling repressed, misunderstood, surging with energy and not sure what to do with ourselves. We are Awake. Woke even. And we just KNOW that there must be some meaning to life. We have woken up to some ineffable potential that longs to be expressed in a fully human way.
But in the same moment that we sense that potential, we are waking up to our pain. Pain that we can’t express ourselves fully. Pain that our relationships are stretched or severed. Pain that our actions are restricted. Pain that our work has shifted, re-located or even stopped.
From our lockdown of (en)forced introspections – whether they have been solitary or mitigated by a surfeit of screen gazing, we have woken up to the pain of other people, other cities, other species, other nations and the planet as a whole. We are waking up to the horrifying possibility that somehow, we are implicated in the causes of all this pain. We have become aware of misguided assumptions (e.g., that unfettered consumer growth is desirable), our mass fragmentation and our mass entanglement. Even as we are more separated than ever, we are miserable with a sense of incoherence and lack of transparency. Even as our species has muddled through a multitude of responses to the pandemic, we can see the evidence of our ineptitude.
This is not an inspiring way to celebrate the end of 2020.
But this dissonance on a global scale has been lived out largely within the local boundaries of our cities. It is precisely because our cities have boundaries that they have been the human systems where we have attempted to surround and contain the spread of the virus. Cities have become vessels simmering on the stove with the lid on, trying to keep the water (of awareness) within from boiling over. But as the timer rings that the year 2020 is coming to a close, we know the glocal pressures and tensions that have built up can’t continue.
As the boiling water (of awareness) transmutes to steam, it is the signal that our cities are ready to shift from Waking Up to Growing Up. Because it turns out that 2020 is not only the year of the pandemic, 2020 is also the year when we can see how quickly we can choose to act glocally – across the scales of neighbourhood, city, nation and globe. We are face-to-face with the evidence that the human species can take responsibility for our actions and develop responses that enable survival if not (yet) complete recalibration of our relationship with the rest of life on our planet.
This means that the long-denied responsibility to redress human-caused climate change can no longer be avoided. The care-free life of our species’ childhood has come to an abrupt end.
An ironic synchronicity of perfect timing smacks us in the face. Climate scientists tell us we have 10 years to make a difference by changing our planet-destabilizing ways. That gives us about the same number of years to Grow Up, that it takes for a pre-teen to mature into adulthood.
Gaia, our mother, is shaking us awake. Grow Up! Gaia is remonstrating. Every resource you need is at hand. Use your intelligences. Take out your maps. Practise your most life-giving behaviours. If you compete, compete for the good of all living beings. Cooperate with one another. Collaborate. Grow Up as Gaia’s Reflective Organs that you were evolved to be. Rise up with the best of heart/mind/body so you can restore the consequences of heartless childish misdeeds and regenerate the life conditions for planetary wellbeing.
2021 calls us to Arise, Respond, Regenerate. Integral City’s endeavour for the next decade is to co-create Schooling that Grows Up a Planet of Integral Cities.
In this Newsletter we share how we have already started with our essays on Regenerativity, our Ubiquity Courses and our Cities Rising Week. We celebrate our City of the Year, our Meshworker of the Year and we witness how the Master Code of Care, all our Integral City Intelligences, Maps, Voices and Practices are translating from What to So What to Now What in an Action Learning cycle that Bounces Beyond Waking Up to Growing Up.
We ask you join us to launch the Decade of Growing Up – a Decade of Regenerativity. We believe small actions taken every day will make the difference that makes a difference to our evolutionary Growing Up as Gaia’s Reflective Organs (GRO). Let us GROW GRO!!!!
The Power of Regenerativity“What is the equivalent for the Human Hive of the 20 kilograms of honey produced by the beehive?” How can we define the goal of the Human Hive that energizes the life purpose of the city? Those are questions that I have been asking for almost two decades. I have been seeking to learn from the biomimicry lessons of the beehive what humans must generate as Gaia’s Reflective Organs in service to Gaia’s wellbeing.
Integral City set as a goal at the beginning of 2020 the intention to design and deliver schooling for a planet of Integral Cities.
We curated Urban Hub 20, testing the hypothesis that the Master Code of Care can align and empower Practitioners, Catalysts and Meshworkers to accelerate change and transformation in a VUCA world. Urban Hub 20 was released to the world March 31, 2020 and is in the process of being translated into Spanish.
Embedded in Urban Hub 20 are the thought-seeds that an Integral City needs not only to sustain itself internally (caring for self, each other and place) but also to regenerate and re-energize the Human Hive within its bio-region. (The case for this is ably made by Stephen Martineau through the story of the Slocan Integral Forestry Cooperative; and by Ard Hordijk and Allard de Ranitz of Synnervate with the strategy for Transition Dynamics in Rotterdam Harbour.)
Urban Hub 21 took us a few steps further, exploring the fractal capacities of cities within the eco-region of Europe and how Europe acts like a super-organism (or organ system) in service to Gaia’s wellbeing.
Through our interactions with Humanity Rising, Nish Gumaste and Peter Merry introduced us to the Diamond Model as a Unity of Everything. Much to our surprise and delight we could see that Map 5 is an Integral City Version of the Diamond Model (sans disasters, and unsustainabilities). So that what we have discerned seems to be a universal pattern of most of the world’s faith systems, most of which are displaying a cycle of regenerativity where the spiritual impulse flows in a never-ending quest for more life.
Humanity Rising’s Bouncing Beyond to a Regenerative World week (hosted by Ed Mueller) introduced us to the activist practitioners regenerating bio-regions with an open invitation for Integral City to resonate and cohere within bio-regions. In the Designing a Regenerative Culture model (Wahl, 2016) we find the answer to the question – what is the equivalent for the Human Hive of the 20 kilograms of honey in the beehive? It is taking our responsibility as an alpha species so we can come into right relationship with Gaia as we evolve our capacities to be organs of reflection for Gaia (as James Lovelock, author of the Gaia Hypothesis proposes).
If we can do this through harnessing Care at 4 scales: for self, others, place and planet perhaps we will discover fire for the second time? (As Teilhard de Chardin suggested.)
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. Teilhard de Chardin
In this year of the pandemic, the divisiveness of the US Election, the death of George Floyd, the unexpected referendum in Chile that women should make up 50% of any subsequent constituent assembly … we have all experienced the globe as our very VUCA but one home. Earth is a place we must care for because it is the only planet we have. Regeneration is not nice to have or do – it is a necessity.
As we write in the following blogs, the regenerativity is so powerful because it is:
An activating capacity
A cultural relationship
An evolutionary pattern.
We explore how a city regenerates itself through 4 Capacities, 4 Voices and the irresistible impulse of Life – all of which are empowered by the Master Code of Care.
Integral City Partners With Ubiquity UniversityStart 2021 with Integral City’s 3 online learning events designed and delivered with Ubiquity University.
1. Connect with Humanity Rising: Cities Rising Week
Humanity Rising (HR) is designed as a global commons for all speakers and participants to come together to share blogs, videos, generate discussions and engage in all sorts of collaborative activities together, especially as we navigate the pandemic experience. Integral City Meshworks is an HR Partner. Integral City has spoken 5 times in 2020 (see links in September Newsletter). Together we are building a new world.
On January 11-15, 2021, Marilyn Hamilton and Beth Sanders (Founder of Nest City) will start the new year of HR, by moderating Cities Rising Week – 5 days that reframe cities as complex, adaptive, living systems, evolved by Gaia as her Reflective Organs. Come join the conversation. It’s free catalytic learning!!
Our exploration will help you experience your city/community as a dynamic living system. We will offer a variety of lenses, tools and practices that will enable you to best serve your city/community so that it can best serve you. Here is the plan of action learning:
Monday: Sensing how your city / community functions and learns – a personal journey.
Tuesday: Recognizing your city /community as a living system of complex, adaptive dynamics.
Wednesday: Discovering the governing principles and structures that will best support your ecoregion i.e. the regional ecosystem in which your city/community functions.
Thursday: Exploring a variety of practices that will enable you to use the tensions in your city /community to shape your service to your city/community so that it can best serve you.
Friday: Noticing how you and we are mobilizing with regenerative action that enables relationships of reciprocity in/with/as cities/communities.
(Go to Humanity Rising or check our blog update for the URL to be released in January 2021).
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2. Learn Integral City Basics with Beyond Smart: Integral City Practices, Tools and Maps
Beyond Smart introduces “practitioners” to just the basics of the Integral City model. You learn the framework of practices, tools and maps that reveal the common patterns that impact the lives of individuals, organizations and communities within your city. This short course explores three powerful images animating Integral City systems – the integral map, the meshwork and the human hive. You will learn from your own situations (and other student sharings in the Ubiverse Group) how the toolkit guides you beyond models for Urban Ecovillages and Traditional, Smart and Resilient Cities. Take this self-taught course at your own convenience, any time, anywhere. Click here for Details and Registration.
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3. Join our flagship course Beyond Resilient: Integral City Inquiry, Action, Impact.
This LIVE online course starts January 20, 2021 and concludes April 7, 2021. This course is for Catalysts who seek new ways:
to work with multiple groups and organizations to engage inquiry and action for reinventing today’s cities for the future.
to interact in-depth with the 4+1 Voices of the Integral City to prototype strategic possibilities.
to learn new solutions, tools and guiding principles to enable the emergence of sustainability and resilience for the future of cities now.
to discover the unique contributions that you make to the aliveness of the Human Hive.
Beyond Resilient (delivered LIVE online) enables Practitioners, Catalysts and Meshworkers to build capacitating scaffolds so that cities work for everyone. Participants grow their leadership to serve the city to thrive within the Master Code of Care: Caring for Self, Others, Place, Planet.
Faculty are Marilyn Hamilton & Beth Sanders.
Click here for Details and Registration.
Integral City Inquiry & Action: Designing Impact for the Human Hive, Edition 2
From the Foreword to Integral City Inquiry & Action: Designing Impact for the Human Hive
by Paul van Schaik, Founder/Creator and Managing Curator of Urban Hub: Thrivable Cities Series; founder of IntegralMENTORS; Co-Founder Integral Without Borders; Founder/Founder/Principal Associate iSchaik Development Associates; Founding member of the Integral Institute
This second edition of Marilyn Hamilton’s second book … takes her people-centred co-creation on Integral Cities from theory into action. It is a how-to-do-it book that has been enthusiastically adopted around the world with a great following and users in Russia, Europe and the Americas.
As the integral framework shows so clearly, in order for healthy human development, and thus city development to occur, our individual and communal personal development becomes key.
Lewis Mumford wrote of this in 1960.
Before modern man can gain control over the forces that now threaten his very existence, he must resume possession of himself. This sets the chief mission for the city of the future: that of creating a visible regional and civic structure, designed to make man at home with his deeper self and his larger world, attached to images of human nature and love.
Integral City Inquiry and Action is more than a toolkit for action – it is also a manifesto of how to proceed if we seriously want to build sustainable thriving cities that take into account the myriad voices and worldviews of all people, communities, organizations and care for the planet. It is a must have book for all who want to join or lead the exciting evolutionary journey of making our cities a joyous place to live, grow and thrive. Read it, and then use it for ongoing reference and inspiration.
Check Amazon to order.
Integral City & Constellation Empowering EventsIntegral City Lectures, Keynotes, Webinars Video Recordings
UP! Convergence 2020 – Marilyn Hamilton – Integral City: Co-Evolving Gaia’s Organs for Unity & Peace – lecture at Unity and Peace Conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxiI_zdWNlY&feature=youtu.be
JFK Bruce Alderman Eutopia Lecture Series – How Do We Create Thriving Human Habitats Eutopia – Planetary Wisdom Civilization https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLTUZDvg45k&list=PLgwOm2rs964fwWcxPKCz9mHoKD0P9urSP&index=2
In the series based on Karen O’Brien’s book, You Matter More Than You Think, Marilyn Hamilton spoke on “Fractals Matter” . https://youtu.be/tHBGOf68kOY
Connections to our Constellation of Organizations
Integral Without Borders will be offering more webinars like the successful Integral Project Design for Social Transformation and its ongoing IWB Virtual Café.
Unity Community Whole World View, October Newsletter WWV Newsletter WWV https://mailchi.mp/wholeworld-view/june-newsletter-unitycommunity-9460801
Peace day 2020 Global Youth Assembly – a Youth delegation arrives at the UN City, Copenhagen on a Vikingship. Youth shared how to meet all needs while meeting needs of planet during Humanity Rising UN75 Special — Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Founding of the United Nations https://ubiverse.org/events/humanity-...
MORE INFO
Keep abreast of our Integral City Events on the Mighty Network – just click here.
Join Marilyn Hamilton/Integral City monthly for our free zoom Views from the Balcony – 9am GMT – 2nd Wednesday of month.Or join Beth Sanders/Nest City monthly for our free zoom Street Corner Visiting – – 8pm GMT – 4th Tuesday of the Month.
Meshworker of the Year 2020: Ellen van Dongen
Meet Ellen van Dongen, Integral City Meshworker 2020. Ellen van Dongen is the Founder and producer of Lifemaps.NL. Her passion and the purpose of Lifemaps.NL is to nourish the self-learning and creational powers in people. As a biologist Ellen has brought to each one of her Lifemaps designs, her astute living systems approach, informed from her long career in systemic business development and strategic consulting. Her work has always been value based and purpose oriented.
City of the Year 2020: Edmonton, Canada
Edmonton, the city that plans for disruption, is Integral City of the Year 2020. Edmonton tested its new City Plan, made to withstand disruption, with humanity’s first pandemic in a century. Here’s what Edmonton has to say for itself: “The City Plan–a roadmap for good days, challenging days, future days in Edmonton.”
Developed over the course of two years, it was heading to Council for approval just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit Edmonton. City Council went into emergency mode, and it looked like the City Plan might be one of many casualties and never make it back on Council’s agenda. But as spring and summer progressed, the plan started to come into its own as the community realized that the plan, designed with disruption in mind, was passing its first test before it was even adopted.
Celebrating Power as Planet-of-Cities in the Coming Quarter of 2021
Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.
Jane Jacobs
December 21 marks the start of what Integral City calls the Power Quarter (from December 21 to March 20). As our world trades the global challenge of the pandemic from 2020, we can be grateful that we have survived. It now behooves us, as we are filled with the hope from the promise of the vaccine, to reframe our connection to the whole of the planet so that that will enable regenerativity in ways way we have not yet imagined. If we seek fire for the second time, then this regenerativity must be imbued with the Love and Care for self, others, places and planet. What fears from 2020 do you trade for dreams of 2021? How can we use the massive global learning experience of 2020 to translate from a species’ healthcare response to the same level and speed of care for restoring the planet’s key regenerative capacities? If you could take on one challenge that would make a difference for this year what would it be? If you broke that down to one mini-challenge per month what would that be? What about one per week? Or even one per day? Visit us on the our Integral City Website and Blog or tell us about your aspirations for regenerating our planet of cities in 2021, in our Mighty Network.
Meshful Blessings of this Sacred Season for our Planet of Cities from
Marilyn Hamilton and the Integral City Constellation Corps Team
PS Here are some FREE resources for Growing Up Integral Cities:
Integral City Series of New Talking Books – to listen/download click here:
Introductions to Book 1, Book 2, Book 3
Talking Book 2 (all 16 chapters) Integral City Inquiry & Action: Designing Impact for the Human Hive Integral City
Video links from Humanity Rising Summit – Marilyn Hamilton Panelist and/or Moderator
Day 20 Whole Systems Change https://ubiverse.org/documents/humanity-rising-day-20—recording
Day 56 Healthy Human Habitats https://ubiverse.org/documents/humanity-rising-day-56—recording
Day 67 Regenerative Economics https://ubiverse.org/documents/humanity-rising-day-67—recording
Graphic eBook Urban Hub 21: Coming of Age – Dare to Dream
Research:
Johan Rockstrom: We must act now to re-stabilize the planet in 10 years.
Bees Research – Networks same as humans Unexpected similarity between honey bee and human social life
Integral City Blogs
Cities Need You to be an Island of Calm in Sea of Turbulence
Humanity Rising. Ubiquity University. Integral City. Join our Circles of Care
Learn How to Resonate Your City Voice With All City Voices
Lifemaps – Waking Up the Human Hive in Europe Caravan of Unity
How Integral City frameworks can strengthen our immune systems as the best biomimicry defence against the pandemic. The series includes:
Breakdown Deepens, Divine Remix Stalls in the City
Movers/Shakers/Makers/Carers Who are Making Our Intelligences Visible to Us
4 + 1 Voices Generate Antibodies of Care in the Pandemic City
Master Code Multiplies More Antibodies of Care in the Pandemic City
7. This blog series explores calming practices and resources from the four quadrants of reality used in the Findhorn Community during the pandemic months of 2020. They include:
All Quadrants – Finding a Road to Calm Through the Quadrants in Findhorn
Upper Left Intentional – Islands of Calm – a Findhorn Meditation for VUCA Times
Upper Right Behavioral – The Flash of the Phoenix Tail – Responses to Findhorn Lockdown Policies
Lower Left Cultural – Phoenix Rising as Findhorn Community Spirit When Life Conditions Challenge Life
Lower Right Systems/Structures – Findhorn’s Web of Structures and Infrastructures of Care
9. Integral City Meshworker 2020: Ellen van Dongen
10. Edmonton: Integral City of Year 2020
11. This blog series explores Regenerativity as:
· an Act
· a Relationship and
6. Newsletters Past Issues 2020 and 2019
Integral City Reflective Organ – December 2019: Power Over – Power With – Power As
Integral City MetaBlog 2019 – A synthesis and index of all Integral City Blogs from 2019.
Integral City Reflective Organ – March Equinox 2020: Superordinate Goal in a VUCA World
Integral City Reflective Organ – June Solstice 2020: Lockdown Wakes Up the Human Heart
Integral City Reflective Organ – September Equinox 2020: Places of Unity Peace and Partnership
7. Integral City MetaBlog 2020 – A Synthesis and index of all Integral City Blogs from 2020
December 17, 2020
Is Regenerativity an Evolutionary Pattern?
Living systems are defined by 3 characteristics:
They survive
They connect with their environment
They regenerate.
So regenerativity is fundamental to a living system like a city. As living systems cities, regeneration in the city can be seen through all 5 Maps of the City.
Map 1 reveals regenerativity through the process of developmental growth that transcends and includes the stages of development that human systems traverse. Regenerativity arises when the individuals and their collectives transform to a more complex stage that means they discover new ways to survive and connect to their environment. For instance, during the pandemic most schooling shifted from the classroom to home. Teachers became replaced or supported by parents delivering home schooling. This change impacted the families of students and parents in bio/psycho/cultural/social ways. It impacted teachers and school administrations, universities and colleges and government education ministries, challenging all their assumptions about how/when/where to sustain, connect and regenerate educational cycles in cities. This caused some circles of learning to upcycle and expand and others to down-cycle and contract – showing up on this Map 1 at different levels in all 4 quadrants.
Map 2 reveals regenerativity because it shows the nested holarchy of city systems and thereby the influence they have on one another – as an individual is a member of family, neighbourhood, workplace, recreational team, voting party, community association, city precinct, eco-region and nation. Regenerativity can ripple through this entire system of nested connections. For example, in this year of covid the conditions of lockdown kept most people working at home, away from city centres, not using public transportation and utilizing the convenience of online communications. Regenerativity ripples through the entire network as people literally re-created in new ways (online dancing anyone?), worked away from central offices, consumed supplies through online platforms, were separated from family members and redefined their relationship to nature. If you lived in a nursing home, provided health care or delivered household goods your risk of survival was threatened and your opportunity to regenerate was possibly reduced.
Map 3 depicts the micro-meso-macro relationships of human capacity, through stages of development that impact your options for surviving, connecting with your environment and thus regenerating. Map 3 looks very much like cells multiplying in a petri dish – or a fetus developing in the womb. This view of the city reveals that survival, connecting to your environment and regenerating all occur through the lenses of our worldviews, capacities and interbeingness. During the pandemic this could impact your exposure to the virus and the options for healthcare. The differences in approaches were visible through the daily reporting of locations and numbers of infections, mortality rates and “R” numbers. These played out on national stages where national healthcare policies impacted all 3 characteristics of the city as living system. One could easily compare the experiences of New Zealand (who had extremely low covid rates) to the United States (who experienced very high covid rates) and the response strategies of different countries, e.g., China’s autocratically enforced city lockdowns versus Brazil’s laissez-faire repudiation of public health virus responses.
Map 4 reveals the organizational structures that have evolved over time. Research has shown that individual organizations have lifetimes much shorter than either individuals or cities. However, cities contain all these 8 organizational formats, in addition to the capability of constantly inventing new ways for regeneration to occur – through individual interconnection with all the 4 Voices in a myriad of groups, organizations and sectors. During the pandemic, the Economist reported that the Healthcare sector changed more quickly in response to the virus than had ever happened before. If one considers a city to be a super-organism that contains organs, organelles and cells, then the developmental options that are visible in Map 4 build in resiliency to enable adaptation to the changing environment. This in turn can enable regenerativity at a different level of complexity in which the threat occurs – this might happen at either a greater level of complexity where expansion occurs – or it can happen at a lower level of complexity where contraction occurs. Cities and countries must pay attention to the relationship between internal order and external life conditions to keep not only a steady state of sustainability but the possibilities for re-generation – literally creating conditions for the thriving of a new generation of Citizens (and 4 Voices).
Map 5 is a toroidal flow of energy that depicts the involutionary and evolutionary flow of life energy in a city. As the map of spirituality in the city, it is tracing the journey of life before and after it manifests with a need to sustain itself; before and after it arises to connect with the existing environment; and before and after regenerativity replicates the pattern embedded in the bio/psycho/cultural/system DNA of the individuals, groups and cultures in the city. The flow of energy in Map 5 represents the cycle of regenerative life on a grand scale. It reveals the never-ending quest embedded in city emergence. It captures the exhilaration of expansionary possibilities – like any boom town can tell you – and the sluggishness of cities locked down against their natural expressiveness – like any human habitat who has lost their economy or raison d’etre – such as any mining or fishing village deprived of their “catch” – or during the pandemic any learning retreat deprived of their spiritual seekers.
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All the maps of Integral City reveal that regenerativity is not inevitable, but regenerativity is necessary to grow Care for survival, deepen Context for connecting wisely with our environments and expand Capacity to enable healthy regenerativity that depends on wellbeing at every scale from person, people, place to planet (as we explore in Book 3: Integral City 3.7: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives).
This blog series explores Regenerativity as:
an Act
a Relationship and
an Evolutionary Pattern.
Is Regenerativity a Cultural Relationship?
Regenerativity arises from the relationship of the 4 Voices. As they connect in the city, they find the energy for change and in the process create a culture of regenerativity.
The opportunity for regenerativity is always arising because the dynamics of the city mean the relationship between Citizens, Civic Managers, Business/Innovators and the 3rd Sector is always changing. The 4 Voices of the city in relationship with one another can evolutionarily support, culturally inspire and transitionally guide each other because they depend on one another to optimize their wellbeing.
Civic Managers depend on being voted in and/or the support of taxes or fees for public services at City Hall, Education, Health, Police, Fire, Emergency Response. It is Citizen votes and taxes that fuel those offices. The regenerativity of these Civic Management services must in turn support the resilience and regenerativity of Citizens.
By the same token, Business/Innovators depend on Citizens to be their customers and clients. Without the purchases of Citizen consumers Business/Innovators would not have the flow of revenues to finance the production or services. And Citizens depend on Business/Innovators to meet their needs for everything from the basics of food and shelter to the conveniences of recreation, transportation and communication.
The Third Sector/Civil Society depends on Citizen effort, resources and contributions that range from physically volunteering to financially supporting. Citizens, in turn, are the beneficiaries of the not-for-profit philanthropies, non-governmental organizations and faith communities.
Not only, do we see the interconnections of the 4 Voices amongst each other, but inevitably each Voice is linked in a supply chain with others of the same Voice.
Thus, we can view the City as a Regenerative Economy where energy flows through the living system like air and blood through a living body.
We have written elsewhere, how evolution biologist, Elisabet Sahtouris thinks of a cell as a city – because the fractal patterns that exist at cellular level are repeated up the scale of living systems to the organelles (organizations) and organs (cities) of Gaia herself. Thus, cities reflect the same patterns as cells and the regenerative capacity of the smallest system (cell) impacts through the relationship across cultures and scale, the regenerative capacity of the largest systems (city and planet).
Regenerativity is the quality of living systems that enables their aliveness in all cultures at every scale. Regeneration perpetuates person, people and place, all of which, in turn, enable the planet to be a living system.
When we consider the consciousness and culture of human systems, regenerativity cannot simply be relegated to a biological or systemic function. Regenerativity must arise from a consciousness that takes responsibility for creating the conditions for regeneration. Furthermore, individual consciousness interacts with group consciousness to co-create a culture of regenerativity.
Daniel Christian Wahl, concludes his book on Designing Regenerative Cultures (2016) with these thoughts:
As life, as nature, as consciousness, as universe we can bring forth a world in which humanity, like the rest of life, creates conditions conducive to life. Living the questions together is the practice of doing so responsively and responsibly, using our human capacities for collective intelligence, foresight and vision to get clear about our collective intentions and to design and co-create the regenerative communities we want to live in.
Daniel goes on to assert: “The intention to act as a cultural creative, a transition designer and an evolutionary activist in the co-creation of regenerative cultures is something that deeply informs [his] being and … doing.”
May our relationships, deeply embedded in our regenerative cultures, strengthen us to transition into living fully the Master Code of Care that enables our regenerative persons, people, places and planet.
This blog series explores Regenerativity as:
an Act
a Relationship and
an Evolutionary Pattern.
Is Regenerativity an Act or Capacity?
The act of generativity is centred in the act of creation. Creation arises when any two or more elements are brought together to reveal something new – something that distinguishes it from the source resources.
The act of regenerativity indicates that generation happens more than once. It is an act that repeats itself to produce dependably the same results.
At Findhorn Ecovillage, where I live in Scotland, our community has generated a symbol of the myth of Regeneration. We have created a mosaic of a grand Phoenix. The act of creating the art, regenerated a community spirit. The completion of the project regenerated our belief that we could work together to complete a worthy goal. And the contemplation of this mythical bird arising from the ashes of despair in the pandemic year, reminds us that regeneration is an act that involves all of us – body, mind, heart and soul. Only through the act of regeneration do we gain the capacity of regenerativity.
In the wider world of Nature, regenerativity may happen on a cycle or season – like the dandelion that regenerates as soon as its bloom turns into a seedpod.
Regenerativity may happen in a vessel of regeneration – like an egg, a womb, a hive. In all these cases regenerativity is supported by the life conditions that secure the energy necessary to regenerate.
Regeneration is the act – while regenerativity is the capacity to regenerate. While life conditions are stable regenerativity can result in sustainability. The act of regeneration is the third quality – the feedback capacity – of all living systems – which by definition must be able to survive, connect with their environment and regenerate.
Our Earth system provides a meta-environment to contain all the other environments wherein living systems survive and regenerate. As such it has natural limits to its matter, energy and information cycles where regenerativity must realize its natural constraints. Any living system that surpasses the capacity for its environment to sustain itself, will find a natural response that contracts the capacity to regenerate.
The regenerativity of humans in our Human Hives is fast reaching a series of tipping points where our disrespect of planetary boundaries will render our connections to our environment (aka life conditions) mis-matched to our species’ capacity to sustain itself. The fears of climate experts are that when more than a cluster of critical tipping points are passed, life as we know it on Earth will not be sustainable and runaway, intersecting, interacting tipping points will disable healthy regeneration.
Many believe that the pandemic of 2020 has been gifted to humans as a particularly visible, virulent transgression of the relationship between humans and other species, thus releasing the covid virus as an unforeseen consequence. This viral consequence has impacted every Human Hive and forces us to re-value and respect the life conditions that make regeneration possible and regenerativity a capacity we must deeply respect in order to restore and recalibrate.
This blog series explores Regenerativity as:
an Act
a Relationship and
an Evolutionary Pattern.
Edmonton: Integral City of Year 2020
Edmonton tested its new City Plan, made to withstand disruption, with humanity’s first pandemic in a century.Here’s what Edmonton has to say for itself:
“The City Plan–a roadmap for good days, challenging days, future days in Edmonton.”
Developed over the course of two years, it was heading to Council for approval just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit Edmonton. City Council went into emergency mode, and it looked like the City Plan might be one of many casualties and never make it back on Council’s agenda. But as spring and summer progressed, the plan started to come into its own as the community realized that the plan, designed with disruption in mind, was passing its first test before it was even adopted.
In the fall of 2020, City Council held its public hearing and made its final decision to approve the plan. Here’s what Mayor Don Iveson had to say:
“This is one of the pieces of public policy that I will be most proud of when I leave office next year because it embodies one of the most important aspects of why I became mayor: to build a better city for our next generation so that more of our kids and grandkids might choose to say here and be proud of their hometown and help to build it.”
Here’s the plan, in one 25 word question:What choices do we need to make to be a healthy, urban and climate resilient city of two million people that supports a prosperous region?
The City Plan lays out those choices.
Three quick links to help you explore The City Plan:
A fun website (with lots of movable pieces) that tells the story of The City Plan and allows exploration: https://cityplan.edmonton.ca
An short article that serves as nice overview: https://transforming.edmonton.ca/the-city-plan-a-roadmap-for-good-days-challenging-days-future-days-in-edmonton/
The City Plan website with the plan itself, maps and a policy search platform: https://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/city_vision_and_strategic_plan/city-plan.aspx
Edmonton demonstrates all of the Integral City Intelligences at a world-class level.Contexting Intelligences
Ecosphere — A liveable city means that development and sustainability do not compete. Conscious decision-making will enable climate resilience. Edmonton has modelled and committed to climate targets. As Edmonton grows, it will not consume more land. Further, Edmonton has adopted a new adaptation strategy and action plan to ensure the community contributes to global greenhouse gas emission reductions.
Emergence — Edmonton embraces itself as a rebuildable city. Instead of letting unexpected challenges define the city, it chooses to adapt, to plan to adapt, to enable adaptation.
Integral — For many years, the Integral City model has actively shaped the work of several City of Edmonton projects. The City Plan was no exception. Clear voices of citizens, business, community organizations and city hall, and other public institutions, are woven into the plan. The intelligence of these perspectives makes the plan meaningful.
Living — The City Plan charts a course for a welcoming, inclusive and compassionate city. The plan will not sit on a shelf, instead it is designed to be regularly updated, be evergreen. Further, The City Plan imagines the city as a place where humans and nature live together.
Individual and Collective Intelligences
Individual: Inner and Outer — The values of of Edmontonians, gathered in the engagement processes, served as the organizing structure for the plan. The purpose of the City Plan is to enable Edmontonians to belong and contribute, feel at home, preserve what matters most, create and innovate, thrive, and have equitable access to the city. The values are also described in little videos about how Edmontontians want to experience their city.
Collective: Structure — Over the last few years, Edmonton has chosen to change its shape, from a sprawling prairie city to one that will double in size by growing up rather than out. The City Plan entrenches social, economic and ecological choices in legislation.
Collective: Cultural — The culture of Edmonton is captured in the process of creating the plan, as well as the plan itself. Moreover, the plan embodies Edmonton by using the values identified by Edmontonians in the engagement process to organize the plan. It is a plan in which people can find themselves.
Strategic Intelligences
Inquiry — The “spine” of the plan’s creation process, and the plan itself is a question: What choices do we need to make to be a healthy, urban and climate resilient city of two million people that supports a prosperous region? The City Plan embodies inquiry.
Meshworking — The City Plan is about connections: the between Edmontonians to make the plan, but also designing a city explicitly to foster people connecting with each other in their communities. As a community of communities, Edmonton offers an excellent example of creating a city vision by “connecting the system to more of itself.”
Navigating — The City Plan is all about movement and equitable opportunities for movement in the city. The scenario modelling behind the creation of the plan examined assumptions about how to build a city that fosters the 15-minute city and creates a stronger social fabric and equitable transportation options. The City of Edmonton has also redesigned a new bus network system and is constructing new light rail train lines in the city. The City adopted a new bike plan in 2020, supporting the directions of The City Plan. Edmonton is purposefully recreating how citizens navigate the city.
Evolutionary Intelligences
Edmonton exemplifies a city that responds to changing life conditions with commitment. Edmonton chose to create the plan with disruption in mind by setting a direction rather than prescribing action. In doing so, it passed its first disruptive hurdle by naming who it wants to be and naming the choices it makes to be an inclusive and climate resilient city.
Small, Diverse, Agile Planning Team
The director of The City Plan, Kalen Anderson, led a masterful process with a small team, actively weaving in and with the diverse voices within government and stretching far into the community of Edmonton.
The practice of planning our cities was put on it’s head. Instead of convention, where planners come up with a plan and then seek feedback, Kalen’s City Plan team hosted a city-wide inquiry, captured the results, and conducted extensive technical studies to test what choices would get the desired results.
The result: a plan rooted in the values of the community that fosters resilience amidst disruption. Kalen and team invited the city to be in conversation with itself in good days, creating a plan that is serving Edmonton well in these challenging days–and future days.
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For more information about how The City Plan came about, please explore the range of documents on this page: technical studies, policy development documents, and the “What We Are Hearing” reports that document the engagement process while The City Plan was created.
Congratulations to Edmonton, Integral City of the Year 2020.
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For prior Integral City of the Year Awards see:
Amsterdam – City of the Year 2019
6AIKA Finland – Cities of the Year 2018
Russia’s 3 City Associations – City of the Year 2017
Fort McMurray – City of the Year 2016.
Paris – City of the Year 2015 .
December 15, 2020
Integral City Meshworker 2020: Ellen van Dongen
Ellen van Dongen is the Founder and producer of Lifemaps.NL. Her passion and the purpose of Lifemaps.NL is to nourish the self-learning and creational powers in people.
As a biologist Ellen has brought to each one of her Lifemaps designs, her astute living systems approach, informed from her long career in systemic business development and strategic consulting. Her work has always been value based and purpose oriented.
As a Client Executive at IBM Ellen developed large scale new business in long-term partnerships. As a Strategic Advisor in Social Security in The Netherlands she played a role as change manager, using a systemic approach, involving all stakeholders.
Ellen’s’ award of Meshworker of the Year 2020 recognizes her Lifemaps
initiative and endeavour in the Caravan of Unity (CU). CU took place in September 2020.
In partnership with Integral City, Lifemaps TM contributed to the CU event which was hosted by Co-Creating Europe (CCE). CCE offered the first of a series of Lifemaps aiming to wake up the Master Code of Care and energize the Caravan of Unity.
Lifemaps was the ‘avenue’ chosen to experience the rich meshworking potential of Integral City by gamifying the process of listening to the 4 Voices and the 12 intelligences for each of our cities. In this context, for the CCE CU, the lifemap scenarios were designed to Invite the cities and their participants to bring to the table the 4 voices of the city.
Lifemaps.NL helped participants to visualize what is going on around key themes in the world, such as the pandemic lockdown and Climate Crisis. They provided a realistic overview, showing connections, priorities, and indicators for action. The Lifemaps.NL workshops occurred in 4 different cities in Europe:
Findhorn, Scotland, UK, on Zoom (facilitated by Marilyn Hamilton)
Tampere, Finland, on Zoom (facilitated by Taina Ketola)
Klaipeda, Lithuania, on Zoom (facilitated by Rasa Kvaukaite)
Lisbon, Portugal (facilitated by Patrizzia Cappelletti Rocha)
Integrating Lifemaps and the Integral City Master Code of Care was genuinely organic and natural as consequence of Ellen’s process of creation and maturation of the games.
On her creation journey Ellen helped city facilitators to connect the dots for the participants. She showed how Lifemaps can be instruments that support the discovery of the hidden and forgotten connections between humankind and nature. She created awareness of what this means, for the individual, community, business, civil society and government. By making all this explicit through the game, new pathways leading to a more natural world were opened up. We learned humans not only take care of self and others, but also of place and planet, the Master Code of Care for Integral Cities.
Ellen designed Lifemaps as a combination of a table poster and several sticker sets. It can carry a multi-layered process: intuitive mapping of reality, doing research based on the map, choosing priorities and creating a compass for the future. There are ready-to-use lifemaps for personal transformation, and pre-structured scenarios to visualize your world view, reflect about world citizenship and imagine your place in a natural world.
Ellen develops new scenarios for individual perspective. However, Lifemaps scenarios for the collective perspective are developed in co-creation with a core question. In these cases, sticker sets are tailor-made, based on the input of the collective and reflect the real situation, in context.
While Ellen was developing Lifemaps scenarios, sticker and symbol sets, she was also a member of the Integral City Constellation team.
In addition, Ellen Is co-author of Urban Hub Volume 20, part of a series of graphical books, produced by Paul Van Schaik, Integral Mentors. and Integral City. This volume, Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World, had a special focus on Climate Change and Ellen contributed a Lifemaps for Integral City.
Ellen is a proud mother, nature lover and blessed to share her home with the kindest cat in the world. She lives near Utrecht, Netherlands.
For Ellen’s initiatives in responding to the pandemic and contributing to the Caravan of Unity, Europe we are proud to award Ellen van Dongen Meshworker of Year, 2020.
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For more Ellen’s Lifemaps connect with this website: Lifemaps.NL.
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Definition of Meshworker
A Meshworker of the Year demonstrates the meshworking intelligence as defined on the website . 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.
Candidates for the Meshworkers of the Year Award invest dollars, time, effort and expertise at a level of complexity that serves a whole city or cities. Here are our previous winners:
2017: Hub Co-Evolucio, Reus, Catalonia, Spain
2016: Morel Fourman, Gaiasoft,Africa
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