Marilyn Hamilton's Blog, page 29

Views from the Balcony – The SCUWED Un-Normal – July 15, 2020

I stepped out on my balcony this morning with a quizzical sense of change-in-process. In this second half of the year of pandemic – our 7th month of a shared world experience – people are talking about returning to the “old normal”. Or wondering what will be the “new normal”.

My sense is that we are on the tightrope suspended between the two – in fact it is the trapeze wire  made famous by Danaan Parry’s essay “Transformation of Fear” converted to song by Fran McKendree https://franmckendree.com/album/1438696/the-parable-of-the-trapeze-or-the-fear-of-transformation. Perry says:

“Most of the time, I spend my life hanging on for dear life to my trapeze-bar-of-the-moment. It carries me along at a certain steady rate of swing and I have the feeling that I’m in control of my life.

I know most of the right questions and even some of the answers.

But every once in a while as I’m merrily (or even not-so-merrily) swinging along, I look out ahead of me into the distance and what do I see? I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It’s empty and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart of hearts I know that, for me to grow, I must release my grip on this present, well-known bar and move to the new one.

Each time it happens to me I hope (no, I pray) that I won’t have to let go of my old bar completely before I grab the new one.” (1)

I look out from my balcony and I see not one – but several trapeze bars suspended in the air before me – with no landing spot ahead for me.

I observe the bars have names on them – they are the list of what I am noticing is not “normal” from just last year. Yet they are not deemed “abnormal” by any standardizing measures. Nor are they yet a “new normal”.

So, I have made a new category – the “un-normal”. These are the in-between spaces – the circumstances that people are remarking as strange – because they don’t feel normal; curious – because we are not certain if they are passing experiences or are they here to stay?; unrelenting – because we just can’t stop watching; weird – because people seem willing to try anything; exasperating – because authorities keep changing their minds; dangerous – because we seem to have lost touch with the value of life.

So here are my nominations for life that is SCUWED:

Strange: Emperor has no clothes is widespread phenomenon – White men in power reveal their vulnerability publicly, apparently believing they have some innate immunity to biology that is no respecter of human hierarchies.

Curious: Heroes are not what they used to be – Greta Thunberg captures the media’s attention with her message to “listen to the science” but refuses to play by their rules of “normal” heroism.

Unrelenting: Addictive feedback endlessly loops – Reports on the covid statistics – daily, hourly, by country, diagnosed, tested, recovered, died.

Weird: No safety in no symptoms – Asymptomatic carriers can suffer severe brain damage.

Exasperating: Every day some authority changes its mind – Releasing or tightening lockdown rules; Reinterpreting covid R factor; Face masks worn or not? Quarantine constraints. Travel restrictions. Pubs open or closed. Public gatherings (dis)allowed.

Dangerous: VUCA world is normal world – Volatile news; Uncertain authority; Complex interactions are no respecter of borders; Ambiguous futures for youth.

In such a SCUWED world, I look for some “normal” comfort that we might survive. Will the wisdom of the Fear of Transformation prevail even in these times?

“… transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather with giving ourselves permission to “hang out” in the transition between trapezes. Transforming our need to grab that new bar, any bar, is allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens. It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening in the true sense of the word. Hurtling through the void, we just may learn how to fly.” (2)

I am curious – what would you nominate as evidence of our SCUWED world? How do you recognize Perry’s image of change in the void as the world we inhabit right now? Can you believe we will catch these trapeze bars and find the landing spot on the other side of “un-normal”? Will we learn to fly?

Notes Approval is Pending for Use of these quotes:

(1), (2) From the book Warriors of the Heart by Danaan Parry.

All material quoted on these pages is copyrighted; used with permission from the Earthstewards Network http://www.earthstewards.org/ESN-Trapeze.asp   publishing@earthstewards.org 

Humanity Rising: Imagine Thriving Human Hives as Gaia’s Reflective Organs

Humanity Rising Solutions
This infographic was created for Humanity Rising Solutions online summit, July 16, 2020.
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3 Links to FREE Urban Hub 20: https://integralcity.com/2020/04/14/news-flash-urban-hub-20-accelerating-city-change-in-a-vuca-world/

Amsterdam: Integral City of the Year 2019: https://integralcity.com/2019/12/21/integral-city-2019-amsterdam/

Free Mighty Network with Nest City: https://integral-nest-city.mn.co/members

Humanity Rising Solutions July 16 https://humanityrising.solutions/agenda/

Beyond Resilient Online: Sept. 12 – Sept. 26, 2020 (7 x ½ days) https://integral-nest-city.mn.co/courses/2445024/content

Beyond Smart Online: November 27-29 , 2020 (3 x 2 hours) https://www.findhorncollege.org/course/beyond-smart-online/

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Listening to the Spirit of Cities …What is Needed to Make Visible a Global Network of integral Cities and Eco-regions?

At the World Unity Week conference, June 23, 2020, Diana Claire Douglas systemically constellated (SCW) a question that has been growing in the Integral City Community of Practice since the beginning of the year.

As Climate Change has both threatened cities and called them onto the world stage as key players in setting policy to change human behaviours at large scale. As the Coronavirus has circulated across the globe, invading cities who have been locked down by national governments for 3-4 months at a time, restricting movement of individuals and groups. As racial violence has erupted in cities in the USA and spread to other cities in Europe and around the world. As Humanity is Rising to respond to the first major traumatic event collectively experienced at the same time and way. As the World Unity Week prepares us to celebrate the UN Charter’s 75th Anniversary.

As cities everywhere are struggling with colonial style governance systems that neither Smart City Technology nor Resilient City Environmental approaches can appropriately address…

We are curious, how cities can reframe their paradigms as living systems, operating systems for effective governance and interconnections around the globe. We are asking, “What is needed to make visible a global network of Integral Cities and ecoregions?”

In this SCW, we sought that insight as an extension of the questions we ask every time we are invited to offer  an Integral City approach to design responses to the many VUCA challenges that the world’s cities now face.

In preparation, for this date set to convene an SCW online at the World Unity Conference, Integral City Practitioners responded to Diana Claire’s call for the Elements that should be present to answer this question. (For background on SCW see Diana Claire’s explanation of her work at her website www.knowingfielddesigns.com  and in the recently published free book Urban Hub 20: Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World.)

A long list (24+/-) Elements emerged that we wrote out and became the (VUCA) container for the SCW in all 3 of the rounds of constellating (for details in the positions of the elements in each Round see Note 1 below). Then Diana Claire invited the 14 people at the online SCW to make cards for the Key Elements who would explore the question: What is needed to make visible a global network of Integral Cities and ecoregions?

These Elements stepped forward to be represented as noted below in the 3 Constellation Patterns:

Spirit of Cities
Spirit of Integral Cities
City Guide
Global Network
Spirit of the Land
Spirit of Rivers
Humanity
Nature
Gaia     
Ecoregions
Mycelium
Unified Field
VUCA Life Conditions as Container (see Note 2 below)
Master Code of Care

Here is how our exploration revealed a powerful answer to our inquiry.

In Round 1 the Elements were somewhat static and subdued. They had little relationship with one another. A palpable fragmentation existed. Humanity was hiding as it looked down into the land – perhaps denying the circle of Life Conditions holding the whole constellation in tension.

In Round 2 the Ecoregions emerged as a new Element. Land spoke of its hard crust and molten core reminding us of its potential and possibility to explode.

When the Element Mycelium paid its surprise visit then connections and repatterning started to rapidly occur. Spirit of Cities (and Nature) noticed the Master Code of Care on the edge of the circle.

This opened the door to Round 3 when the Constellator expanded the Field we were playing in to include the Unified Field. This was represented by placing placeholding cards on the outside of the circle. and became an enlivening energy that prompted further motion

Global Network shifted from an objective/data network into a living mycelial web of connections that attracted the City Guide to wake up and move with Global Network to just above 6 on the 6-12 axis. Land spoke of its feminine/masculine energies. And Nature was attracted inside the circle just below 12 – with considerable enthusiasm on its part.

This movement of Life in Global Network and Nature and Land’s relaxation gave the Spirit of Cities courage to come down from its tower and nestle safely between Rivers and Ecoregion.

In a parallel move Spirit of Integral City moved closer to the container at 12 and 6 (still outside).

Humanity raised its head and spoke of its attraction to Rivers moving closer to her.

Witnesses commented on the Unity Energy as Love – paralleling Spirit of Cities and Nature attraction to the Master Code of Care.

Conclusions: Here is what we noticed as we thought about the experience in the SCW and the inquiry:

Prior interactions at the WUW affirmed the Integral City as an Evolutionary Impulse in the Field.
The revelation that the Global Network already existed as a natural mycelium network gave hope and optimism.
We have done many constellations on behalf of the Spirit of Cities. This is the first time City Guide has appeared. We will need to explore further who/what City Guide is. Perhaps City Guide is a role for Integral City Meshworks to play – with all cities as a witness who can give pointing out directions to what is emerging. City Guide is perhaps an acupuncturist who can amplify and/or dampen energies to balance flows within and between cities.
Nature can Play.
Spirit of Cities can feel safe and not threatened when connected to the Rivers.
Land can sense the acupuncture points of the cities (from the inside out).
I note that the final pattern is predominantly right-sided – indicating that manifesting a global network is emerging from the field.
Master Code of Care naturally attracts Spirit of City and Global Network, perhaps indicating that it is DNA for a natural global network?
The connection of Cities to Rivers was important. It would be a good message to the Lifemaps Play in the Caravan of Unity. And Lifemaps may become one of Global Network’s mycelium connectors.
Integral City is a pattern existing in the Knowing Field, so it is a potential like an implicate order.
With the recognition of the Unity Field as Love we created a map of Involution/Evolution – like Integral City Map 5.
City Guide could be witness to emergence of Evolutionary Impulse – revealing Master Code of Care; 5 Maps.
When you reveal Master Code of Care you reveal Humanity.
Intricate relationships exist historically, geographically, and integrally between Humanity, Rivers, Ecoregions and Spirit of Cities.

Notes:

Note 1: Details of the 3 Constellation Patterns

Round 1: The Representatives (located around the world in front of their computer screens with the clock diagram/VUCA container on their floor at home) sensed their locations  outside and within the container – locating their positions by the numbers on an analog clock. As Diana Claire called us to report in – each of us made an analog replica of the Elements on our individual diagrams.

Gaia at 6 outside
Nature at 12 outside
Global Network at 9 inside
City Guide at 9, inside Global Network
Rivers flowing around whole circle inside but locating at 3 inside
Spirit of Land – in the centre inside – but filling the whole container
Humanity – in the centre looking down into the earth/land
Spirit of Integral City – at 6 and 12 way outside the circle
Spirit of Cities – above the whole container on a tower above Humanity/land
As the Representatives reported in, we learned that Spirit of Cities felt very unsafe.
Humanity was contracted and sad/withdrawn.
City Guide was okay to start with but not able to converse with/about any changes.

Round 2

After some discussion between the Representatives that indicated little ability to shift or transform, 2 new Elements demanded to be recognized – the first was Ecoregions – who located themselves near Rivers and connected to Nature and Land.

The second was much more mischievous – and identifying itself as an invasive renegade – Mycelium. Mycelium informed us that the Networks already exist – they are natural and connect up all life in the soil – and that Nature as we know it couldn’t exist without Mycelium natural/subterranean connects – always, bridging, densifying, dynamically growing.

Round 3

With this Mycelium invader in our container, energy shifted – the rest of us Representative/Elements woke up.

And then Diana Claire initiated the final movement — introducing the Unified Field. The Unified Field  was located as a meta-energy/field that held the whole container of Elements.

Unified Field  was perceived as Love. It shifted all the Elements.
Nature came inside the circle at 12.
Land turned over on its back, with chest to the heavens, and expanded to fully relax and fill the container.
Rivers Flowed.
Global Network moved to 6 inside and became full of dynamic life, mimicking the Mycelium who was pervasive everywhere.
City Guide moved above Global Network along 6-12 axis.
Spirit of Cities felt safe by coming down from tower and locating about 1 pm between Eco-Regions and Nature.
Spirit of Integral City moved closer to the container – still outside – at 6 and 12.
Spirit of Cities and Nature both noticed the Master Code of Care on rim of Circle.

___

Note 2: Life Condition Elements Around Circle

Inequality
Infrastructure crumbling
Violence
Yin, yang and dark $
Complex systemic challenges
Sustainable
Unsustainable
Rich – poor gap
4 voices
Traditional cities
Resilient cities
Smart cities
Master code
History of lands – stolen
Governance
City Sprawl
Pollution

Integral City Reflective Organ – June Solstice 2020: Lockdown Wakes Up the Human Heart

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.

The chronicles of cities show us with certainty that a people who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. This knowledge combines the subjective and intersubjective life of the populace — the individual and collective consciousness— that must be mindful of the biological and structural life of the city.

Only in our conscious awareness (attention and intention) can we engage with the issues that are truly important in the external, visible, physical, objective and interobjective life of the city. It is yet again a reminder of the holographic nature of the city and how each of the four integral perspectives (subjective, intersubjective, objective and interobjective) necessarily includes all of the four integral perspectives.

Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive. Edition 2. 2019. Minneapolis, MN: Amaranth Press, p.21

Scroll to end of newsletter to access Free Resources.

Spontaneous Unity Arising

It is June 2020 and the first season of pandemic life which is in full swing in the global south is sliding into the second season of tentative release from lockdown, in the global north. Out of the depths of despair that following the pandemic statistics can bring, other positive and lifegiving energies are emerging.

  The Solstice marks the date of publication also marks the commencement of World Unity Week (WUW).

Visionary author Dr. Jude Currivan , co-Founder of WholeWorld-View commented:

” Love lies at the heart of a growing and collective perception of the inter-connectedness and innate unity of the whole world. ”

WUW is launched to recognize civil society as the sleeping giant that has awakened to its power to create great global movements for the transformation of humanity. Beginning with an Indigenous-led global Opening Ceremony that follows the sun starting on Friday, June 19, 10:00 PM EDT it leads to a World Unity Ceremony with over 100 NGOS and all the Interfaith and Inter-spiritual voices of Mother Earth on June 20, at 8:00 PM EDT.

The solstice broadcast and the week-long program are being carried by media platforms such as Unify, UPLIFT, the SINE Network, and Shift Network , comprising a potential audience of over 10 million people.

On June 23, 2020 World Unity Week is initiating the convergence of many of the different networks in the field of cities and regions. Integral City will co-facilitate the emergence of a visible global network of cities and eco-regions. We will use the Integral City GPS so that everyone can find their piece of the path in the emergent Cycle of Meshworking. We expect to progress through the stages of Networks – Community of Practices – Meshworks. Pragmatically this means that in WUW 20-27 June 2020 we will focus first on the Network phase.
We will create “Open Space” sessions to host critical conversations that lead to practical actions. We come together to collectively shape our common future, build momentum, inspire hope and catalyse deep transformation. Join us by registering here.

 W UW will end on June 27th with a celebration for the 75th Anniversary of the UN Charter.

World UNITY Week, is not intended to be a “one off” event, but is an open invitation for the global community to join in the monthly celebration of “The Global Days of Unity”, leading towards the 11 Days of Global Unity culminating in a large-scale global celebration across Peace Weekend 2020 (September 19-21), centered on the annual U.N. International Day of Peace (September 21).

Integral City Footnote: We plan to be part of the Unity Caravan, creating the opportunity for cities to explore Lifemaps from mid-summer to the Peace Weekend.

Humanity Rising Up

Parallel to WUW, Humanity Rising Solutions (HRS) continues (it started in May 2020) with daily broadcasts from 5-7pm CEST. Convened by Ubiquity University, and lead by President Jim Garrison and Chief Innovation Officer, Peter Merry, HRS plans to continue until the pandemic has abated and/or lockdowns are lifted.

Humanity Rising represents a movement of people and organizations coming together to take counsel on how to leverage the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic into an opportunity for human renewal and increased resilience to future challenges.

The goal of the Summit is to create an international coalition strong enough to transform conversations that matter into actions that make a difference.

Readers are invited to register here, and come together to chart a global and local course to new specifications, navigate with sustainable coordinates, and embrace new models that take the wellbeing of our planetary ecology and all communities into account.

Each day’s events are recorded and accessible from the Library for download. Marilyn Hamilton of Integral City had the honour of contributing The Evolutionary Impulse of Integral Cities to the June 10 exploration of Whole Systems Change (along with Richard Barrett, Hans Andeweg and Peter Merry). Get the recording link here.
Integral City will be back on July 16, leading a panel on Solutions for the Human Habitat.



Integral City GPS Wakes Up All Paths

The publication of Book 1 Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive inspired the creation of the GPS. It is a tool to help us discover the intelligences in cities – and for Practitioners, Catalysts and Meshworkers to discover their piece of the puzzle that contributes to making the whole city fully alive.

For WUW, we offer the bonus of a podcast explanation of the GPS operation here.

The 12 Intelligences embedded in the GPS are explained briefly on the Integral City website here. They are also explained in each chapter of Book 1, Edition 2 Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive.

 We share the explanation of the GPS design – and its 3 bezels (in this extract from Book 2 Inquiry & Action: Designing Impact for the Human Hive, Appendix C3).

Homo sapiens has built several types of cities—we focus on three types of cities: the Smart City driven by technology and industry; the Resilient city driven by ecological and eco-regional interdependencies; and the Integral City driven by the Master Code.

The Integral City GPS tool locates these 3 city types on 3 bezels that can move both independently and in synchrony.

At the core of the Integral City GPS lies the Evolutionary Intelligence, which provides the energetic impulse that drives all the other intelligences. Recognizing that every city emerges along an Evolutionary trajectory is also a core distinction of an Integral City .    Read the full story here.

Congrats to Integral City Beyond Smart Online Grads

We are pleased to congratulate 4 Cohorts of the Grads from our Beyond Smart Online courses. Meet them as members of our Integral City Mighty Network. You can join and interconnect with the growing Integral Nest City Community of Practice – just click here.

Upcoming Integral City & Constellation Events with People Purpose

Keep abreast of our Integral City Events on the Mighty Network – just click here.

Join us monthly for our free zoom Views from the Balcony – 8am BST –  2nd Wednesday of month: July 15, August 12, Sept. 16, Oct. 14, Nov. 18, Dec. 16.

Urban Hub 20 – Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World is the twentieth book in the series from Integral Urban Hub and IntegralMENTORS.  For this 20:20 vision of our VUCA world we have asked the creator of Integral City Meshworks Dr. Marilyn Hamilton to take on the task of our first-ever guest curator. Marilyn, author of the Integral City Book Series, has a vast experience in this area with a great network of fellow integralists. She has been inspired by the pioneer of city planning and sociology Patrick Geddes. His Outlook Tower, Camera Obscura and Summer Schools renewed old Edinburgh. We hope that the results of this highly readable and informative volume can renew and regenerate cities today. Together we have imagined how an Integral City Meshwork enables us to respond in a wholistic way to the life conditions of our VUCA world. Read about the Contents here.

Listen to an Interview about the book here.

Here are 3 ways to access the book:

SlideShare: FREE Download  https://www.slideshare.net/PauljvsSS/urban-hub20-accelerating-citychangein-a-vuca-world-thriveable-cities

  ISSUU: Free Online Flipbook  https://issuu.com/home/published/urbanhub20-vuca3

Amazon: Order Hard Copy 

ISBN-10:1660970334
ISBN-13:978-1660970339

UK      https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1660970334

Spain    https://www.amazon.es/dp/1660970334

Germany   https://www.amazon.de/dp/1660970334

USA    https://www.amazon.com/dp/1660970334

Book 1 Edition 2 Announcement – Integral City Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive – new Foreword by Elisabet Sahtouris

Evolving City Intelligences multiply and integrate all city capacities.

Marilyn Hamilton was an early researcher of Integral frameworks. Integral City Edition 2 is a significant application of the Integral model to the city scale of human systems. With more than 60% of humanity now living in cities, I recommend you learn how Integral City gives us critical intelligences to evolve the human hive.

—Ken Wilber, Integral Philosopher & Visionary, Author: Sex, Ecology & Spirituality; Integral Vision; Integral Spirituality

How are we evolving the human hive? 60% of humanity now lives in cities. Can city dwellers, like bees who pollinate the fields, act so intelligently, they add value to the planet? How can the clash of differences that separate people, purpose, profits and priorities generate fresh energy to solve 21st century VUCA problems? How do we propagate new pathways for community learning and give the 4 Voices of the city, fresh hope?

“Every city can enhance its own health with the unique and wonderful tools of this book and its field book, which enable readers to go deeply into, and thus truly understand, their city’s collective human psyche along with its physical infrastructure and thus to move forward in the way of genuine living entities. Read this book, share it with every ally you can, take it to your City Hall and get moving. There  is  a better world for us all ahead!”  Foreword to Edition 2,  Elisabet Sahtouris , Evolution Biologist

You Matter More Than you Think: Quantum Social Change in Response to a World in Crisis

by Karen O’Brien

You Matter More Than You Think is the starting point for an inquiry about quantum social change and its implications for climate change. The book explores how the metaphors and meanings of quantum physics can contribute to new understandings of the relationship between individual change, collective change, and systems change. It considers how paradigms and practices can change the way we relate to each other, the environment, the planet, and the future.

This is a book for those who are interested in social change, and open to the possibility that each of us can contribute to an equitable and thriving world. It is also for those who are concerned about climate change and may be feeling a deep anxiety about the future and if /how they matter. Most of all, it is about why you matter more than you think.

Nest City: How Citizens Serve Cities and Cities Serve Citizens, by Beth Sanders, argues that our linear ways of thinking about, organizing and planning our cities does not meet the true nature of cities as complex and messy systems. There are no simple solutions to the challenges we face: many citizens don’t feel they belong; we don’t agree about how to best move around; many don’t have jobs, or homes they can afford; we make running businesses challenging; and we are facing challenges with the climate crisis. At a time when understanding the relationship between our physical, economic and social habitats is essential, Sanders sets forth an approach to work with the disruptions of our times, drawing on her experience as a city planner and a relationship-broker in the conflicts that surface in city life.

The result is a book that articulates the importance of having a sense of direction, being willing as citizens and cities to learn along the way, and accept the uncertainty and messiness of cities as opportunities to improve our cities–so they serve citizens well. Nest City will forever alter the way you look at your city, your local public institutions and community organizations and business–and how you think about and contribute to your city. Order your copy here.

Celebrating People in the Planet-of-Cities in the Coming Quarter of 2020

June 21 marks the start of what Integral City calls the People Quarter (from June 21 to September 20). Who is waking up in your city? How can the GPS help you attract and align the 4 Voices of the city? How can you imagine starting with a network, moving to a Community of Practice and then a Meshwork to solve problems in your city?  Visit us on the our Integral Nest City Mighty Network or Blog. We want to know how you have been inspired by World Unity Week and Humanity Rising to work together with others?

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 Waking Up our Human Hives:


World Unity Week Online Summit


Humanity Rising Solutions Online Summit – Now Until Pandemic Cycle Resolves


Book Pre-Release, Dr. Karen O’Brien You Matter More Than You Think: Quantum Social Change in Response to a World in Crisis


The Ecologist, Herbert Girardet: Coronascene Manifesto


Guy Dancey, PracticalUtopian: Who are We? Where are we Going? Some Reflections in this COVID-19 Time  


Integral City Blogs 



Urban Hub 20 Series:·

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


Reframing 10 Urban Injustices: With Master Code of Care Integral City GPS Wakes Up All Paths Series on Right-Sizing Cities:

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?
Space to Resolve 4 Gaia’s Quadrivium of Traumas
Covid19 Lessons for Right-Sizing Cities



7. Newsletters Past Issues 2020 and 2019

Integral City Reflective Organ – June 2019: 4 Voices Imagine the Human Hive
Integral City Reflective Organ – September 2019: Strike the City vs City on Strike
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 GPS Wakes Up All Paths

The publication of Book 1 Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive inspired the creation of the GPS. It is a tool to help us discover the intelligences in cities – and for Practitioners, Catalysts and Meshworkers to discover their piece of the puzzle that contributes to making the whole city fully alive.

The 12 Intelligences of the Integral City are embedded in the GPS. They are explained briefly on the Integral City website here. They are also explained in each chapter of Book 1, Edition 2 Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive.

 

We share the explanation of the GPS design – and its 3 bezels (in this extract from Book 2 Inquiry & Action: Designing Impact for the Human Hive, Appendix C3).

Homo sapiens has built several types of cities—we focus on three types of cities: the Smart City driven by technology and industry; the Resilient city driven by ecological and eco-regional interdependencies; and the Integral City driven by the Master Code.

The Integral City GPS tool locates these 3 city types on 3 bezels that can move both independently and in synchrony.

At the core of the Integral City GPS lies the Evolutionary Intelligence, which provides the energetic impulse that drives all the other intelligences. Recognizing that every city emerges along an Evolutionary trajectory is also a core distinction of an Integral City ….

The Smart City Locator is situated on the 2nd bezel. It uses Logic Models to track the logic of cities—based on Strategic Rational thinking using the intelligences of Inquiry, Meshworking, and Navigating. It depends on scientific and methodical Inquiry, research and development. It collects big data, maps patterns, tracks vital signs, and navigates the city’s neural networks for effectiveness and efficiency. The Smart City Locator organizes the favorite functions used by Civic Managers and Citizens and asks: How are we doing in reaching targets? Do I have the basics of life? Do I have a job? Are the stores open? Do the buses run on time?

The Resilient City Locator is situated on the 3rd bezel. It is like the Motherboard of our intelligence system based on the natural systems we have inherited from Mother Earth. The Resilient City Locator locates our Human Hives in the context of their intelligences related to Ecologies and eco-regions; their Emergent responsiveness to local conditions; the basic Integral realities of bio-psycho-culture-systems; and their embedded, recurrent dynamic Lifecycles. It relates the interdependent scales of our cities in terms of their inter-city and intra-city ecologies.

The Resilient City intelligences provide contexts for the Strategies of the Smart City intelligences. It is used by Civic Managers who track the external conditions of the eco-regions of our human hive—asking about climate, water, energy, population densities—to seek feedback that tells us if we are going to be successful at not just reaching our target once, but multiple years into the future. The Resilient City locator alerts Business Innovators to threats and opportunities needing remedies, adaptive strat­egies, innovations, and inventions. It activates a measure of large-scale systems integration. And working with these impact patterns, it leads us to the third locator.

The Integral City Locator is situated on the 1st bezel. It acts as the core intelligence chip that reflects the deepest intelligence of the Human Hive. It offers “Integral Intel Inside.” This chip embeds the core intelli­gences that enable human systems to be the most advanced life systems on earth. The Integral Integrator is built on the very simple architecture of Inner and Outer, Individual and Collective Capacities.

Outer Individual Intelligences include the external objective data elements tracked by the Smart City. The Outer Collective Intelligences include the external inter-objective infrastructural and systemic elements of cities mapped by the Resilient City—like the electric grid, transporta­tion systems, and the built environment.

Inner Individual Intelligences include the internal subjective phe­nomena of emotions, consciousness, beliefs, mindfulness, and intentions. Inner Collective Intelligences include the internal intersubjective realities of values, worldviews, vision, and culture.

The true distinctiveness of the Integral City locator arises from the power of the Inner Capacities—Individual and Collective Intelligences—that drive city life. … The Integral locator points especially to the Caring Capacities—the ones that emerge from our attention to living the Master Code … capacity to embrace greater circles of care—from self, to others, to place, to planet. [Thus] we expand our capacity to develop habitats that carry and support the life conditions that we most need to be Smart, Resilient, and Integral.

Note: Traditional Cities are not located with this GPS Locator.

Covid19 Lessons for Right-Sizing Cities

One of the interesting responses and strategies for responding to covid19 has been to define the right-size for co-existing in the same space in cities.

But while the rules may be useful (if not true) they are only partial. They are focusing on only one of four possible city “spaces”.

Firstly, the most used spatial measurements, in Integral City terms, are quantitative measures from the right-hand quadrants.

For the mis-named “social distancing” is merely bio-physical distancing – we can see that in the Integral City Map 1 – it just belongs to the Upper Right Quadrant of Place Making.

But for health and wellbeing to be established under covid19 conditions we must consider at least 3 other measures.

As we are returning to collective social gathering spaces, we are starting to apply measures of the “right number” of people to be together (as a bubble) in defined spaces – e.g. 2 family households outdoors, maintaining physical distancing from one another and other “bubbles”.

However, there are real qualitative measures that come from the Place Caring left-hand quadrants that may impact people more than any outcomes from the use of the quantitative right-hand measures.

In the upper left quadrant of psychology, consciousness we are seeing measures of mental health/disease and the complexity of values and beliefs.

In the lower left quadrant of culture and relationships we are hearing a babble of different communications aimed at people who not only have different languages, but cultures based on different worldviews, relationships and expectations (elegantly analysed by Beena Sharma of VEDA).

The lack of success with many countries’ covid19 strategies arises because they do not have multi-level, multi-perspectival message systems that address individual consciousness and collective cultures – nor do they embrace the city as a whole living system that are part of a planet of cities.

With this quick analysis, we can see that effective cov19 distancing must embrace bio-psycho-cultural-systems perspectives. And be aimed at multiple levels of complexity/communication. And we remember that this type of whole system communication was designed in an earlier era for HIV/AIDS (by Barrett Brown). We must make time and space to retrieve this from our archives and learn to right-size and translate messages for a plurality of mindsets.

References:

Brown, B.C. (2007). How to Tailor Public Communications about HIV/AIDS to Different Worldviews. Integral Sustainability Center, Integral Institute Boulder, Colorado, USA , June 17, 2007.

Sharma, B. (2020). VEDA. Vertical Development Academy. http://www.verticaldevelopment.com/

This blog series is an inquiry into Right-Sizing Cities.

The series includes:

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?
Space to Resolve 4 Gaia’s Quadrivium of Traumas
Covid19 Lessons for Right-Sizing Cities

Space to Resolve Gaia’s Quadrivium of Traumas

Elisabet Sahtouris – who wrote the Foreword to Edition 2 of Book 1, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the human hive – contends that humans have evolved the 3rd great leap for evolutionary complexity.

The first happened with the emergence of nucleated cells, the second came with the emergence of multi-celled creatures, and the third is cities. She points out that each of these cycles goes through similar growth phases from youthful competition to mature cooperation and trans-unit collaboration.

As humans are able to gain “overview” insights from space and understory images through the microscope, we are starting to see that we have a role to play in service to each other and all life. Necessarily, we are coming to understand what most indigenous worldviews have taught for millennia – that humans have not only impressive adaptive capacities – but that we need to recognize that we must adapt equally impressive response-abilities in service to each other, our habitats and the planet.

If we can now use science to support what spiritual systems have taught for so long – that we are not just ON Earth – but have been evolved WITH other beings on Earth. In fact, our very substance shows us we ARE Earth. AS Earth we must learn to respect the lineage of our ancestry. If we cannot comprehend our vital and inextricable relationship that to Earth, then we are destined to forget how energy and life flows through us.

If Gaia has evolved us for her purposes as Gaia’s Reflective Organs, then we must RE-MEMBER ourselves as interdependent with the whole ecology of living systems (seen and unseen) with which we have evolved.

What is preventing us from recognizing and daily affirming our belongingness to Gaia is becoming a series of entrenched blockages that are showing up in Earth life as deep shadows. Humans are experiencing them as a quadrivium of traumas.

Upper Left Quadrant – holds psychological trauma of mental dis-ease, depression

Upper Right Quadrant – holds biological trauma of zoonotic dis-eases like covid19, Ebola, HIV/Aids

Lower Left Quadrant – holds cultural trauma of racial tensions and injustices

Lower Right Quadrant – holds systems trauma of climate change, and resource depletion

If Gaia has invented us for a life-giving purpose now is the time for us to name, claim and re-frame the dissonances we have created by ignoring her calling and intentions. If cities are to serve as Gaia’s Reflective Organs, we must call all our Intelligences together to evolve out of our blocked spaces into a new space-time-heart flow that is based on Gaia’s respect and care for life.

This blog series is an inquiry into Right-Sizing Cities.

The series includes:

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?
Space to Resolve 4 Gaia’s Quadrivium of Traumas
Covid19 Lessons for Right-Sizing Cities

Right-Sizing Cities: How Does Gaia Reflect on Size?

One of the most impactful and fascinating insights about the relationship of humans to the Earth from which we have evolved, came from James Lovelock, author of the Gaia Hypothesis – that the Earth herself is a living system.

Lovelock contends that humans are not mere banes on the Earth – but have been evolved as her “reflective organs”. I have taken that conjecture one step further and proposed that cities are Gaia’s Reflective Organs, and humans are the cells in those organs, while our organizations are like organelles. Furthermore, with 100’s of cities populating the Earth, these organs are networking themselves into a Reflective Organ System for Gaia.

As an evolutionary phenomenon, the living systems that are cities are at a very young stage in their evolutionary lifecycle. We have invested in energy management systems – aka economies – that are based on competition for Earth’s resources and competition between ourselves. The economic model that has driven our species in the last two hundred years has been capitalism – with its most recent variation in the form of neo-liberalism. This model is blind to the generative and regenerative capacities of the planet to support this form of energy flow. It has been basically overspending the bank of planetary resources and depleting Earth’s capacity to replace renewable energy sources in a sustainable way. Thus, we are endangering the very wellbeing and resilience that has enabled human development until now.

We are essentially undermining our capacity – and responsibility – to be Gaia’s Reflective Organs.

Luckily for us, Gaia has evolved ways for natural systems to self-correct when they become unbalanced with the eco-systems they inhabit. We can look at thousands of examples from natural history where a species has come to dominate an ecosystem in an unhealthy, unbalanced way (like rabbits, birds, deer, fish, etc.), the eventual outcome is a correction by the very system itself. The species depletes its energy supply and either dies off or collapses its population down to a manageable level in relationship to the energy source and ecological environment.

Humans have had the temerity to believe we could use our technologies to circumvent this natural process and circumvent the corrections to our disrespectful consumption patterns.

However we are now able to name the corrections that Earth’s natural systems are visiting upon us: climate change (which we have been denying for decades); zoonotic diseases (the latest of which has shut down the world’s economy with the coronavirus pandemic; and cultural dissension (which is a ancestral trauma that denies the bio-psycho- cultural-systems interconnection of the human species across all the ecoregions of the planet it has inhabited).

If we are going to right-size our cities, we must come face to face with Gaia’s design intention that we act as her Reflective Organs. We must go back to first principles and discover that our cities are fractal systems that have emerged from the evolutionary unfolding from individuals to collectives to cities to planet. Humans and our systems at all scales are fractal patterns of Gaia’s life patterns. She has a deep sense of what she has created us for. And enormous patience for us to wake up and discover how we must learn to cooperate with her so that we can cooperate and collaborate with each other at all human scales.

This implies that right-sizing cities must enable the living of the Master Code of Care – to learn to live every day with care for Self, care for Others, care for our Places/Cities (including eco-regions) and care for the Planet.

I suspect that the rightsizing of cities will reveal that there is a “sacred” or universal relationship between and amongst these fractal scales of Self: Others: Place(s) : Planet.  When we discover how to translate that into energetic eco-footprints – we will also discover how to discover it into the energetics of caring that sustain and renew us.

References:

Lovelock, J. (2009). The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning. Basic Books

Patten, T. (2018). A New Republic of the Heart. North American Books.

Raworth, K.,  (2018) Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. Chelsea Green Publishing; Reprint edition .

Rees, W. E. P. D., & Wackernagel, M. (1994). Ecological Footprints and Appropriated Carrying Capacity: Measuring the Natural Capital Requirements of the Human Economy. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Taylor, G. (2008). Evolution’s Edge: The Coming Collapse and Transformation of our World. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.

This blog series is an inquiry into Right-Sizing Cities.

The series includes:

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?
Space to Resolve 4 Gaia’s Quadrivium of Traumas
Covid19 Lessons for Right-Sizing Cities

What is the Right Size of our Cities?

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 inner conditions necessary to support their internal purpose and quality of life, they also right-size their hive based on the eco-region that they pollinate as they gather the energy – aka pollen and nectar – to produce the honey that is their food supply.

The success of bees in achieving their purpose of producing 20 kg of honey per year depends on the quality of life in the natural conditions of the eco-region itself. What diversity of plants exist in the region that they provide pollination services to? How many plants are there? What is their condition? What seasons do they flower in? What other natural pollinators are drawing from the same energy source? How have bees developed cooperation with other pollinators and collaboration with the plants themselves?

If we draw back and look at the rightsizing of cities, considering the same questions for humans, we must look at the science of the eco-footprint. For that measurement now gives us the necessary feedback loop we need to know how much energy we require to support our cities – whatever size they are.

Embedded in the algorithm for calculating the eco-footprint are the assumptions about the size of the city population and its consumption patterns. For large cities in the developed world the estimates for the eco-footprint shows that if everyone on earth lived at the developed-world level of consumption, it would require 3 planets to supply all the cities.

These unnerving (but long-known) calculations are offset by the consumption patterns of cities in the developing world who have lifestyles requiring less than one-planet’s productivity. Altogether our cities live on borrowed time that on average the developed and developing cities “only” require about 1.7 planets.

What this means is that human lifestyles are consuming the future of Earth’s ecological output. This inconvenient consequence of this is that we are not allowing Earth to naturally replenish her lifecycle of living resources.

Thus if we accept that the right size of cities must enable present and future generations to survive, connect with their environment and regenerate, then we are called to take some lessons from the honey bees and redesign our life-styles and recalibrate the space, energy and relationships requirements needed by individuals and collectives.

One example of how to do this, that I live with, occurs here at Findhorn Foundation, Scotland – where annually we are calculating our eco-footprint. As an individual I learned that my lifestyle for 2019 was below the median of others in the UK – except for the airmiles I travelled last year. I learned to my horror that I was living at a 7-planet level because of that energy consumption. The 2020 pandemic has “corrected” my unsustainable behaviour and reduced my airmiles to zero. It is a hard way to redeem my life choices – but it is a lesson that I invite others to reflect on.

I am learning that right-sizing cities require choices for living locally – like the bees in their hives. But it also requires choices for travelling between cities and eco-regions. The bees again remind me that unless I am performing a service to those destinations that creates renewable energy for next year, then I am spending Earth’s capital at an unsustainable rate. If I wish to walk (or fly) the talk I promote for right-sizing cities, I am going to have to change my travel choices.

References:

Rees, W. E. P. D., & Wackernagel, M. (1994). Ecological Footprints and Appropriated Carrying Capacity: Measuring the Natural Capital Requirements of the Human Economy. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Taylor, G. (2008). Evolution’s Edge: The Coming Collapse and Transformation of our World. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.

This blog series is an inquiry into Right-Sizing Cities.

The series includes:

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?
Space to Resolve 4 Gaia’s Quadrivium of Traumas
Covid19 Lessons for Right-Sizing Cities

What is the Right Size of the Human Hive?

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 hives). The bees have developed particularly good reasons to manage the size of their hive. It has to do with managing heat. If the hive gets too big it takes too much energy (and water) to cool it down. In their natural wisdom, bees inhabit their hives with the optimum use of “bee space” allocating just the right amount of space for each bee to have the appropriate amount of room for the hive to achieve its purpose of producing 20 kg of honey per year. That means room to:

survive (eat, sleep, clean)
perform roles of honey production and storage, hive building and maintenance, (moving around the hive, communicating with each other) and
regenerate (supporting the eggs and pupae) in the hive’s bee lifecycles (overlapping cohorts of 45 days).

When bees outgrow their hives (i.e. exceed the optimum population of approximately 50,000) , it is a sign that they are thriving. They are humming the Song of Increase . So, while life is good, the bees tap into their hive-mind and make a collective decision that it is time to create a new hive. They prepare for their move by selecting 50 to 60% of the hive to fly off to a new site, with the old queen.

This strategy for swarming allows the “experienced” queen and her cohort of bees to collect at an initial staging post and send out scouts to find the best new home. The intelligence of bees means that they identify several possible sites and then “vote” on the preferred location. So, selecting the new location is another an act of collective consciousness.

Meanwhile the half of the hive that remains in the old location, makes a new queen and sets to work on creating a new “performance feedback loop” to bring the original hive back into a full “thrival” condition to produce 20 kg of honey/year.

Thus, learning from the bees would suggest to me the right size of a human hive depends on:

Knowing the energy input/output needs of the hive – how much space do we need to support the survival of humans in the city to eat, sleep, play, clean?
Knowing the space required to do our work in service to a shared purpose.
Knowing the space need for us to regenerate and sustain all generations.

The last factoid that contributes to this line of thought comes from the philosophers Aurobindo and The Mother. They proposed that the right size for cities was about 50,000 people. In the 1920’s when they were contemplating the development of the ideal city (the prototype of which is now known as Auroville in Tamil Nadu, India), they also proposed how India could expand its urban developments. They suggested the path was to build 20,000 cities of 50,000 each. That would allow each city to have a high quality of life – creating the conditions of wellbeing for the individual as well as the collective.

If you do the math of that number of cities in India would contain a population of 1 billion people (and 2020 population is 1.387 billion). So Aurobindo underestimated the number of cities needed by 40%. However, the concept of having many cities of a manageable size is a major contrast to the megacities that have emerged in their stead.

We come back to the question: What is the right size for the Human Hive? In a VUCA world where the impact of our city sizes is having negative effects that have perpetrated climate change, pandemic spread and racial divides, it is time that we humans dare to talk about the undiscussable topic of right-sizing our human hives.

References:

Freeman, J. 2016. Song of Increase: Listening to the Wisdom of Honeybees for Kinder Beekeeping and a Better World . Sounds True; Reprint edition.

This blog series is an inquiry into Right-Sizing Cities.

The series includes:

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?
Space to Resolve 4 Gaia’s Quadrivium of Traumas
Covid19 Lessons for Right-Sizing Cities