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Archive for February, 2012

Building SustainABLE Communities

Posted in city, D. Strategic Intelligences, tagged , , , , on February 23, 2012 | 2 Comments »


This blog is a fifth prologue for a keynote at the FreshOutlook Feb. 27, 2012 Building SustainABLE Communities Conference.

Civic meshworkers who use Integral City integrated sustainable community approaches become part of a multi-stakeholder meshworking brain-trust.

We are catalyzing the intelligences of the government, civil society, organizations and academic institutions transplanting resources, assets and ideas that contribute to wellness at home, play and work. Together we are creating entire new operating systems for sustainability that will enable economic, environmental, social and cultural recovery.

When we co-create habitats for sustainable communities in our Human Hives we quickly discover that:

  • our actions inevitably enhance our city and community images and reputations
  • secure supply chains emerge in around Integral Cities
  • risk is mitigated through shared values and proximate peers
  • we retain and attract high-performers
  • we create opportunities for sustainable energy efficiencies as we learn how to competitively recycle energy and effort in our eco-region;
  • we redefine value-added profitability not just for our organizations, but for the city, its eco-region and I daresay Gaia herself;

When multiple stakeholders mesh together, we create community sustainability systems that become regenerative– where we naturally align intelligences, principles and strategies for leadership, relationships, organizational development and governance to transform entire cities into living, exceptional, sustainable human hives.

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Meshworking Evolutionary Intelligences for the HUMAN HIVE

Posted in C. Collective Intelligences, city, E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Lifecycle, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 21, 2012 | 5 Comments »


This blog is the fourth prologue for a keynote at the FreshOutlook Feb. 27, 2012 Building SustainABLE Communities Conference.

An Integral City is a complex adaptive human system that concentrates habitat for humans like a bee hive does for bees.

Let me tell you about why I am attracted to the story of the human hive. I adapted it from the story of the honey bee, told by Howard Bloom — he discovered that the honey bee developed a strategy for individual adaptation, hive innovation and species resilience.

Do you know that the Honey Bee (apis mellifera) is 100 million years old?  That is 10 to 100 times the age of our species. The Honey Bee is also the most advanced species of the branch of the Tree of Life called the invertebrates. We are supposed to be the most advanced species  of the branch called the vertebrates. So with those credentials I wonder if the Honey Bee species has something to teach the human species?

 A bee hive has about 50,000 bees in it – about the size of a small city. And since many if not most of you work to performance goals, do you realize that a honey beehive also has a goal? It must produce a certain amount of honey per year in order to survive — about 40 pounds per year.

So a beehive has a clear sustainability objective for the hive, measured in terms of energy production.

How do bees obtain the raw materials to produce honey? They do this by creating 5 roles within the hive – not the usual suspects most of us are familiar with like drones and queens. No, no these roles have much more purpose and innovation to them:

About 90% of the hive are Conformity Enforcers (CE). Their job is to fly to flower patches and harvest as much nectar and pollen as they can. They use the “waggle dance” form of communication to let sister bees know where to find the resources. When 90% of the hive is doing the same dance – it’s like a Rock & Roll rave — the energy produced attracts a lot of attention and reinforces successful finds.
About 5% of the hive are Diversity Generators (DG). Their job is to fly to different flower beds than the Conformity Enforcer’s. As a result their waggle dance contains different information – more like an Irish Jig than Rock & Roll??. When the Conformity Enforcer’s are at peak performance the Diversity Generator’s are not noticed because their communication is drowned out by the Conformity Enforcer “rave”.
However — a small per cent of the hive are Resource Allocators (RA). Their job  is to reward the performance of Conformity Enforcer and Diversity Generator bees. When Conformity Enforcer performance lags (after depleting the resources in one flower patch), Resource Allocator’s withhold rewards until the point that Conformity Enforcer bees are not only de-energized — they become downright depressed. You can imagine them walking around completely bummed out – the party is over – btw, they can measure depression in bees by measuring their pheromones.  Eventually when the Conformity Enforcer’s energy is lowest, they finally take note of the Diversity Generator Irish Jig (communication) and switch their resourcing flights to new locations.
An even smaller per cent of the hive are Inner Judges (IJ). Some say this is even a hive intelligence. The Inner Judge’s work with Resource Allocator’s to assess and reward performance, so that the hive can achieve its sustainability goals.
The fifth role is a whole hive role – it is created through Inter-group Tournaments (IT). This role actually emerges from the competition between hives within the bee’s eco-region; i.e. the territory they share with other hives competing for the same resources.

These five roles create a resilience strategy that depends on performance and innovation to support the hive and the species. But the bees have taken their sustainability strategy beyond the hive to scale at the regional level of resilience.  Because of course as they gather resources for themselves, they pollinate their eco-region, thereby creating energy renewal for next year. This means the bees have developed a double sustainability loop that supports hive survival AND regenerates the energy resources in their eco-region. The Inter-group tournaments operate at the level of species survival – ensuring any hive that gets an edge in the innovation and evolution curve is the one most likely to survive and pass on its learning.

In terms of sustainability, I wonder when homo sapiens sapiens will innovate sustainability strategies that will embrace performance goals and replenish the resources we use to sustain our human hive and thereby add value to the earth, as effectively as the honey bee?

 

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Meshworking Evolutionary INTELLIGENCES for the Human Hive

Posted in A. Contexting Intelligences, B. Individual Intelligences, Building - Structures, C. Collective Intelligences, city, D. Strategic Intelligences, E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Ecosphere, Emergence, Inner, Inquiry, Integral Maps, Lifecycle, Master Intelligence, Meshworking, Navigating - IVSM, Outer, Storytelling - Cultures, tagged , , , , , , , on February 20, 2012 | 3 Comments »


This blog is the third prologue for a keynote at the FreshOutlook Feb. 27, 2012 Building SustainABLE Communities Conference.

Integral City is a new paradigm for looking at cities that reveals its bio-psycho-cultural-structural evolutionary intelligences. These twelve intelligences cluster into five capacities and are organized into an Integral City Compass that provides direction and alignment for an integrated operating system for the “human hive”. (The core principles are summarized here).

The five sets of intelligences encompassed in an Integral City operating system are these.

1.      Outer Ring: Contexting Intelligences:

  1. Ecological Intelligence is an awareness and capacity to respond to the realities of a city’s climate and eco-region environment. Just as honey bees adapt themselves to different geographies, Integral Cities in different locations must adapt different solutions to the same infrastructure problems.
  2. Emergent Intelligence is the capacity to look at the city as a whole, through the lenses of aliveness, survival, adaptiveness, regeneration, sustainability and emergence.
  3. Integral Intelligence uses four essential mapsto integrate city life:
    1. the four quadrant perspectival map of reality (bio-psycho-cultural-social)
    2. the nested holarchy of city systems
    3. the scalar fractal relationship of micro, meso and macro human systems
    4. the complex adaptive dynamic stages of change
    5. Living Intelligence relates to the aliveness of each citizen through each of its lifecycle stages and the aliveness of the city through its lifecycle stages. Living intelligence asks how can we align and optimize the life of people in the city at each stage of life? How can we align and optimize the lifecycle stage of the city with its people?

2.      Inner Ring Upper: Individual Intelligences

  1. Inner Intelligence is the “I” space of each citizen. It is the seat of intentional consciousness, attention, interior experience and intelligences or lines of development, e.g. emotional, cognitive, spiritual.
  2. Outer intelligence is the biological “It” space of the citizen — the space where the body acts and behaves. Behaviours demonstrate our intelligence in action. Demographics are key determinants of our intentional, cultural and social capacities, because they represent the bodies through which our intentions, cultures and systems are delivered.

3.      Inner Ring Lower: Collective Intelligences

  1. Cultural (or Storytelling) Intelligence represents the “We” life of the city. It considers the relationships in the city which transcend boundaries that both contain and separate including: the individual and the group voice; multiple levels of values; and city cultures and rural cultures.
  2. Social (Structural) (or Building) Intelligence represents the “Its” space of the city. This intelligence connects us to the realities of the city, that we see, feel, hear, smell, touch and taste. It gives us the capacity to structure and systematize our environment.

4.      Middle Ring: Strategic Intelligences

  1. Inquiry Intelligenceasks key questions that reveal the meta-wisdom of the city:
    1. What is important to you?
    2. What’s working in your life, family, community, school, health system, city?
    3. What’s not working in your life, family, community, school, health system, city?
    4. What is your vision of the optimum in your life, family, community, school, health system, city?
    5. Where do your source your bio-psycho-cultural-social energy in the city?
  2. 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.
  3. Navigating Intelligencemonitors and discloses the wellbeing or general condition of the city. It uses a vital signs monitor as a reporting mechanism or protocol which monitors and discloses the health of the city. It includes five key indicators for an integral dashboard:
    1. Climate change
    2. Environmental health
    3. Society’s responses to environmental problems
    4. Positive economic relationships
    5. Incongruent neighbours (p. 11)

5. Centre Ring: Evolutionary Intelligence

Evolutionary Intelligence is the capacity to transcend and include the intelligences we currently demonstrate, in order to allow new intelligences to emerge. Evolutionary intelligence is an impulse that springs from our evolutionary history and impels us forward into our evolutionary future. It assumes that life conditions will continue to change and the human species will change and adapt and evolve with such changes.

Integral City Intelligences manifest an integral paradigm which offers many advantages for designing Integral Cities that :

  • Respond to critical contexts that situate the city in its eco-region as a living human system on planet Earth
  • Create the bio-psycho-cultural-social climate to build capacity in individuals
  • Develop habitats for the prosperity of the collective
  • Integrate strategies that bridge and mesh sectors, silos, stovepipes & solitudes
  • Continuously evolve intelligences that integrate optimal conditions for city emergence and eco-regional sustainability

Integral City Intelligences enable thriving because they underscore the Master Principle:

Take Care of Yourself

Take Care of Each Other

Take Care of this Place/Planet

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Meshworking EVOLUTIONARY Intelligences for the Human Hive

Posted in A. Contexting Intelligences, city, E. Evolutionary Intelligences, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 18, 2012 | 1 Comment »


This blog is the second prologue for a keynote at the FreshOutlook Feb. 27, 2012 Building SustainABLE Communities Conference.

Evolutionary Intelligence is the capacity to transcend and include the intelligences we currently demonstrate, in order to allow new intelligences to emerge.

Evolutionary Intelligence is an impulse present at the centre of our Integral City compass, that springs from our evolutionary history and impels us to reach forward into our evolutionary future. It assumes that life conditions will continue to change and the human species will change and adapt and evolve with such changes.

In framing evolution, Integral City draws on an integral geological map developed by Eddy (2003) which embraces three meta-spheres: the Cosmosphere that spans the universe; the Biosphere that includes the living global environment; and the Anthroposphere that embraces the human condition. Eddy’s map effectively integrates the human condition within the three spheres as massively entangled at all scales and times.

The Anthroposphere in the Integral City (Hamilton, 2008) is captured in the Integral City Compass with its five sets of capacities, twelve intelligences and thirty-six principles.

It is only by meshworking intelligences in the human hive in an evolutionary way that we will survive long enough as a species, to grow the capacities of collaboration, community, and urbanization beyond any context the human system has ever evolved.

In fact applying evolutionary strategic design will not just be useful for selecting appropriate approaches for sustainability for cities in the developed and developing worlds but it will be the necessary paradigm for all cities with a plurality of cultures to integrate their many worlds into a workable evolutionary operating system.

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MESHWORKING Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive

Posted in Classroom course, F. Training, Meshworking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 16, 2012 | 5 Comments »


This blog is a first prologue for a keynote at the FreshOutlook Feb. 27, 2012 Building SustainABLE Communities Conference.

Meshworking is an intelligence of the human hive (Hamilton, 2008) that creates a “meshwork” by weaving together the best of two operating systems — one that self-organizes, and one that replicates hierarchical structures.

From an Integral City perspective this operating system connects all four quadrants and recalibrates the levels of development (Hamilton, 1999). The resulting meshwork creates and aligns complex responsive interior and exterior structures and systems in the human hive that flex and flow.

Meshworking intelligences are triggered in the mind/brain (and the “hive-mind”) by dissonance (i.e. constraints) in the environment. The hive-mind/ brain is capable of re-organizing itself and releasing new potentials in the human hive. This allows for the emergence of new meaning making, worldviews, values systems and new capacities. At the same time meshworking intelligence utilizes hierarchical structures and capacities to create sorting and selecting mechanisms that allow the humans in the hive to make survival choices. As structural capacities emerge, new values systems emerge as well, creating a level of complexity that develops where both our individual (and hive) minds and brains can meshwork hierarchies and make hierarchies out of meshworks.

Meshworking intelligence uses imagination, courage and powers of attraction. It articulates designs from the meshing of the diversities in people and thereby releases and reorganizes new intelligences that are currently locked and blocked in silos of sameness.

Meshworking catalyzes a shift in the human hive system, so that new capacities emerge and the city system reorganizes itself into something more internally resonant and externally coherent with life conditions. When this occurs a new level of capacity emerges in the complex hierarchy of city systems and we can solve problems that we never could before.

(excerpt from: Hamilton, M. (2010). Meshworking Integral Intelligences for Resilient Environments; Enabling Order and Creativity in the Human Hive. Paper presented at the Enacting an Integral Future Conference.

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Valentine for Gaia’s Reflective Heart

Posted in city, Spiritual intelligence, tagged , , , , , on February 15, 2012 | 1 Comment »


I want to love the city as my self. I want to care for the city – not just take her for granted.  I want to observe and think and feel and want for the city, as if she were a living person – because she is an extension of me and all the people who live within her as Gaia’s Reflective Heart.

   

I want to love the city as a whole, so that I can grasp her as an integrated whole system made up of massively interconnected sub-systems, each of which needs to be healthy in relation to all the other sub-systems. I want to become aware of the health of the city, just as I am aware of the health of my self.  I want to develop and use monitors of the city’s vital signs so that I can understand the city as a living system with complex, and interrelated sub-systems.

I want to love the external and internal life of the city, so that I can appreciate it through my powers of observation, but also through how the city reflects how I and others think, feel and desire about the city – how is the city an extension of all ourselves?  That means that I need to be able to be open to understand how other selves (people) in the city think, feel and want.

I want the city to love herself – to have a sense of pride in herself; to develop an ethic and set of values for how people choose to live together; to develop a vision for herself for tomorrow.  I want the city to understand she can choose to flourish, just as I can make choices for my self to flourish.

I want to love being an intentional city dweller.  I want to understand the part I play in a healthy city – as body, mind and soul.  I want to contribute the appropriate part of my resources to the city’s sustenance and health, not just through fair taxation, but through active participation in decision-making and voluntary contributions of time and skills. I want to support through voting, referenda and direct participation, the tough decisions that elected officials and city managers might need to make, in order for the city to be well.

I want to love my elected officials because they think, feel and want for the city in an integral way, so they can represent city thoughts, feelings and desires.  I want intentionally integral city managers and staff, to manage the processes of the city as a living system, so that she is healthy and balanced.

I want to love the upper levels of government (provincial/state and federal) because they value the city – because they know without her success, the success of the upper levels of government is undermined.  I want the upper levels of government  to translate their valuing of the city into political support and the resources that honour that value.

I love the city and I want the city to flourish, because if she flourishes, my peers will flourish and my self will flourish.  If the city suffers, some or all of my peers will suffer and my self will suffer.  The city is my self. The city shows her love for me in so many ways. And I love her as I love my greater Self.

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Integral City 2.0 Requires a Momentous Leap from Activism to AQALism

Posted in B. Individual Intelligences, C. Collective Intelligences, city, E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Integral Maps, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 10, 2012 | 1 Comment »


Today ’s cities are being transformed by activists. Tomorrow’s cities will be transformed by AQALists. What is the difference?

     >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Today’s activists demonstrate their beliefs through confrontive action. They stand up against injustices, rules, authorities and infrastructure by blocking access for as many people as possible. They are willing to threaten power,  throw projectiles and thrust their bodies into streets, doorways and jails. Emotions drive motion and defiant acts define active participation.

Activists break down barriers and open doors in places where human freedom has been suppressed. Their actions are necessary to release the energy of changing from what we no longer want. But activism of this type is not sufficient to change to what we do want.

Changing to what we do want requires contribution of an entirely different order. Activists must expand individual actions into creating and organizing collective systems that serve the greater good of all.  They must invite the civility of society to embrace relationships with cultures different from their own – including those with whom they disagree. Such tolerance requires leaders who can create the habitats for mutual respect and coexistence of different belief systems, expressions and practices – as long as they don’t infringe on the beliefs, expressions and practices of others. The new activists must also be willing to reflect on their actions, systems and relationships, becoming ever attentive to the never-ending quest of their own learning, spiritual depths and personal development.

Changing to what we do want demands that we add to the energy of action, the strength of structures, the goodness of relationships and the beauty of inner reflection. When we centre in the four quadrants of these capacities, and open the door to ongoing development and evolution of our individual and collective selves, we have taken the momentous leap (1) from mere Activism to AQALism(2) – able to be, do, have and relate in all quadrants and all levels of complexity. This momentous leap moves us from merely being able to take care of ourselves, to being able to integrate our care of each other and our care of Integral City 2.0 as necessary contributors to the evolution and wellbeing of Gaia.

Endnotes:

(1) Momentous Leap refers to the framing of Clare Graves in describing the developmental path of healthy human beings

Graves, C. (1974). Human Nature Prepares for a Momentous Leap The Futurist.

(2)AQAL is a term coined by Ken Wilber to embrace all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all types. For further explanation refer to

Wilber, K. (2007). The Integral Vision. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc.

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Integral City 2.0 Develops Innovation Ecosystems

Posted in Building - Structures, city, D. Strategic Intelligences, Navigating - IVSM, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 7, 2012 | 1 Comment »


Integral City 2.0 innovation systems are emerging because conscious capitalists, governments, students and citizens are aligning strategies for leaders, organizations and governance systems to transform entire cities from resistant holdouts to resilient human hives. Humans as Gaia’s most “reflective organ” have located 50% of our species’ brain trust in the world’s cities.

We are starting to see the shape of Integral City 2.0 in places that have developed a variety of innovative frameworks and practical approaches to optimizing human co-existence. If we could combine and align these emergent designs into innovation ecosystems, we would create a resilience strategy that would move our human hives from City 1.0 to City 2.0 in service to a healthy planet. Five cities on five continents lead the way.

1. Curitiba, Brazil demonstrates an ability to develop individual capacity and organizational capital through people-friendly transportation systems and re-valuing eco-citizens who collect cooking oil, tires and even fallen leaves.

2. Sydney, Australia has developed Sustainability and Resilience strategies through the Sustainable Sydney 2030 Vision  for a Green, Global, and Connected City. It identified 10 targets and  five big moves embracing the city centre, transportation network, green corridors, community hubs and energy and water infrastructure.

3. Metro Vancouver, Canada  leverages community engagement and dynamic decision making that coalesces authority, power and influence, at breakfast meetings with citizens across 21 municipalities. They are anchoring three imperatives: regard for both local and global consequences and long-term impacts of decisions; recognizing and reflecting the interconnectedness and interdependence of systems; and being collaborative.

4. Songpa, South Korea demonstrates the value of Context mapping that integrates Place, Priorities, People and Planet. It completely removed a major freeway that bisected the city and fully restored the river that now has become the ecological and cultural centre of its urban life.

5. Murcia, Spain applies navigational dashboards that monitor vital signs of wellbeing across all city systems. It integrates KSF’s across city initiatives and objectives with multiple stakeholders. These measures include everything from reduction of energy consumption to school use of photo-voltaics to citizen awareness, especially immigrants, women, seniors and students.

What these Integral Cities 2.0 are proving, is that we can create the life conditions for innovation that will become a legacy to future generations. When we co-create City 2.0 habitats for innovation eco-systems we discover that:

  • secure supply chains emerge in around the Integral City 2.0
  • risk is mitigated through shared values and proximate peers
  • we can retain and attract high-performers
  • we create opportunities for sustainable energy efficiencies as we learn how to competitively recycle energy and effort in our eco-region;
  • we can redefine value-added profitability not just for our organizations, but for the city, its eco-region and Gaia herself;
  • our actions inevitably enhance our brand reputations.

Multiple stakeholders acting together in Integral City 2.0 create innovation ecosystems that become self-fulfilling – where we naturally align leaders, strategies and governance systems to develop caring capacities for taking care of people, taking care of priorities and taking care of this planet.

Download Links, Resources, Connections for Integral City 2.0 Developers at: http://www.integralcity.com/developers/

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Civil Society 2.0 Music Recalibrates Integral City 2.0

Posted in city, E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Emergence, Storytelling - Cultures, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 2, 2012 | 1 Comment »


Civil Society 2.0 has new power because it is integrating new relationships and a Manifesto for Evolutionary Freedom with social media 2.0. This is creating new resonance and coherence for glocal wellbeing, social justice and environmental sustainability in the human hive. The song sheet that Civil Society is co-creating is quickly emerging new music for all of us in the Integral City 2.0 choir to sing.

Our Civil Society 2.o voices are a new symphonic force to be reckoned with. We are now hitting octaves beyond the range predicted by Paul Hawken  in”Blessed Unrest“. As an unlikely mix of philanthropists, community developers, social investors, conscious capitalists and activist citizens discover our power, we are (like the Gettin’ Higher Choir)  amassing a community choir honing in on the right key(s) to sing in and how to emote with harmony.

The quality of our Civil Society voice today wavers like the boy soprano who can no longer hold one true note, but we are frequently starting to break into a more mature sound.

The emergent voice of Civil Society  2.0 integrates the voices of We with I,  Him with Her, Us with Them in the process of creating a vibrant Integral City. 2.0 choir that resonates with the We and Heart of Integral City. 2.0 .

And the verses that Civil Society 2.0 repeats ring with the notes of Civil Freedoms – Freedom to Protect, Freedom to Honour, Freedom to Defend, Freedom to Respect, Freedom to Promote, Freedom to Accept, Freedom to Facilitate, Freedom to Value. In sum, we are singing for the Freedoms to Evolve. We are emerging a Manifesto of Freedom That Honours Life’s Universal Values of Place, Person and Planet.

Civil Society 2.0 is emerging music that resonates with the vibration of each voice and coheres with the colour of all harmony. We are claiming our birthright and composing new music that recalibrates our Integral City 2.0 into evolutionary spheres that will sustain us.

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