The essential structural and infrastructural systems of the city exist to support the direct and indirect survival of its citizen bodies, relationships and exchanges. Even as cities become increasingly adept at creating built solutions to meet human demands, they seem to be disconnecting from the ultimate infrastructure on which their systems depend – namely the planet’s carrying capacity (a concept explored by Wackernagel and Rees in their recently celebrated ecological footprint).
The intelligences for structures, systems and infrastructures must embrace the concretization and manifestation of relationships in the human hive.Structural design and our current built landscape are likely contributing to climate change and we must accept responsibility for governance systems that serve the values of sustainability or we will discover our choices lead to Collapse (Jared Diamond).
Even as our structures, infrastructures and systems have concentrated resources and blocked energy flows, our species has the intelligences to redefine how a healthy dissipative structure operates at the scale of the city. Architects like Mark DeKay, Christopher Alexander and Bill McDonough are showing us how.
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This blog is a prologue to the Integral City webinar conference City 2.0 Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive . We are inventing a new operating system for the city. Click to get more details re the Free Expo and eLaboratory membership scheduled September 4-27 2012. You are invited to attend and participate.
