How Do We Power Up Our Cities?

Evolutionary Power Source

To build Smart Cities we drew on fossil fuels. To develop Resilient Cities we are drawing on renewable energy. To energize Integral Cities we tap into the energy at the center of our GPS compass – the internal energy that makes all the other locators respond and register intelligent responses. It has many names – Energy Source – Evolutionary Amplifier – Evolutionary Impulse – even Spirituality. I have called it simply the Evolutionary Intelligence. For good reason it sits at the center of the Integral City GPS Compass.

However we choose to understand or explain this intelligence, I believe it has left the evidence of 14 billion years of track record that has brought us to this room today. The consistency and persistence of its driving force is now explored by both scientific communities and spiritual communities, and begs us to discover the next evolutionary step of inter city and intra city collaboration.

The tentative explanations of both scientific and spiritual leaders seems to be converging into Quantum Thinking Theory and Field Theory – an energetic “Knowing Place” where visible and invisible energy open our understanding of cities – ecologies – and the universe – into other realms entirely.

Business Innovators tap its mysteries to leap ahead of what Citizens and Civic Managers sustain as the status quo. Civil Society Integrator’s observe its evolutionary patterns to discern alignment and re-balancing of systems.

As the sciences of mind and matter listen more closely to each other, it has become obvious that we need to convene the  4 voices of the city so that together we may tap into the power of this evolutionary intelligence as a Human Hive Mind. (Indeed over this last summer a movement of Russian cities is illustrating this principle by embarking on defining a Living Cities Charter to identify and operate by the principles implied by evolutionary, integral intelligence’s.)

(This blog is one of a series on Waking Up the Human Hive Beyond the Smart, Resilient City to the Integral City – thinking notes for a keynote speech at IDG’s IT Smart Cities Conference, September 23, 2015, Amersfoort, NL.)