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Learning Lhabitats: How to Start Small and Get Things Going?

Posted in Emergence, Lifecycle, tagged , , , , , on May 15, 2013 | 2 Comments »


We are starting a new set of Integral City learning (ad)ventures. We call them Learning Lhabitats.

Lhab Jungle

Learning Laboratories and Habitats are being designed for people who sense a new Integrator Role is emerging in cities. They know MUCH change is needed and MANY voices are clamouring for attention. Those concerns lead to key questions, city Integrator Alain Vol,z asked me when I was in the Netherlands in April. Here’s the conversation we had.

A. So where to start and get things going?

IC: We think the place to start is with your self. What is your passion? Why do you feel called to step into an Integrator Role? How can your passion be in service to the greatest needs of the Human Hive?

A: Why look at the city as a Human Hive? What value does it add?

IC: Looking at the city as a human hive re-frames it from a built environment into a living system full of dynamic relationships. Each person contributes soul and role as they interact to achieve goals. The goals can be located with family in the home; e.g. putting dinner on the table. With friends at play; e.g. enjoying sports and recreation. With colleagues at work; e.g. serving customers and earning profits. With neighbours in the community; e.g. sharing a community garden. With the civil society; e.g. feeding the homeless. With civic managers; e.g. deciding on new health policies.

The value of looking at the city as a human hive is that we gain an understanding of how interconnected we are with everyone else in the city and that it makes “common sense” to work to create and share a common vision and goals. That way we can align our energies without alienating our creativity. Thinking of ourselves as a human hive gives us the keys to resilience and adaptiveness.

A. How can we take first steps on a small-scale from the perspective of the Human Hive? Where is it being applied?

IC: The first steps are to start to think in terms of the city-scale. We need to see that the city is a human system in the living system that is Gaia. Human hives are Gaia’s “reflective organs“. As individuals we are cells in Gaia’s reflective organ. We can start first with ourselves and get in touch with our Passions and Purpose. We can understand the cycles of Prosperity that natural flow through the city like the natural stages of a human life cycle. I have seen this applied with people who have created a Vision for their city. Others have created learning habitats for youth entrepreneurship. Yet others have created circle dialogues for encouraging women to enter politics.

A. What are the key conditions for success? What needs to be organized? How does one apply change/process management from the perspective of emergence?

IC: In all the examples of success, one key condition has been applied: Include all of the 4 Voices of the city  in the change process. The 4 Voices are the City-zen, Civic Manager, Civil Society and Business. That has enabled the Human Hive to naturally align and focus itself – like the living system it is.

Meshworking is a way of organizing the 4 Voices so that they can respect one another, learn together and work towards a common goal. Typically this starts with a simple set of dialogue circles where the 4 Voices meet; discover their roles and relationships; and learn how they all contribute to neighbourhood, community or city wellbeing. This opens the doors to addressing whatever issue they want to work on. It could be as simple as neighbours helping neighbours (as in an Amsterdam local health currency, sponsored by Rabobank) or as challenging as working towards climate action goals (as Colwood, BC, Canada.)

When this trust is established a network of the 4 voices emerges.  In later stages it may move into a community of practise (COP) to address the issue  and then it is possible to align individuals, networks, COP’s into networks of networks. Within a small community this can happen quickly if it is motivated to respond to change (e.g. after Hurricane Sandy in New York). Within larger communities this process can emerge over years – even decades.

Learning how to start the change/process management by attracting and strengthening the voice of City-zens will be the first course that Integral City Learning Lhabitats offers. You can find out more about what is planned for 2013 here.

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Re-Gendrification? Saging Conscious Beings? Shapeshifting Species?

Posted in E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Emergence, tagged , , , on March 28, 2013 | 1 Comment »


For the first time in history, the women in the developed world are noticing that they have the power to tap into state stage wisdom.

Women - New World

In an era where so much that is invisible technologically has been released in service to human survival and evolution, perhaps women are sensing a less threatening environment where their interior ways of knowing (1) may also be made more visible, more available and more accepted?

Perhaps now is the time to move beyond the disabled nation structures and state-changing monasteries of the past into an entirely new state for the human species where women can join men in new ways? Eisler calls such a possibility a partnership. Cohen refers to it as a new human consciousness.

I propose revelations from the interior ways of knowing are flowing strongly through women today. And the women who are leading the charge with honoring those ways of knowing (eg. Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Nancy Abrams, Hazel Henderson, Nancy Roof, Elizabeth Debold, Diane Hamilton, Elisabet Sahtouris, Meg Wheatley, Elza Maalouf ++++) are releasing a quickening of the human spirit that is spanning the globe. In the information age, it is precisely the interior ways of knowing that reveal to us the new realities of the (largely invisible) universe. They make visible the invisible and enable the emergence of global, holarchic, universal and archetypal complexities of Intelligence Levels 7 and 8 and the higher stages of state consciousness.

Shapeshifting the Species
Some people have asked, “Where are the women?” in the Integral Movement.  … They are researching the resilient realities of their particular typologies; they are inventing new structures for human performance; they are creating cultures that believe in perspectives that embrace the invisible with the visible; they are learning the power of their individual consciousnesses; they are grasping the leverage of their collective consciousnesses; and they are linking the interior epistemologies with the exterior epistemologies of the integral realities. Ultimately, they are becoming the Sages shape shifting not just women (and men) but the direction of the human species.

Where are the women? – change your ways of relating to the world and you will find not just the women but the new Sages of our species:

1. Look through the epistemologies that women use to relate to the world.
2. Recognize and transcend the evolutionary structural boundaries that have privileged dominator cultures, then emerged social networks and now see the new territory that has opened up in the systemic flex-flows of an integral worldview.
3. Appreciate the triple helix of the evolutionary trajectory of the species so that you can see how both men and women have co-created each other and life conditions for evolutionary survival, adaptiveness and reproduction.
4. Create the conditions of safety so women can let go of old patterns buried deep in their cultures and psyches so they can reconnect with the source of being and becoming and shift from identification with their gender to being fully conscious human beings.
5. Appreciate that life conditions vary around the world and each person, family, clan, community, country and geography are co-creating new conditions for our next evolutionary emergence as fully conscious human beings.

Read the full article from which this was extracted here.

Endnotes:
(1) Identified by Ken Wilber as: phenomenology, autopoeisis, hermeneutics and social autopoeisis

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Re-Generating Through 4 Generations

Posted in C. Collective Intelligences, Emergence, Lifecycle, Storytelling - Cultures, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 27, 2013 | Leave a Comment »


Continuing on the theme of Regenerativity, I remember well how 4 women (1) from a Saeculum (2) of Generations shared their Gifts to the Future Generations (at the World Future Society 2011).  We called it BIRTHING NEW OPENINGS FOR LIFE .

GTWR Seed Pods 4 Generations

Recognizing that we have arrived at the 4th turning of the Planetary Shift, we designed a 4 Generational Choreography of Groking, Talking, Walking and Rocking!

Grok OPENS the new Species Story through Re-Generacy
Talk OPENS the new story of the Human Hive through Co-Generacy
Walk OPENS Generational Interconnection through Trans- Generacy
Rock OPENS the Transpersonal Way through Kosmo Genesis
We reached back to the Last Saeculum for the Poetry of Four Quartets that seems to open the door for the Kosmic Warriors of the 4th
turning . We borrowed the poetry of a member of the last Warrior/Hero Generation – TS Eliot (Eliot, 1954) – who seemed to speak so
loudly and clearly to the spiral turning of the Planetary Shift Saeculum:

TS Eliot (Eliot, 1954)
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time….

WE were the Generational Constellation to Birth the Planetary Shift:

Quick now, here now, always –
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)

We were ready to pay the price of all who we have been and will become … Groking, Talking, Walking and Rocking so that ….:

… all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Beyond the Independent Imagining of Youth and Elders lies the Interdependent constellation of generations.
All of us are born into a world more evolved than our elders can imagine. And the only way for our species, our cities, our generations
and our warriors to BE the new world is for the four generations to BECOME it together.

Our choreography Birthed OPENINGS for all LIFE:

Artists Grok the Universe through: Universal Human, Culture, Planet
Prophets Talk Space through: Interior, Exterior, Hive
Nomads Walk Time through: Person, Generation and Saeculum
Kosmic Warriors Rock Energy through: Passion, Planet, Kosmos

The dance of this Re-Co-Tran-Kosmo-Generativity continues. Won’t you join us to Grok, Talk, Walk, and Rock the Planetary Shift into Being?

Read more about the Regenerativity of Generations here.

Endnote:

(1) The four women: Barbara Marx Hubbard, Marilyn Hamilton, Cherie Beck, Vanessa Fisher.

(2) Saeculum is the sequence of 4 generations described in:  Strauss, W., & Howe, N. (1997). The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny. New York: Broadway Books.

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Regenerativity in the Human Hive – A Quality Shared by All Classes

Posted in Emergence, Integral Maps, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 22, 2013 | Leave a Comment »


Regenerativity in the Human Hive is a quality shared by everyone – not just a special “Creative Class”. The first day of Spring (in the northern hemisphere) or Fall (in the southern hemisphere) can especially remind us of how the power of creativity is regenerative for all the roles in the human hive.

beehive

It is interesting that the critique of the “Creative Class” has prompted it’s author Richard Florida to admit that focusing on a cluster of artistic, technologically, educated elite in cities has not led to whole city regeneration. His analysis now shows that this strategy seems to benefit only the elites themselves in terms of wages and quality of life. (Read Florida’s analysis here.) Florida notes that this condition is ” not just a vicious cycle but an unsustainable one — economically, politically, and morally.”

If we were going to seek some lessons on Regenerativity from the natural systems, suggested by Pattern Dynamics(tm) we might consider how the Pattern of Creativity, intersects with all the other Primary Patterns. This path seems to lead to the qualities of Regenerativity that emerge in both the Growing Season of Spring and the Harvesting Season of Fall. Let’s consider how these qualities of Regenerativity show up in the Integral City Maps.

Pattern Dynamics (tm) Creativity

The Autopoeisis Pattern “makes itself” from combining Source with Creativity. Building on Transformity and Power, Self-making that is adaptive drives the emergence of the nested holarchy of city systems in Map 2, the emergent capacities in Map 3 and the increased complexity of organizations in Map 4. This pattern recognizes how the city as a human system is constantly making and re-making itself through the grand cycles of Spiritual Sourcing and Re-Sourcing in Map 5.

The intersection of Creativity and Dynamics gives us Spontaneity. Spontaneity occurs “in the moment” as a creative impulse. It arises in more complex form than the more simple pattern of Synchronization in the Rhythm Pattern (discussed below). But often because Synchronization has occurred, the conditions for Spontaneity arise. Spontaneity arises from the trust to openness and exudes freedom and flow with the zest of excitement. It transcends the Past,  springboards from the Present and propels the system into the Future. In the city because there are so many opportunities for Synchronization and Emergence Patterns, the potential for Spontaneity is ever-present. For many people coming from more traditional structures (as mapped in Map 4) the Spontaneity of the city, is (almost) like an addicting state of creative arousal.

The intersection of Creativity with Creativity (a double reinforcing loop) gives us Emergence. Emergence in Map 2 suggests that the interaction and interconnections amongst the different wholes (or holons) of the city will cause emergence – i.e., the creation of something new that has not existed before. (This is also powerfully conveyed in Map 3.) Emerence is a quality of complex-adaptive, self-organizing living systems – which is exactly what a city is – and why it can be so regenerative.

The intersection of Creativity with Exchange gives us Uniqueness. Uniqueness in Map 3 implies that the collective human systems of team, organization, community and city are inevitably unique because no two people express their competencies, capacities or talents in the same way as any other. Thus both the combination of structures, and the emergence of self-organizing creativity can produce uniqueness that offers selling propositions and values exchanges that can only be discovered through trade and exchange.

The intersection of Creativity with Structure gives us Complexity.  Map 4 shows a step-by-step emergence of Complexity as each organizational pattern integrates more complex goals, roles and capacities into its structures. With each new layer of complexity the organization (and eventually the city) can impact greater spans of space, time and moral influence. 

The intersection of Creativity with Polarity gives us Order/Chaos.  Map 1 appears very ordered and one has to assume that chaos is ever-present as an invisible quality of this map (and be comforted by the discovery in complexity theory, that we “get order for free” as systems do self-organize). We explored this quality when we looked at Map 3, but for the purposes of considering its impact on regenerativity, we can see the alternating cycles of order and chaos are built into the city as an ecology of living systems.

The intersection of Creativity with Rhythm gives us Synchronization. Synchronization: As the magic of synchronization arises, in the city, this enables human systems at all scales to start to notice the metabolic patterns that link them and bring about fortuitous and regenerative synchronicities and exchanges. Strangers discover common ancestors. Co-workers discover they live on the same street. Politicians with apparently opposing views discover common ground. Synchronization is implicit in all the maps of the city – as it contributes to the emergence of meta-patterns that set up new levels of coordination.

These qualities are all embedded in our understanding of Regenerativity in the city. They enable the conditions for new growth to emerge in Spring. And they are equally responsible for the harvest that we can gather in Fall. Certainly they belong to everyone and are not restricted to an elite group in the city.

I have continuously rediscovered this fact, when I meet my audiences and ask them to “tell me about a time when you created something new by combining two ingredients (people, ideas, organizations, etc.)”.  When the audience shares their stories with each other an explosion of self-discovery occurs and a release of creative energy that regenerates spirits, inspires action, intitiates new relationships and develops new systems. It is the nature of cities to be Regenerative and it is a quality that is sharable by all classes – not to mention being sustainable, economically, politically and morally.

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Integral City Map 5: Embracing Spirituality in the Human Hive

Posted in C. Collective Intelligences, E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Ego, Emergence, Ethno, Global/Worldcentric, Master Intelligence, Spiritual intelligence, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 22, 2013 | 8 Comments »


Integral City how do I capture your spirit? Map 5 gives us a glimpse into the spiritual energy of love, that is ever-present in the Human Hive, as we live on the edge of evolution.

Integral City Map 5: Spirituality in the Human Hive

Integral City Map 5: Spirituality in the Human Hive

Where is it possible to sense the spirit of a city? Is it in the quiet of a chapel, or the chanting on a prayer mat? Is it from a vista that discloses the miracle of light and form that is the city at night? Is it while doing good deeds in the service of those in need? Or is it in the tumult and din of a play-off game for our favourite sport?

Of course, spirit is expressed in all of these ways because spirituality is a universal life force that cycles through existence as an involutionary and evolutionary impulse (Wilber, 1995). The first stage of the cycle, called involution, originates at the non-dual “source” that lies at the centre of existence where it descends from the invisible to the visible; from the immanent to that which is presenced; from the unmanifest source to manifest “re-sources”. The second stage of the cycle, called evolution, attracts all creation back to source so that it ascends from the manifest to the source; from the visible to the invisible; from gross physical bodies to subtle and causal energy fields to non-dual source. Spirituality is not outside of city creation but embedded in it as the source, flowing through it as energetic fields and manifest in its emergent re-sources (Hamilton, 2012).

James Lovelock has called humans Gaia’s Reflective Organ. I take his insight one step further and suggest that cities are the actual organs and individuals are cells within it.

As Reflective Organs we may know spirituality (or God) in all four quadrants of our integral reality (reflected in Integral City Map 1) as: spiritual experience (UL) ; action flow state (UR); collective ecstasy or ethos (LL); and collective creation (LR). Spirituality is also an UL and LL intelligence (or line) that is capable of growing from ego to ethno to world to kosmic levels of development for individuals and cultures. As well (paradoxically), it is the Absolute source of stillness at the centre of existence (Map 1) and the Relative evolutionary impulse that drives all city manifestation (Maps 2, 3, 4).

The city as spiritual container holds not only the spiritual lives of citizens at three scales (Self, Culture and Nature), but also the artefacts of spiritual expression including all the systems, structures and infrastructures within the LR built city. Ironically, although we tend to point at the physical cathedrals, mosques and synagogues as centres of spiritual life, in fact these are mere expressions of the mystical “soul” of the city in all its built form and business.  But it is this very busy-ness that incites people to seek the Space, Place and Grace in a spiritual refuge where coherence can emerge from the over-stimulation of the senses, and spiritual reconnection can occur.

As the city matures through the exchange of energy between spiritual Source and Re-Source a spiritual energy Field emerges. Evidence about spiritual behaviors, attitudes, shared practices and systems, suggest that a field effect is emerging in the city (McTaggart, 2001; Sheldrake, 1988). The field probably arises because the city as container causes the multiplicity of chaotic exchanges (Map 3) within and across holons and social holons to converge into patterns that sustain. A kind of “spiritual groove” becomes carved in the energetic field, that through repetition reinforces itself.

Finally, when we admit all three faces of God (expressed as the Master Code) as the essence of spirit in the city, we make room for an ever evolving field of spirituality.

The perennial values that all spiritual wisdoms share appear to contribute to the human hive as a Reflective Organ. Spiritual guides see Beauty, Goodness and Truth as core values that imbue spiritual life at all expressions of Self, Culture and Nature (DeKay, 2011, p. xxvii; McIntosh, 2007, p. 300; Wilber, 2007, p. 70).

Within an integral frame these values co-arise and their interior and exterior modes seem to cross-connect and rotate or even interchange as they stimulate multiple routes to the emergence of Grace, Place and Space. In tracing the cycle of spirituality in the human hive, we come to a final spirituality map that reveals Grace, Place and Space as outcomes from the dynamic interconnections of Beauty, Goodness and Truth. Perhaps it comes as no surprise that the integration of these core spiritual values is apprehended as the meta-value of Love in all the horizontal and vertical zones of the Integral City (as illustrated in Map 5)?

The Source Zone of city spirituality exists as the Absolute, ever-present non-dual infinite ground of spiritual abundance. Here the core value of Beauty may be accessed through the Interior Portal of Appreciation and enacted through the Exterior Practice of Expression. This results in the spiritual outcome of Grace.

The Field Zone of city spirituality arises through the subtle and causal memory patterns created by evolutionary spiritual practise. Here the core value of Goodness may be accessed through the Interior Portal of Stillness and enacted through the Exterior Practice of Service. This results in the spiritual outcome of Place.

At the Resource Zone of city spirituality emerges the relative manifest qualities of the evolutionary container of the human hive. Here the core value of Truth may be accessed through the Interior Portal of Learning and enacted through the Exterior Practice of Teaching and Construction. This results in the spiritual outcome of Space.

Integral City how do I not just capture your spirit – but embrace it?? Map 5 suggests Love is the spiritual pulse through which Gaia’s Reflective Organ makes:

Grace – In Taking Care of Yourself.
Place – In Taking Care of Each Other.
Space – In Taking Care of This City.

References:

DeKay, M. (2011). Integral Sustainable Design: Transformative Perspectives. London, UK: Earthscan.
Esbjörn-Hargens, S., & Zimmerman, M. (2009). Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc.
Hamilton, M. (2011). Integral Spirituality in the Human Hive: A Primer Trialog. Retrieved from http://www.integralcity.com/wiki.html
Lovelock, J. (1972). Gaia As Seen Through the Atmosphere, Atmospheric Environment, (Vol. vol. 6, p. 579).
Lovelock, J. (2009). The Vanishing Face of Gaia. New York: Harmony Books.
McIntosh, S. (2007). Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution: How the Integral Worldview is Transforming Politics, Culture and Spirituality. St. Paul, Minnesota: Paragon House.
McTaggart, L. (2001). The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe. New York: Harper Perennial.
McTaggart, L. (2011). The Bond: Connecting Through the Space Between Us. New York: Free Press.
Sheldrake, R. (1988). The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature (1995 ed.). Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press.
Wilber, K. (1995). Sex, Ecology and Spirituality: the spirit of evolution. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc.
Wilber, K. (2001). Marriage of Sense and Soul. New York: Random House.
Wilber, K. (2006). Integral Spirituality. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc.
Wilber, K. (2007). The Integral Vision. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc.

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Integral City Map 4: Shape-shifting Structures That Fit

Posted in Building - Structures, Emergence, Integral Maps, Meshworking, Navigating - IVSM, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 19, 2013 | 9 Comments »


Integral City how do we honor the many systems, structures and infrastructures that have emerged to shape you ? Map 4 offers us a cartography of organizational forms so we can appreciate how many functions serve the complexity of city life.

Integral City Map 4: The Complex Adaptive Structures of Change

Integral City Map 4: The Complex Adaptive Structures of Change

The built structures of the city are often the first boundaries that an observer remarks upon. These external expressions are artefacts of the internal structures in the brain/minds of city inhabitants that have now become visible (e.g. through fMRI scans). Both inner and outer structures of human systems arise from the adaptive process of people responding to life conditions (across all scales from global climatic-geological to local micro-biotic).

Map 4 is something like an archeological cross-section of the organizations that have emerged in the city over the last 5000 years.  Map 4 discloses the shapes of organizations as they have complexified  from family hearth, to clan circle, to territorial castle, to bureaucratic hierarchy, to industrial grid, to social network, to systemic ecology, to global noosphere.

And while all these organizational forms can be identified discretely, in fact they are now interconnected and cross-linked just like the organelles within a cell. Moreover, we know that the living system in each organization processes energy, matter and information through 19 sub-systems – just like all the living systems that make it up (including cells, organs, bodies, groups and sub-organizations). In fact Map 4 reveals that the organizations in the city, are moving towards further complexity, operating in the city just like the organs in  a whole living systems.

It is not difficult for us to imagine that soon individual cities will be operating as organs in a planet of cities, where cities will create the 19 global systems required to exist as a planet of living cities.

I have described the merits of this map (borrowing from the organizational icons in the book Spiral Dynamics) in the audio (and printed) book, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences in the Human Hive. I also discussed it with Ken Wilber during our Integral City 2.0 Online Conference (and Integral Life) Interview. Map 4 as a whole captures the Integral Intelligences of the city with special focus on the Structural Intelligences , as well as Living,  Emergence, Meshworking and Navigating  Intelligences).

Map 4 in the Integral City demonstrates strong patterns that relate to the natural designs in Tim Winton’s Pattern Dynamics (TM) Structure and Dynamics Patterns. But the Pattern of Structure reflects very similar patterns of boundaries, networks, complexity and emergence as in Map 4. The Pattern of Structure in the city shows us how human systems shape-shift boundaries, internal patterns and purposes to strategically survive and thrive.  At its core the Structure Pattern gives systems their frameworks for enabling processes to be replicated into energy-efficient activity.

Map 4 brings into focus the levels of complexity that are embedded into the strata of Map 1. Map 4 reveals the organizational structures that are nested as holons into the holarchy of Map 2. Finally the structural patterns of Map 4 show the organizational contexts within which the relationship exchanges of Map 3 both normalize and emerge from. Ultimately without the structures in Map 4, a city would not be able to sustain its economy, social, institutional or cultural life.

PD Structure

Map 4 reveals aspects of the Pattern of Structure because it reveals seven qualities identified by the language of Pattern Dynamics (TM):

  1. Boundary: Map 4 shows that each type of organization is a system with a boundary. Because boundaries are fundamental to seeing in systems, it is valuable to know how to identify, respect and negotiate boundaries in the city.
  2. Holon: Map 4 shows how 8 different types of organizations can each be considered a holon – a whole system. And taken together all the organizational holons in the city make up the city itself as a holon.
  3. Hierarchy: Map 4 is effectively a hierarchy of complexity – each organization in the genealogy transcends and includes core aspects of the organizations that have emerged before it. It should be noted that within the organizational lineage, some organizations are dominator hierarchies – and these continue today for managing effective responses to such situations as emergencies and terrorism.
  4. Network: Map 4 can be re-organized to better display the self-organizing network that emerges when organizations create supply chains with inter-sectoral exchanges of information, energy and matter. These networks become the precedent structures necessary to deepen connections and commitments for the development of shared objectives like innovation ecosystems.
  5. Complexity: Map 4 shows a step-by-step emergence of complexity as each organizational pattern integrates more complex goals, roles and capacities into its structures. With each new layer of complexity the organization (and eventually the city) can impact greater spans of space, time and moral influence.
  6. Holarchy: Map 4 is essentially a holarchy of organizations shown in levels of complexity. This resonates strongly with Map 2 which nests this holarchy in ways that individuals and groups within the city overlap with one another. However, another implication of the aspect of holarchy is the opportunity it offers for meshworking. This means that capacities are aligned around shared purpose, goals, processes, standards, resources and timelines.
  7. Field: Map 4 only hints at the field of connections that emerge from the structures of the city. However, the field can be thought of as a non-linear, energetic set of connections that can be as intangible as the “spirit of the city”  (which we explore in Map 5)- or as visible as the skyline of the city which depicts its core values in built form.

Integral City how do we honor the many systems, structures and infrastructures that have emerged to shape you ? Map 4 reveals the historical lineage of organizational structures in the city. And although not every city has all these organizations or patterns at a fully mature stage, most major cities in the world have the organizations at least to the bureacratic and industrial levels of complexity – and in small experiments the social networks, systems ecologies and innovation ecosystems are beginning to sprout.  No matter how many layers of organizational complexity a city currently nurtures, they all co-exist in complex networks (and sometimes meshworks), that (like the brains they reflect) enable the production of all the goods and services necessary to support the life of the holarchy of Map 2, the relationships of Map 3 and the human systems potential represented in Map 1.

In other blogs we have explored of Integral City Maps Maps 1 , 2 and 3. In a future blog we add the spiritual insights from Map 5.

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Integral City Map 2: Evolving Gardens of Creativity

Posted in B. Individual Intelligences, C. Collective Intelligences, Ecosphere, Emergence, Lifecycle, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 12, 2013 | 10 Comments »


Integral City how do I create thee?   Perhaps Map 2 can reveal how …

There are points of time, of distant memory, 
when the soul unites 
within the pattern of the universe.  
That union brings forth the understanding of life’s harmony.  
So it should be within the [city] garden …
Author Unknown

Integral City Map 2: The Nested Holarchy of City Systems

Integral City Map 2: The Nested Holarchy of City Systems

Every relationship we belong to in the city, offers us a new garden of possibilities for discovering, growing and expanding our sense of wholeness in the city. And because we live in an era when the rate of emergence (in all earth systems) is increasing, our survival depends on our agility to be inspired by the abundance of creative potential in all these gardens.

Integral City Map 2, shows how the human systems in the city nest into a series of “relationship gardens” – or pools – that cascade into one another (that we call a natural holarchy of complexity).  This series of gardens – or pools –  includes a landscape of relationships that is more complex than the one before. The landscape of the whole city creates the habitat for the cascading gardens of communities, organizations, groups, families and individuals.

From a design perspective, each one of these gardens, calls forth a centre that creates strength for all the other gardens connected to it. Architect Christopher Alexander observed that all living systems have strong centres that interconnect and support one another (as we discussed in Map 1). In this way a kind of symbiosis evolves where multiple centres of different sizes actually serve each other in a complementary way, creating natural ecosystems that support wellbeing in each garden at the same time as they create wellbeing in the whole cascade of relationships in the cit.y

I have described the merits of this map in the audio (and printed) book, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences in the Human Hive. I also discussed it with Ken Wilber during our Integral City 2.0 Online Conference (and Integral Life) Interview. Map 2 as a whole captures the Contexting Intelligences of the city: Evolutionary, Living and Ecosphere (with strong links to Individual, Collective and Structural Intelligences).

Map 2 in the Integral City demonstrates strong patterns that relate to the natural designs in Tim Winton’s Pattern Dynamics (TM) Structure and Exchange Patterns. But the Pattern of Creativity seems to capture best the elegance of evolutionary, living eco-systems inherent in Map 2. The Creativity Pattern in the city shows us how adaptation and novelty in the city arise from the the natural emergence of life, like an apple seed growing into a sapling, that becomes part of an orchard, that evolves a whole new species of apple.

Pattern Dynamics (tm) Creativity

Map 2 captures the patterns of the city as they relate to key conditions for innovation and creativity. They reflect how, like a garden, innovation in the city is planted, matures, cross pollinates and adaptively responds to life conditions.

Map 2 reveals aspects of the Pattern of Creativity because it reveals seven qualities identified by the language of Pattern Dynamics (TM):

  1. Seed: Map 2 starts with the individual as the core seed of intelligence in the city. In the modern city the seeds come from many cultures (like species) so that the family gardens from say the Punjab culture are distinctively the Dutch culture.
  2. Bifurcation: Map 2 does not explicitly show bifurcation – or branching in two directions from one initial path – but it has this choice implicit in it; for instance, when children who play together are directed to attend different schools; or when one family member breaks away from the church they grew up in, to attend another one: or when neighbours on the same street belong to different recreational activities or drive to different work places.
  3. Adaptation: Map 2 reveals the variety of habitats to which individuals, families and groups must adapt as they interact in the city. For people used to traditional ways, the number of choices on daily offer, is often overwhelming because they demand constant (and often stressing) adaptation to new situations outside their worldviews. For students schooled in high technology applications and entertainment, adaptation in the city is both a game and an expected life condition.
  4. Growth: Map 2 conveys the natural holarchy of nested systems in the city through which an individual can grow over a lifetime. Each system represents a “garden of experience” that expands the habitat of relationships for the individual. Each expansion offers the opportunity for more exchanges between individuals and collectives – with possibilities for innovative production, financing and integration of services.
  5. Emergence: Map 2 suggests that the interaction and interconnections amongst the different wholes (or holons) of the city will cause emergence – i.e., the creation of something new that has not existed before. (This is also powerfully conveyed in Map 3, which we will discuss in a subsequent blog.)
  6. Evolution: Map 2 clearly reflects the evolutionary complexity of the human systems in the city, as the holarchy of nested relationships becomes more complex. Map 2 shows how evolution of a city ecology depends on the transcending and including of all the less complex sets of relationships in the city. For instance, the neighbourhood, like a garden, includes all the organizations, recreational zones, schools family homes and individual comings and goings. Every neighbourhood evolves differently than others because of the variety that makes up its nested holarchy of city systems. This is why they have such distinctive patterns – just like a Japanese garden has very different features than a classical Italian garden.
  7. Elegance: Map 2 conveys the simple elegance of a classical natural form – like a conch shell, or a spiralling galaxy, or Venice’s St. Mark’s Square (a favourite example of Christopher Alexander to illustrate the evolutionary nature of creativity and beauty).

Integral City how do I create thee? Map 2 suggests that the simple unfolding of the pattern of relationships that naturally emerge across a life time in the city,  will create the complex adaptive conditions for creativity. As we have explored with Integral Architect Mark DeKay, the vibrancy of life in the city depends on creating the conditions for humans to emerge solutions that improve the wellbeing of self, culture and nature in the whole city.

In future blogs we continue the exploration of Integral City Maps 3, 4 and 5 and show how each adds further depth to Maps 1 and 2.

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Are We Falling Apart or Waking Apart?

Posted in E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Emergence, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 13, 2012 | 2 Comments »


Dr. Ichak Adizes asks if we are falling apart faster? He charts the dissonance that exists in our individual physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual sub-systems.

Adizes Logo

Dr. Adizes observes that our physical maturity is way ahead of our emotional and spiritual maturity. And while we can learn all the way into old age, that choice is not often enough exercised. This leaves the human being looking like it is in a very misaligned condition (dis-integrated even) at the moment. And because the individual is so unintegrated across these sub-systems, it impacts all the scales of human systems – our families, our organizations and our communities. Perhaps it is also the root of why we feel our cities are so turbulent and misaligned?

We asked recently in the Integral City 2.0 Online Conference: How can we wake up? grow up? and take responsibility? Several of our visionary teachers (Buzz Holling and Elisabet Sahtouris) told us that living systems go through a resilience cycle where the alignment stage is followed by breakdown and re-distribution of resources, before integrating into a new resourceful stage.  So, it may be that the dissonances, noticed by Dr. Adizes are actually signs of the next stage of resilience.  Perhaps in order to wake up our whole system (both individually and collectively), must pass through two very messy misaligned stages before a new alignment of all our systems can emerge? Perhaps the fact that our sub-systems are  not maturing at the same rate as one another is a perfectly natural phenomenon?

Just as a foetus in the womb grows its sub-systems at different rates and different stages – and indeed the same pattern repeats itself as the human matures into adulthood. When we look at the scale of the human species (and not just the individual or family) when we find ourselves on the cusp of being in a new relationship with the world , this kind of developmental dissonance is our natural next step of evoluton?

With all our emphasis on the importance of the physical, maybe it is natural that it should be the first system that “jumps the maturation queue”? Now it is the season to start waking up the emotional, mental and spiritual systems too.

Maybe December 21, 2012 is the signal for us to birth a more integrated system?

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Emergent Intelligence Frames Whole System Design

Posted in Building - Structures, Emergence, tagged , , , , , , on May 22, 2012 | 1 Comment »


Emergent Intelligence helps us not only see the city as  a whole but to design it as a whole. This gives us a chance to tap into our human hive mind – a mind that transcends and includes our individual minds. This condition arises because each person is massively interdependent on a living collective system in which he or she is embedded.

Where am I seeing evidence that this is emerging in cities? New discoveries like human generated energy  and new building designs that are energy neutral or even energy generating such as we see in Cradle to Cradle certification or where we are changing how we even think about designing energy effective buildings.

Such developments are signficant because, as a dissipative structure the city sucks in resources from its environment and spews out products, by-products and waste to its environment. That is why, when we take into consideration all the cities of the world (where now more than 50% of humanity live), their functioning affects the lives of all people regardless of where they live, inside or outside the city.

If city designers and developers can see the city as if it were a whole system, they may be able to appreciate its embedded wisdom for surviving in its unique life conditions; the mystery of its collective life force; and the tremendous potential it embraces in the energy, information and matter that it embraces. Seeing the city as a whole helps us to truly appreciate the performance of its sub-systems and gives us the context in which we can understand and flow with emergence.

Now What?  Here are three simple rules (principles) for applying Integral City Emergent Intelligences:

1. Survive so all living systems (holons) serve each other’s existence.

2. Adapt all city functions to flow in a closed loop of resource exchange with the environment.

3. Create a self-regenerating feedback loop, by interconnecting human regeneration cycles so that they honour the contributions of each stage of life as they replenish the environment.

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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.

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Emergent Designers Seek Energetic City 2050 for Arnhem

Posted in Building - Structures, Emergence, H. Research, Inquiry, Integral Maps, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 10, 2012 | 3 Comments »


Emergent Intelligence in the city enables survival, adaptation and regeneration of the whole human system.  Last week I was exploring how designers apply Emergent Intelligence in Arnhem, NL working with Alliander and Freedom Lab to explore Energetic City 2050.

Over the next six months, three teams are exploring how people in the city could generate their own power. Each with their own manifestos, and with a diversity of approaches, Innergy, Markt and Netwerk will explore energy, regenerativity and energetics apparently from all four quadrants of the Integral City.

As designers, in the Human Hive, I am curious to see how they will explore regeneration as it occurs through biological reproduction and inner renewal, shared learning and teaching and coaching others in roles, competencies and capacities? Will self-organizing energy production enable new forms of renewal as the city, like all living systems, will develop new cyclical habits that enable the accumulation, exploitation, distribution and redeployment of resources (the four stages of resilience identified by Gunderson and Holling et al)?

While Arnhem is set in the verdant food production area of eastern Netherlands, by shifting energy sources, how will emergence (a characteristic of living systems), arise from the resonance and coherence of the city system with its agricultural environment? How will the teams design resonance to emerge as the new city systems align externally to the city’s environment? Will they find new ways for the city to literally resonate with its surroundings? With the imaginations of artists, engineers, architects, social workers and IT designers, I am anticipating some surprising emergences and coherences will arise from the realignment of all the elements of the city system so that energy can be optimized. And when both resonance and coherence become synchronized what new capacities may emerge in the city system?

I am excited to see what new capacities for sustainability may emerge as a newly energized city invents new ways to embrace order, strategic planning, caring and sharing and systemizing.

This Experiment is an Inspiring Route to Liberating City Design! Before I left the first (of four) Energetic City 2050 Intensive, I could see the teams were already operating as if the city was not a system of parts, but a whole system of the human species (essentially an ecology of whole-parts or holons). Thus as they explored designs for a system of wholes, the city’s holarchy of  communities, organizations, groups, families and individuals and the built environment were going to open up to whole new potentials.

Kudos to the imaginations behind this daring experiment (Karin Rikkers of Alliander, and Alex VanOost especially) – it opens the way for  the healthy functioning of all the holons in one city and demonstrates how emergence can be a whole new learning methodology for other cities to practise.

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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.

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