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Great Purpose. Great Need. Great Joy. Great HUBs.

Posted in C. Collective Intelligences, Inquiry, Integral Maps, Lifecycle, Storytelling - Cultures, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 2, 2013 | 2 Comments »


It’s an honour and privilege to celebrate the inauguration of HUB Oakland, on this Easter weekend (march 29, 2013).

Hub Oakland

In Canada this Good Friday, is a statutory holiday. Here in California, today it will be remembered as the opening of something very special – the HUB will be generating energy that will wake up all of Oakland in the years to come.

Thank you for asking me to join you in your integral celebration. Thanks to David for leading us in Qi Gong and opening up our whole chi energy system. Thanks to Mark Fabionar for sharing the success of HUB Sonoma State U – Honoring the Past. Uniting the Present. Building the Future.

HUB Sonoma State U

Thanks to Lisa Chacon, Konda Mason and Ed Street for inspiring us with HUB’s vision and plans for structures to serve its Purpose. Thanks for sharing that the HUB’s job is to nurture Joy – What Makes You Truly Alive. Your video also mentionned how different this is than focusing on the World’s Greatest Needs. But I wonder what would happen if everyone coming to the HUB could notice the intersection of their Greatest Joy and the World’s Greatest Needs? There, I believe, is the sweet spot of everyone’s Purpose!! And tonight I’d like to talk to you about the mysterious connection between Great Purpose,Great Need and Great Joy.

A Great Purpose

My name is Marilyn Hamilton, and I am most well known for my book Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive. That is my purpose – I wake up the Human Hive!!

Let me hold up a cover so that you can see the lineage that I come from – that we all come from. You can see Gaia in the context of our Solar System, Galaxy and the Universe. She has birthed all geographies and Life on earth – including our eco-regions and all its plants and animals – including us Human Beings. In turn we have birthed our families, clans, kingdoms, nations and states. We have co-created the cities – which I call Human Hives.

I call cities Human Hives, taking instruction from another species – the Honey Bee. Apis Mellifera is the most intelligent species on the branch of the Tree of Life called the Invertebrates. Homo Sapiens is supposed to be the most intelligent species on the branch called the Vertebrates.

Now Honey Bees as a species are a 100 million years old. We as a species are only 100,000 to 1 million years old (depending on whose metrics you use). And Honey Bees have populated every geography on Earth with their bee hives. So I have been wondering what might we learn from a species that is 100 million years old that might not only sustain us, or create thriving cities – but contribute as much to all of Earth’s species as the Honey Bee does.

This morning I was walking with Alex&er Laszlo, Chair of ISSS, on the powerful land of IONS Earthrise in Petaluma. He said to me, “ You know all the species in all of the ecologies of the world know what the bee contributes to everyone’s wellbeing. Now, I am asking,‘What does the human species contribute that supports the whole?’”.

This is a powerful question that ties in with my admiration of the honey bees. For each hive must produce 40 pounds of honey a year in order to support a hive of about 50,000 bees. But in achieving that goal, year after year those bees pollinate the plants in the fields, around the globe, that produce $90 billion worth of food that humans consume each year (and we don’t even count the ways that other species also benefit). And that cycle of harvesting pollen and nectar, pollinating plants and producing honey, is a double sustainability cycle where the bees are creating renewable energy that supports them in the following year. This is an exponentially greater contribution to sustainability of global ecosystems – because it not only serves the bees, but the whole eco-region on which they depend.

The question I ask is “What is the equivalent of the bees’ 40 pounds of honey for the Human Hive?”.

Bee 40 lb honey - Tijmen Brozius1

A major hint of the answer has been given by James Lovelock who developed the Gaia Hypothesis – that the Earth is a living, self-regulating system. I heard him interviewed by a reporter who asked in a very disdainful voice. “Well I guess you don’t have a very high opinion of humans with all the damage they have done to the Earth?”. Lovelock countered with considerable vigour, “On the contrary,humans are Gaia’s reflective organ!” It is just that as a species we are very young – hardly teenagers in comparison with the 100 million year old honey bee. As reflective organs we have a lot of evolutionary maturing ahead of us.

In fact, I suggest that humans as individuals are cells in Gaia’s reflective Human Hive organs – and these reflective organs are like nodes on a planetary meridian system – our Planet of Cities. It is cities or Human Hives that are actually Gaia’s reflective organs. And those too are at very early stages of maturity – in comparison to what they could be. Because most of our sustainability paradigms focus only on sustaining ourselves, and not on the symbiotic relationship that the bees have established, with their capacity to co-create renewable energy.

Now if the bees as the most intelligent species of the invertebrates, can do that, I ask, why cannot the most intelligent species of the vertebrates also accomplish that? Especially with our distinctive capacity to be reflective organs? Organs that can multiply reflective capacity through both individual and collective consciousness and culture?? Organs that live by what I call the Master Code: Take Care of Yourself, Take Care of Each Other and Take Care of this Place.

So those are the kind of questions I am asking myself about the “Evolutionary Intelligences of the Human Hive”.

When I first wrote my book, I imagined my readers would come from the “progressive” thinking in cities on the west coast of North America and northern Europe. And so do many invitations to speak in academic settings affirm that audience. But much to my surprise, invitations have also come from cities in the Developing World – Mexico, South Africa and even Russia. (My book has been translated into Russian and Korean this year.) When I first received those invitations, I was not sure how to respond – whether I was the right person to do this kind of work in those challenging (and challenged) locations?

A Great Need

Then an experience in my personal life, changed my whole perspective about how I do my work in cities. Two years ago my brother, Richard, called me and told me that he had been suffering (silently) from lymphoma for 11 years. (This is a cancer of the blood, related to leukemia, that destroys your immune system by attacking your white blood cells.) Richard had completed many rounds of chemo, and all possible treatment modalities except one – a bone marrow/stem cell transplant. He needed a sibling donor (as they have the most likely blood markers) and asked if I would do that for him. I was shocked!! This is one of those times, when one’s IOU to the Universe, to serve at the highest and best use, is called in for payment!! With considerable trepidation, I agreed to go for the tests to see if we were a match. I was a 10 out 10. (My friends said that was typical – I am an overachiever!!).

Another friend did some subtle energy work with me and told me my lineage from both sides of my family were so happy that I would do this. But best of all – my blood cells were intoxicated with delight, that they were going to have an out of body experience!! That totally cracked me up – just to think I had a scheduled date for an OBE!! Still, both Richard and I knew that there were no guarantees with this treatment – it only created the conditions for his own system to re-gain the strength to re-balance his immune system and start producing his own white and red blood cells again. It might take months to do this. It might take years. It might take the rest of his life. Or it might not take at all. Basically, it came down to – nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I wasn’t sure I could do this – and if I did, I knew I couldn’t do it alone – so, I told my brother I asked for three conditions:
1. I needed to ask my sangha to support me (and they did).
2. I would send him not just my blood but every mindful condition for health and wellbeing I could infuse directly and non-locally into my transplant.
3. I needed to ask him to stop working at the successful entrepreneurial venture he had created as a second career choice. He had traded in his music career for a high-tech welding operation. I asked my brother as a condition of the transplant not to return to this “job from hell”. If he was going to live, then I asked him to go back to his first love – to live for his music – not to let the music die in him.

He agreed. And he wrote me (and his wife Jean) the symphony “Appaloosa” (now playing here).

So we did the transplant. 36 hours and 13 complete transfers of my whole blood system through a centrifuge machine to collect 2 bags of stem cells that took 50 minutes to be transplanted into Richard’s bloodstream. On transplant day plus one, his positive indicators shot through the roof. We were all elated. And that was a good thing – because we needed that first blast of success to see us through the weeks and months ahead of us where his fight for survival was as demanding as you can imagine – where death seemed like the only realistic thing to plan for. And at the end of six months, that is what we all expected. But it turns out those stem cells were not prepared to stop living their purpose. They were intent on doing the magic that these primal cells can do – and they were busy colonizing Richard’s bone marrow to such an extent that his own body’s immune system kicked back into life. Just when Richard thought the doctors were going to tell him all hope was gone, they told him: “You better stop preparing to die – and start preparing to live!!! Most of your misery is now caused by graft-host disease!! Your body’s immune system is fighting your sister’s stem cells. That’s what we wanted to see because it means your body is exerting its own sovereignty and energy.”

Richard went through many ups and downs in the last year. Little did we know the power of this stem cell transplant, meant that his whole blood type converted into my blood type (and all the other organs in his body had to make that adjustment!! He changed from a personality subject to SAD syndrome to my radically optimistic personality (one of those little extras that I said I’d send along for the ride).

Fast forward one year – just 2 weeks ago. Richard has been in a slump and once again feeling like this whole risk has been for naught. The docs sit him down and this time the news is: “You are cancer free!!”. Imagine, after 13 years being told he is cancer free!! He called me up overjoyed and a little amazed. I was ecstatic!! I share it with you this Easter weekend, as a true story of commitment, faith, deliverance and hope. A true Easter message that we can celebrate here at the HUB’s opening.

A Great Joy

So, this is a very long story that I said helped me understand how to look at my work differently. It helped me understand that when I align my Greatest Joy to Great Need, my Purpose is easily expressed. It also helped me realize that the Master Code – Taking care of yourself is the pre-requisite to being able to take care of others, so that we all can take care of this place and this planet.

I have come to imagine myself as a stem cell when I go into challenging and challenged places. My Purpose is to transplant the primal capacities for the habitat to grow strong enough to take care of itself. The first job I have is to Turn Up on Purpose. The second is to be Present to Joy – both mine and the people in the city I am working with – so I can hear and witness what the system’s next natural evolutionary step, most needs. The third is to respond appropriately with the appropriate gift to strengthen the existing system. The last step is at once the simplest and the hardest – it is to let go of results. Just like I had to let my stem cells do their work in my brother’s bloodstream, I must let the people in the Human Hive grow capacities for themselves. So they can discover, what is the way they can produce their 40 pounds of honey to look after themselves, each other, the city, the eco-region and even the planet.

Planet of Cities

As HUB Oakland opens its doors in our City of Planets, I affirm and invite all the magic that will happen here because your Purpose is to create a habitat for what Makes People Fully Alive. Everyone in the HUB are the stem cells for the Reflective Organ – the Human Hive of Oakland. You are really living your Purpose with the Master Code. You are co-creating all the conditions to model how – Taking care of yourself will enable all of you, working together, to take care of each other, so that you can take care of this place and our planet.

Participating in HUB Oakland is the key to Great Joy and a requisite ingredient to co-generating Oakland’s 40 pounds of honey!!

Congratulations. Happy Easter. And JOY to HUB Oakland!!

(This was my keynote to HUB Oakland’s Opening Night, March 29, 2013)

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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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Decoding Integral City Maps; Cohering the Source of Patterns

Posted in E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Integral Maps, Master Intelligence, Spiritual intelligence, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 3, 2013 | 1 Comment »


The Key to decoding  the Integral City Maps is the Master Code:

  • Take Care of Yourself
  • Take Care of Each Other
  • Take Care of this Place
  • Take Care of this Planet

Evolutionary Intelligences

This Key is symbolized with the Integral City Compass which decodes the 12 Intelligences we need to explore Integral City Maps with ever-increasing circles of care.

Each of the five Maps for the Integral City, gives the Map Reader a different territory to explore. Because all the territories are interconnected, the Maps shape-shift from one form to another, leading the Reader through a labyrinth of city patterns, that taken together with the Master Code Compass, cohere into a whole.

City explorers who have taken journeys with the Principles of Living Systems and/or the language of PatternDynamics(TM) start to notice that Integral City Maps and Intelligences belong to this cluster of systems that decode patterns of life.

In the last six blogs, we have explored the language of PatternDynamics(PD) in order to translate its symbols into the language of Integral City Maps. In many ways we could say PD provides six archways (marked by a PD symbol) to the different territories of the city.

In this last blog (of this PD series) we enter the archway to the heart of the city – it’s Source.  Here we recognize the territory of City Spirit which we explored in Map 5.

The Source Pattern is foundational to all the other patterns, emerging from evolutionary consciousness: order, identity and purpose.

PatternDynamics Patterns

Like the other PD patterns, the Source Pattern has seven qualities, but as a meta-meta-pattern each of these qualities derives from a marriage of Source with the other 6 PD meta-patterns plus Source itself.

Energy: The Energy Pattern emerges from the conjunction of Source with Rhythm. The Energy Pattern is foundational to the city’s many ways of moving, expressing and evolving. It is evident in the exchanges of Map 3 and the involutionary, evolutionary cycle of Map 5. Energy appears as first cause for the Evolutionary, Integral and Living Intelligences and Emergent result in the experience of Love.

Resource: The Resource pattern is the child of Source and Polarity. In Map 5 Resource is the centre of the city’s Grace, Place and Space and the emergent quality of core values, Beauty, Goodness and Truth. The Resource Pattern reminds us that the city as Gaia’s Reflective Organ adds value to our planet’s evolutionary journey.

Transformity: The Transformity emerges naturally when Source inspires Structure. It is clearly the pattern of Map 4′s spiral of complex organizational structures.  Transfomity is a source of hope, reminding us that evolution has been experimenting with 14 billion years of complex transformations, to which human systems, including the city, belong.

Power: The Power Pattern, emanating from the collision of Source and Exchange, represents  the Big Bang on Earth. As such it lies in the centre of Map 1 and drives the “prime directive” behind all the cycles in all the other Maps. While Energy is multi-directional, Power is multi-cyclical with a central purpose or centered focus (like the beehive’s 40 pounds of honey). The Power Pattern of the Integral City will eventually produce the city’s purpose. And when 10% of Gaia’s cities discover and start to live into their purpose, we will have a Planet of Cities in service to all life on Earth.

Autopoeisis: 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.

Pattern: The Pattern Pattern is Source’s grand Dynamic Dance with itself on the Universe’s dance floor.  We notice the choreography of patterns in each of Integral City’s Maps. Tracing the Patterns reinforces our appreciation of the miracle that “we get order for free” (1). The PD Book of Patterns, records how Life has chosen to repeat its most productive Patterns at every level of scale in the human systems of the city.

Void: The Void Pattern is Source reflecting on Source. As Source we discover this empty fullness through our meditations, contemplations and other spiritual practices that remind us that we have all evolved from the same Source and will return to the same Source. There is nowhere else to go. Map 5 is a “busy expression” of discovering the Void Pattern in the centre of our Fields of Coherence.

Decoding Integral City Maps, is as simple as accessing the Void through the Source of Source.  And as we practise living with the Patterns of Aliveness that dynamically run through the territories of our bio-psycho-cultural-social lives in the Integral City, we expand our Practise of the Master Code, so that we can evolve to be stewards of a fully conscious, sustainable and resilient Planet of Cities.

Reference:

1. Kauffman, S. A. (1993). The Origins of Order:  Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution. New York: Oxford Press.

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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 1: Loving the Polarities in the City

Posted in Integral Maps, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 7, 2013 | 9 Comments »


Integral City how do I map thee? Let me count the ways … starting with Map 1.

Integral City Map 1:The Four Quadrant Eight Level Map of Reality(Adapted from the work of Ken Wilber, Don Beck)

Integral City Map 1:The Four Quadrant Eight Level Map of Reality
(Adapted from the work of Ken Wilber, Don Beck)

When I started to explore the Integral framework for cities I was influenced both by the work of Ken Wilber and Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics model. Meshing the insights from both, I settled on what is now called Map 1 because it gives a comprehensive whole-systems view of the city.

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 1 as a whole captures the Integral Intelligences of the city. It also frames the context of each of the intelligences in the four quadrants: Upper Left / Inner, Upper Right / Outer, Lower Left / Cultural- Storytelling and Lower Right / Systems-Structural. (I have blogged extensively about all these intelligences elsewhere – just follow the links if you want the details.)

Today, let me explore this 4 quadrant, 8 level Map 1, with the language of Pattern Dynamics (TM), developed by Tim Winton. Map 1 could easily be related to several of Winton’s Patterns. Because it is by definition a whole systems map, it integrates many elements in one Map – so it could relate to the Dynamics Pattern. And it is also has an appearance of a strong Structure Pattern. And in the very centre of Map 1 is the evolutionary spiral – so it relates to the meta-pattern of Source.

But what fascinates me most about this Map 1 is that it depicts the many Polarity Patterns in the city and reveals how the interplay of opposites in the city naturally creates energies that arise from the tensions between the poles.

Polarity Pattern Dynamics (tm)

The Polarities in the city that can be traced in Map 1 follow spectrums with directions that can be anchored horizontally, vertically and diagonally. They represent Perspectives, Realities and Worldviews. Here is just one way we can simply name them, just experimenting with one directional anchor for each set.

Perspectives (vertical)

  • I vs WE
  • IT vs ITS

Realities (horizontal)

  • Intentional vs Bio-physical
  • Cultural vs Social

Worldviews/Values Systems (diagonal – 8 Levels in each quadrant)

  • Objective Integral vs Intersubjective Integral
  • Subjective Post-Post Modern vs Interobjective Post-Post Modern

Map 1 reveals aspects of the Pattern of Polarity because it reveals seven qualities identified by the language of Pattern Dynamics (TM):

1. Expansion/Contraction: Map 1 is a fractal pattern that can be applied to human systems in the city at multiple scales: an individual life, a group of people, an organization, a community or a city.

2. Concentration/Diffusion: Map 1 has both a center and a boundary that captures the concentration of the energy of individual humans, and special interest groups (e.g. recreational teams, reading clubs or professional associations)  and the diffusion of this energy across the many groups of humans in the city such as families, work places and neighbourhoods. (We will talk more about this in another blog, when we discuss Map 2.)

3. Input/Output: The Polarity pattern suggests that there is a directionality and/or tension from the input of the centre of one pole/quadrant to the perimeter of that pole/quadrant in the city; e.g. this might show up in business supply chains where more complex integral worldviews (of say, advanced IT systems) transcend and include less complex post-modern, modern and pre-modern worldviews.

4. Flows/Stores: One pole/quadrant can act as a store from which others emerge: e.g. collective values systems contain and influence individual values systems.

5. Order/Chaos: The self-organizing quality of chaos in Map 1 is not so readily apparent. 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 will discuss this quality more easily when we look at Map 3 (in subsequent blogs).

6. Competition/Cooperation: This quality as it is embedded in Map 1 is usually associated with the tensions between worldviews (particularly the competitive I-Me-Mine levels of complexity and the cooperative We-Us-Our levels of complexity). Clare Graves had the insight that the human species had evolved a survival strategy, that kept it alternately, swinging between the individuated “Express Self” poles (where innovation often occurs) and the collective “Sacrifice Self” poles (where shared governance can emerge).

7. Masculine/Feminine: This gendered aspect of polarity is not readily apparent from Map 1. But with interpretation from research on masculine/feminine qualities, many studies indicate that the masculine is more commonly attracted to the objective (action) and interobjective (systems) poles, while the feminine is more commonly attracted to the subjective (emotional) and intersubjective (relationship) poles.

Integral City how do I map thee? Map 1 reveals a richly polarized system where opposites both require one another to strengthen their own anchor of expression and also constantly change one another in order for the whole city system to survive. If you love the possibilities that emerge from the polarities of the city, Map 1 shows the evolutionarily adaptable opposites that give a whole new meaning to “pole dance” at a city scale.

In future blogs we explore other ways to map the whole city system through the Integral City Maps identified as Maps 2, 3, 4, and 5.

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Systems Patterns – a Language for Living

Posted in Integral Maps, Lifecycle, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 5, 2013 | 9 Comments »


The patterns embedded in human systems have evolved for hundreds of thousands of years.

PatternDynamics Patterns

Indeed, as living systems, the patterns have emerged from the 4 billion years that Life has vibrated on the dance floor of the Planet, as single cell microbes to  multi-organ persons. These patterns emerge from expressing the simple rules (or principles) that make systems alive.

These principles were explored by many of the Visionaries at the Integral City 2.0 Online Conference (IC2OC)- Elisabet Sahtouris in speaking of the 16 Principles of Living Systems; Mark DeKay in exploring his interpretation of Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language; Hazel Henderson in proposing Biomimicry principles for investment; and of course the 12 Intelligences that inspire Integral City’s ongoing inquiry.

Tim Winton, another Visionary of the ongoing IC2OC conference came to the west coast of North America last week – bringing his training on the language of Pattern Dynamics(TM) outside of Australia for the first time. I was privileged to attend Tim’s one day workshop in Vancouver, Canada.

As author of Pattern Dynamics(TM), Tim has created a Pattern Language that is especially enlightening for organizations to notice the patterns that govern organizational life. Coming from a background in forestry and applied life sciences, Tim has developed his systems language from his decades of observing the interaction of the A-B-C systems of life. His own career has created the learning habitat where an elegant Pattern Language has emerged  from Tim’s observations of the Biological and Cosmospherical systems of forest ecologies.  And from this set of symbols he now offers a technology to empower Anthropocentric systems at the organizational level.

Tim’s Pattern Dynamics(TM) language is easy to learn and powerful to apply especially for discovering insights about sustainability and resilience. Pattern Dynamics(TM) uses a basic set of seven patterns (as pictured above) that enable a dynamic exploration in nature and culture of:

Rhythm: the temporal aspects in systems

>Polarity: the interplay of opposites in systems

 >>Structure: the enduring frameworks of systems

 >>>Exchange: the productive capacity of systems

>>>>Creativity: the emergence of novel adaptation of systems

>>>>>Dynamics: the process that coordinates dynamics of systems

>>>>>>>Source: the consciousness of the origin of identity and purpose in systems

These seven primary patterns can be cross-referenced to create a full set of 49 secondary patterns. A visit to PatternDynamics(TM) website will show you how they create an integrated set of patterns to produce a very versatile language for organizational explorations of the dynamical relationships of cultures (internal and external), economies, sustainability and innovation.

Since the workshop, I have been considering how Pattern Dynamics(TM)(PD) offers a complementary language for organizational development in the context of cities.  Like fractals, the PD patterns are essentially embedded at organizational scale, in the patterns that are foundational to the framework of Integral City at city scale.

At the city scale, the patterns that I have explored in the Integral City book, website, articles, conference, blog and trainings  have been derived from the five Maps of the City.

Four of these maps are presented in the book, (and recently discussed with Ken Wilber) and the fifth in a recent article. I will explore each of them in subsequent blogs but here is how I see them relating to Winton’s Pattern Dynamics(TM) .

Map 1: The Four Quadrant Eight Level Map of Reality - this relates to PD Polarity Patterns

Map 2: The Nested Holarchy of City Systems – this relates to PD Creativity Patterns

Map 3: The Scalar Fractal Relationship of Micro-Meso-Macro Human Systems – this relates to PD Exchange Patterns

Map 4: The Complex Adaptive Structures of Change – this relates to PD Structure Patterns

Map 5: Spirituality in the Human Hive – this relates to PD Source Patterns

Tim’s recent interview with the IC2OC  inspired me to explore his Pattern Dynamics(TM) language further. I am so delighted to have received instruction from the Pattern Dynamics(TM) Language creator himself – and can recommend his integrally informed teaching style to anyone trying to understand how organizations as living systems speak a pattern language that reveals their energy, functionality and their evolutionary wellbeing.

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Guiding Step 3: Make Better Sense of the City – Provide Integrally In-formed Information

Posted in B. Individual Intelligences, C. Collective Intelligences, Integral Maps, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 17, 2013 | 2 Comments »


Is information in your city easy to come by? or is it difficult to make sense of your city because information is scarce or misaligned?

Integral City AQAL

Information in the Integral City is critical to the city’s functioning, wellbeing and thriving. But when we are overwhelmed by electronic news blasts it can be difficult to know what to pay attention to, because over-stimulation  can make us shut down. Ironically in the midst of the internet’s mediation of our news frenzy we can feel socially cut off from our nearest neighbours.

How can information that is Integrally In-Formed prevent both the overwhelm and help us interpret what really matters?

Firstly we can use the 4 quadrants of the Integral City map to be mindful that we are receiving and noticing information through all our lenses. For instance, consider information that is useful for your neighbourhood’s transportation system – how would you answer these questions?

  1. How safe do I feel in all the ways I travel?
  2. What modes of travel do I use? walking, bicycling, busing, rail, car driving, flying?
  3. What relationships impact the way I travel? family, friends, work colleagues, strangers?
  4. How does the city maintain city transportation systems? roads, buses, railway, airports?

We can use this simple system to filter the information overwhelm that too often deluges us. And we can also use it as a simple checklist to gain information from all 4 quadrants, when we are in dialogue with others about anything in the city that is important to us. Those conversations can be easily catalyzed by simple starting questions such as:

  1. Why is this [issue] important to you (how is it valuable, or not)?
  2. What is working?
  3. What is not working?
  4. What could work better?

The answers to these questions can then be sorted into the categories of the 4 quadrants noted above.

Using this simple integrally informed information gathering and management system, organizes our personal and collective realities (of thought/feelings, actions, relationships and systems). It creates an intelligent, wholes systems way of  impacting and actually in-forming our decisions, behaviours, cultures and economic opportunities.

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5 Practical Steps for Applying Integral City Theory

Posted in Integral Maps, Inquiry, D. Strategic Intelligences, Navigating - IVSM, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 5, 2013 | 5 Comments »


How can we apply Integral City theory or frameworks to my city? This is a question I am often asked.

Integral City Evolutionary Intel

At the What Next Integral Conference, Roger Walsh offered some helpful suggestions for applying Integral Theory in general.  These are also a useful approach to engaging Integral City practices.

1. Step 1 is to offer an Integral Analysis of the situation and/or city. This may involve a completely private analysis that helps you move to each of the next steps. It challenges the analyst to observe with all five senses and to use the four Integral City maps to notice what there is to notice.

2. Step 2 is to use the analysis from Step 1 to identify the assumptions that are in operation. An example of this kind of analysis is to notice what voice(s) your city inquiries are coming from – the City-zen? Civil Society? City Management? Business? What is important to these voices? What worldviews are they expressing?

3.  Step 3 is to provide (integrally informed) information that can help make better sense of the city. You can help identify: What values are important around here? What is working? What is not working? What could work better? And then your challenge is to facilitate the theming and relationships amongst the answers.

4. Step 4 invites you to subtly shift the perspective of the voices. An appreciative question can often enable a re-frame of the view of a situation from me-centric to other-centric. For example, to shift the perspective of environmentalists vs business owners we might want to listen to the stories people share in response to this question: “Tell me about a time when you were positively impacted by a business in your neighbourhood?” When stories are shared, perspectives start to expand as more partial frames are brought in, to complete a wider, more whole picture.

5. Step 5 opens the space, to offer a vision of possibilities. This step occurs when you have earned enough credibility through walking through the other four steps, that you can create the conditions for all the voices of the city to speak to a desired future. A desired future with support from as many stakeholders as possible gains the momentum that arises from shared beliefs.

Following the 5 Steps sounds logical. Seems simple. But each step requires the practise of seeing the world through compassionate lenses that grow ever wider and deeper with each new step taken. And navigating this practise grows and evolves the practitioner’s capacity for implementing Integral City approaches every step of the way.

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Integral Intelligence – Psycho-Activates Gaia’s Reflective Organ

Posted in Integral Maps, tagged , , , , on June 14, 2012 |


Integral Intelligence is a way of looking at the city that transcends and includes views of the city that are traditional (the city as home), modern (the city as economic engine), post-modern (the city as social safety net) and systemic (the city as living human system).

Integral Intelligence at the city scale embraces all the multiplicities of human systems at a meso level – existing between the personal experience of the individual and the global experience of the planet. If humans are Gaia’s reflective organ (as James Lovelock proposes) then an Integral Intelligence reveals the fractal patterns of our reflective capacity.

At this time in world history it is critical to grasp and apply Integral Intelligence now. The city is home to more than 50% of humanity and most of the elements of its operating system are misaligned and fragmented by traditional reductionism, modern mis-management and inappropriate post-modern social safety nets. City life, challenged by global and local security, sustainability and resilience needs leaders with integrally informed reflective capacity to work on improving city infrastructures, cultivate the vitality of city cultures, and design world class governance systems.

Integral Intelligence acts like an open source integral operating system that is globally attuned but locally adapted.

Integral Intelligence has a powerful psyho-active quality to it – when it is practised (however tentatively) it has a ripple effect that impacts the practitioner, the community and city systems wherever they are touched. Integral Intelligence is open ended and continuously meshes new learning into older practices. (Thus it is both demanding and liberating!).  How can Integral Intelligence be enacted? Here are three “simple” rules for applying Integral Intelligence in the city:

1.Map the territory integrally (horizontally through four quadrants, vertically through eight plus levels of development, diagonally through city change states, and relationally through its nested holarchies and fractals of complexity).

2. Create and sustain an integral mapping system at the highest sustainable level of complexity, that is appropriate to the capacities of city management.

3. Learn from and update the maps annually or more often.

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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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Connect City-Eco-Regional Holarchy: Improve Health

Posted in Integral Maps, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 12, 2012 | 1 Comment »


The four quadrant perspectival map of reality (bio-psycho-cultural-social) can be shape-shifted into a nested holarchy of city holons.

This scalar fractal map shows the relationship amongst the micro, meso and macro human systems at multiple levels of scale from the individual to the family/group, organization, sector, community, city, eco-region and the world. Integral intelligence looks at the city, as a whole system, in the context of its eco-region. So we can see cities in their natural environment (whether that be mountain, sea, prairie, desert, lakeland or any of the other 12 geographies of the world). As Jared Diamond reminds us, human systems must pay attention to their climate, geography and natural ecology in order to make sustainable decisions for survival and connecting with other cities in economic, social, cultural or environmental exchange.

Cities must also develop resilience against attacks from internal invaders (like conflicting values systems) and external predators (like hostile economies that extract financial, human or natural resources without replacing them in a reciprocal exchange). An Integral City is dynamic, adaptive and responsive to both its internal life conditions and external life conditions. The holarchy of nested human systems can be used as mindfulness lenses to help us differentiate perspectives that remind us about different views and different scales. They show us another way that the fractal and holonic existences of human systems and sub-systems interact with one another. When the holarchical map is combined with the four quadrant Integral map of the city, they offer a new organizing principle to interpret information from Global Information Systems (GIS) maps.

An Integral City goes beyond the sustainability of the human systems which it contains and actually adds value to the bio-region in which it is located and/or to the bio-regions to which it is connected. Ultimately this means that an Integral City would be governed by its capacity to develop, maintain and regenerate life-giving resources. Such a city’s health would be measured in the context of the bio-region’s health and the planet’s health.

The Integral maps give us insight into the vibrancy of wholeness of the city and help us to detect when that wholeness is  disconnected and out of synch. They help us understand how the city as a whole functions internally, while seeing the commonalities in the patterns of human systems that link them externally to other cities facing the same affronts to their integralness and thus their capacity for integration and integrity. This map gives us a way to live into the maxim (oft repeated by Meg Wheatley): “If you want to improve the health of a system, connect it to more of itself”.

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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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