Tag: Evolution

Is an unplanned city unplanned? Part 2

… the continuing story of St. John’s, Newfoundland.  A wonderful example of how our life conditions, our habitat, connects to the purpose of settlement and cities.  (Here is Part 1.)

Five hundred years ago, St. John’s was a sheltered, ice-free harbor, a place for ships to rendezvous at the eastern point of North America.  As power and might were driving European colonial expansion, securing the lucrative Newfoundland fishery became a military imperative.  When Sir Humphrey Gilbert arrived in St. John’s harbour in 1583 with 5 ships and 260 men, he announced to the men of thirty six Spanish, Portuguese, French and English fishing boats that they were under English sovereignty.[1]  The port of St. John’s was fought over: the Basques took it from the French; Dutch from the English; and several wars between the English and French wars culminated in English possession of St. John’s in 1762.

Zoom in of Sir Frances Owen's 1798 Map

The early recorded shape of St. John’s is as military life on the edge of North America.  A map of St. John’s in 1784 shows two forts (Townshend and William), the town, consisting of a series of buildings along the harbor.  Sir Francis Owen’s survey map of 1798 shows more fortification: numerous batteries, a block on Signal Hill, Fort Amherst and Fort Waldegrave.  He also notes the hospital, court house and custom house.  The settlement is still small – still a series of buildings along the harbour.  The church illustrated, but not named.  Other familiar names of the places in St. John’s are named:  Kitty Vitty [sic], Georges Pond, Cuckold’s Cove.

For the Empire, the purpose of this settlement of 3244 people is military presence to claim its stake in the fishery and it is organized to do so.  For people living in the settlement, the purpose of the settlement is more immediate: creating the conditions for survival.  The settlement specifically is a means for survival and livelihood (of the Empire and individuals) by making a living, harvesting fish from the ocean and trading it with Europe.  Fishing is a dangerous way to make a living: isolation, cold winters, scarce food, no health care, minimal contact with “the world”.  From birth until death, endless hard work on land and water provided the basics needed to survive this harsh environment.  The settlement is organized to meet these needs: a hospital, homes, wharfs, public houses and even a church, to support the settlement’s ability to make meaning of life and hardship.  The settlement is organized to survive and thrive.

By the end of the 1800s, Newfoundland secures its position as the worlds largest exporter of salt cod.[2]  In St. John’s, this means more houses at the edge of the harbor and the fish flakes on hand to preserve the catch.  As trade with others grows, more docks and wharfs appear and more houses and boats.  And the trades to support this work: pharmacies, offices, stores, warehouses, trades and suppliers.  A plan of St. Johns in 1856 shows a much larger physical settlement to accommodate a population of 30,000[3], almost 10 times that of 1798. The unplanned, disorderly city we recognize in today’s St. John’s, between the water and New Gower Street, has appeared.  However, the map itself reveals extensive order and thoughtfulness.  What the settlement needs is on hand:

  • Fortifications to protect the settlement and interests of British Empire
  • Wharfs and docks to accommodate the fishery
  • Land and buildings to accommodate
    • authority and governance  (government house and grounds, custom house, court house, public wharf)
    • various spiritual needs
    • needed services (confectionary, hotels, auction mart, fishing rooms)
    • future needs (‘site taken by telegraph company’)
    • land transportation networks
  • Clean water supply by aqueduct from Georges Pond
  • Information about who occupies premises, such as Theodore Cliff’s Auction Mart, William Woodley (Fishing Room), Brooking, Son & Co., or J.G Kidder (Boston, U.S.)

The people of St. John’s, and the authorities supporting St. John’s, provided sufficient order to meet the needs of the emerging city; the activities of fishing, preserving, storing and shipping the catch needed a town with it to support the industry. As years passed, citizens and governments alike noticed when conditions changed and something new was needed, and likewise, things no longer needed were discarded.  And so the city evolves, constantly adjusting to changing life conditions.

In the 150 years since the ‘unplanned city’ that we now recognize surfaced, life conditions continue to shape St. John’s.  Geography continued to play a significant role: Marconi’s first transatlantic (wireless) telegraph is sent to Signal Hill in 1901 from Cornwall, England.  A Coronation Souvenir Map, 1937 shows a city still expanding.  In World War II the fortifications were again used to protect transatlantic shipping routes and America’s most Eastern point of land from the attack of German U-boats.  Torpedo nets were set up across the narrows to protect the harbor.  New gun batteries were placed at Fort Amherst, and the American military base, Fort Pepperell, was built. The territorial impulse expanded from the British Empire to the Allied Forces.

Our times change the activities of the city: the decline in demand for salt cod and the increase in demand for frozen fish in the mid 1900’s industrialized fishing patterns; the decline of fish stocks resulted in the 1992 fishing moratorium and economic hardship.  The late 1990s brought offshore oil production – 100 million barrels of oil in 2010 for Newfoundland and Labrador – and St. John’s role as the primary offshore energy supply and service center for East Coast Canada.  Today, cruise ships regularly visit St. John’s as part of their ‘Operation Titanic’, ‘Voyage of the Vikings’ and ‘Top of the World’ expeditions.

St. John’s sits right where the land meets the water, connecting the past with the present and the future.   The sheltered, ice-free port is strategically located 500 years ago and today.  In reality, this port city never existed in isolation; it has always been about connections, a meeting place.  It served as a rendezvous site and safe harbour for European nations 500 years ago.  It supported the connection between Europe and the North America through the fisher.  It connects communities by providing supplies and services with other Newfoundland and Labrador communities, with Canada and the United States, and ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean from points all around the world.  And to be all of that, St. John’s became a city.

The shape of St. John’s is derived from its geography, its purpose, the activities within and in connection to other cities.  It may not have been planned to be what it is today, but it is certainly  not unintentional.  Is that enough to say that it is unplanned?  It did what it needed to do in each stage of its development.  Does ‘planning’ mean that it should have done more than respond to the life conditions at each stage of development?

In my next post, I will bring the pattern to light: that there are evolving purposes to cities.  

Cited Sources –

[1] Derek Hayes, Historical Atlas of Canada: Canada’s History Illustrated with Original Maps, Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., Vancouver (2002) p. 35

[2] Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage: Fisheries.  Available at http://www.heritage.nf.ca/society/fishery.html

[3] In 1857, 30,476 people resided in St. John’s. Statistics Canada. Nfld Table I – Dwellings, Families, Population, Sexes, Conjugal Condition, etc., 1857 – Newfoundland(table), 1857 – Census of Newfoundland (Population/Sexes/Conjugal Condition) (database), Using E-STAT (distributor).
http://estat.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.exe?Lang=E&EST-Fi=EStat\English\SC_RR-eng.htm

Sources –

Beck, Don Edward and Cowan, Christopher C., Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford (2006), particularly pages 52-56.

Hamilton, Marilyn, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, New Society Publishers Inc., Gabriola Island (2008)

Sanders, Beth, “From the High Water Mark to the Back of the Fish Flakes: The Evolutionary Purpose of Cities,” Vol 51, No. 4, p 26-31, Plan Canada.  Print publication of the Canadian Institute of Planners.


Is the unplanned city unplanned? Part 4

What is the role of planning and planners if the overriding purpose of a city is to integrate the needs of its people, with its context, to create a habitat in which people survive and thrive?  Simply, ‘planning’ a city is an activity that supports our collective work to organize ourselves into, and in, cities with the objective of ensuring that our habitat serves us well.

Modes of organizing

Figure 1 - City Purpose Spiral

In Is an unplanned city unplanned? Part 3 , I introduced a spiral of evolving city purposes (Figure 1).  With each level of purpose of the city, there is a corresponding mode of organizing.

500 years ago, when St. John’s harbor was settled (see Part 1 and Part 2), choices were made to ensure people’s individual survival and that of the settlement. They took advantage of a geographic location in proximity to Europe and a calm harbour that didn’t freeze, two geographic factors that contribute to the harbour’s role in transatlantic shipping today.  Specific to the settlement itself, they ensured a supply of fresh water and materials to build shelter.  Decisions were made in response to context to ensure survival, and once immediate survival needs were met, they began organizing themselves.

Figure 2- City Organizing Spiral

Four levels of organizing (Figure 2) are evident in early St. Johns: reacting (survival), gathering (collective survival), doing (power and might), and planning (authority and moral codes).  In the early days of St. John’s people did what needed to be done.  Activities were coordinated – the port authority, the court house, government house, custom house.  Resources were coordinated – water supply, roads.  Likely in ‘do’ mode, decisions were made by the governor about where to locate the church, the various government buildings.  In ‘do’ mode, forts were constructed.  In ‘do’ mode, the homes and fishery in support of the fort were constructed.  As authority was needed, it arrived.

Once our survival needs are met, we are able to expand our view and consider others.  We gather with others to make meaning of what has happened and what will happen.  We work together to survive and begin the journey to thrive – in the pub or church.  When things need to be done, we meet to sort out what to do.  Some individuals will just do what needs to be done and set up fish flakes wherever it works.  Build a dock where it works.  This can feel unruly, and when sufficiently so, someone will try to give structure to things – in the case of St. John’s we the Port Authority, government house, custom house, the court house.

In St. John’s, the ‘doing’ also takes place at the scale of nations: the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese all want to claim the fishery and access to the fishery.  In ‘doing’ mode, they build kingdoms and lay claim to territory.  As time goes on, hints of plans take root in St. John’s.  And plans come with authority to make sure that the plan is implemented.  St. John’s’ early maps reveal how this took place: pipes for water supply, the custom house (and its rules), road construction, property ownership, and who occupies premises.  In response to our life conditions we organize as appropriate (Figure 2).

A sixth purpose for cities

The fifth purpose for cities is to generate prosperity for its citizens, in thriving economies, a mitigation of the rules that emerged from authorities, and a renewed sense of entrepreneurial spirit and creativity.  In St. John’s this id evident in the corporate structure for the St. John’s Port Authority: users of the port, City of St. John’s, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Government of Canada.  This is partnership, not a central authority simply consulting with stakeholders.  And while not a ‘city’ organization, it certainly shapes St. John’s.

A sixth purpose is emerging for today’s cities (Figure 1): to create the conditions for people to fully access our diversity of knowledge.  We are growing into an understanding that city hall is not the only player who organizes a city but that there are many others involved: chambers of comer, community foundations, advocacy groups, developers and builders, citizens, health authorities, school systems, provincial and federal government, citizens, etc.  All and each of these players shape our increasingly complex cities.  They are increasingly demanding a role in the process of creating our cities.

The planning profession – new work

The formal act of planning our cities emerged as new work when we required additional order in response to life conditions of a certain time, geography, challenges and social circumstances.  Planning in Canada is a fairly recent phenomenon: The Town Planning Institute of Canada was established in 1919, later turning into the Canadian Institute of Planners in 1974.  Further evolution of the profession has involved the regulation of the profession by provincial governments in recent decades:  Alberta, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan.

Today, we see the formal act of planning land uses in municipal legislation: zoning by-laws, area structure plans, municipal development plans and official community plans.  In their work, planners help us organize our social and community services, build economic capacity, address transportation and infrastructure needs, manage cultural and heritage resources, ensure environmental protection.  The Canadian Institute of Planners defines planning as:

the scientific, aesthetic, and orderly disposition of land, resources, facilities and services with a view to securing the physical, economic and social efficiency, health and well-being of urban and rural communities.  

While this definition is complicated, it is clear that the planning profession is in place to help the city be the best it can be for its residents.

Two roles for planning today

The challenge for citizens and planners today is to recognize two different kinds of planning support to cities:

  1. Provide the answers – traditional, linear, planning expertise.
  2. Create a habitat for exploration – support the city’s awareness so it can respond purposefully, appropriately.

The difference between the two is simple: planners have expert knowledge vs. citizens have expert knowledge.  There are times when the specific expertise of planners is needed.  This is “top-down” activity, which is the right thing under certain circumstances.  The second role, however, requires acknowledgement that a city is trying to organize itself and there is work to be done to help the city see itself (more on this, what Marilyn Hamilton calls integral vital signs monitoring, in later posts).  To get what we need from our cities, we each need to be in tune to what our cities need of us.  This means honing our telling and listening skills in our work in the world. We need to notice not what we want to do, but what is being asked of us.  This is where the next evolutionary step will emerge for the profession – a profession in service to cities and their inhabitants.

Planners are relevant when supporting the work of a whole city to organize itself.  Individually and collectively, planners support our work to improve our habitat.  Planners are well positioned to create the conditions for cities to see changing life conditions and for cities to figure out how to adjust.  Our work, then, is to create the conditions for ourselves, and our cities, to see and respond to life conditions.  Some of this work takes the form of planning as we know it, and some will take other forms.  The purpose of planning is to support city efforts to notice, adjust and organize to ensure people survive and thrive.

To answer the question, ‘Is the unplanned city unplanned?’, I note that all cities are organized to meet a purpose in a given context.  ‘Planning’ is only one mode of organizing.  The unplanned city is unplanned, but not created without purpose.  This is significant.  Planned cities don’t achieve their plans exactly anyway.  The real matter at hand is knowing the purpose(s) of cities.  Whether planned or unplanned, all cities are organized.

My next post will explore the voices that make a whole, integral city.

Sources –

Beck, Don Edward and Cowan, Christopher C., Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford (2006), particularly pages 52-56.

Hamilton, Marilyn, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, New Society Publishers Inc., Gabriola Island (2008)

Sanders, Beth, “From the High Water Mark to the Back of the Fish Flakes: The Evolutionary Purpose of Cities,” Vol 51, No. 4, p 26-31, Plan Canada.  Print publication of the Canadian Institute of Planners.

Is an unplanned city unplanned? Part 1

To tackle the question about whether we are planning or organizing our cities, it is necessary to first look at the purpose of cities.

The large, evolutionary purpose of cities is to create a habitat in which we can generate new ways of thinking, making and doing new things.  We build the very habitats we need in the form of cities.  Our cities are our nests.  Within this large purpose, there are stages of purpose of settlements and cities. At each stage, we are driven to more than merely survive: we wish to thrive and move on to a next stage. This takes place as we constantly look for new work (new ways of thinking, making and doing new things) in relationship with our habitat (physical and social).  At each stage, we build the nest we need.

It is time now to again build the nest that we need.  In order to do that, we need to discern the pattern that can be seen so far.

St. John’s

St. John's - the Battery

In North America, St. John’s, Newfoundland is a perfect place to marvel at how human settlement changes as the purpose of the settlement changes over time.  In his opening remarks at the 2011 Canadian Institute of Planners conference in St. John’s, Mayor Dennis O’Keefe invited conference participants to explore and pay particular attention to the ‘unplanned city’.  He made this invitation in jest, for you can’t miss the unplanned part of this city.  There is a crazy mix of buildings and roads, houses perched on rocky slopes hovering perilously over the water.  The steep hills that every engineer I have worked with – if asked for approval – would scream rejection.  Streets everywhere connecting and ending with no discernable pattern.  Streets impossibly skinny, too short, too curvy.  Today, much of this shape remains as St. John’s unplanned city.

This unplanned city is mesmerizing. The word unplanned immediately conjures in my mind some form of  ‘accidental’ or ‘inadvertent’ city, but St. John’s is not an unintentional settlement.  It was very purposeful, and that purpose guided the very shape of St. John’s. In fact, the purpose of St. John’s as a settlement has shifted over time, with each step in its evolution leaving its mark.

Fish Flakes in St. John's (http://www.heritage.nf.ca/society/images/coll_03_07_006_600.jpg)

Mayor’ O’Keefe’s jest might have slipped by me were it not for two things that startled me while exploring the unplanned city.  First, the St. John’s Port Authority is over five hundred years old.  Second, seeing a map describing land ownership with the words, “from the high water mark to the back of the fish flakes.”  The life conditions of historic St. John’s are radically different from what I know on the Canadian prairies.  I am not used to imagining European settlers’ lives in North America over 500 years ago.  While the words, “from the high water mark” are familiar, the words, “to the back of the fish flakes” belong to a way of life in another era, wholly unfamiliar to my life on the Canadian prairies in Edmonton.

Life Conditions

I see the evolving purpose – and shape – of cities from the vantage point of their life conditions.  With the words ‘life conditions’, I am drawing on Clare Grave’s work on evolutionary value systems, and the notion that humans are driven by the dynamic interaction between our internal states and our external worlds.  Our life conditions, our external worlds, are our habitat:

  1. The historic times we live in (the era)
  2. The geographic place (the physical conditions)
  3. The challenges we face to exist (priorities, survival issues, threats to safety); and
  4. The social circumstances in which we find ourselves (status, lineage, political systems).

St. John’s reveals clear examples of how life conditions have an impact on the purpose of a city, and the shape a city ultimately takes.  And as life conditions change, the city’s shape evolves as needed.

In my next post, I will explore the evolution of St. John’s to discern how our life conditions – our habitat – connects to the purpose of settlement/cities.  
Is the unplanned city of St. John’s unplanned?

 

 

Sources –

Beck, Don Edward and Cowan, Christopher C., Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford (2006), particularly pages 52-56.

Hamilton, Marilyn, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, New Society Publishers Inc., Gabriola Island (2008)

Sanders, Beth, “From the High Water Mark to the Back of the Fish Flakes: The Evolutionary Purpose of Cities,” Vol 51, No. 4, p 26-31, Plan Canada.  Print publication of the Canadian Institute of Planners.

 

 

 

 

Planning or organizing?

This fundamental question is for everyone who lives, works, plays in and visits cities: are we planning our cities or organizing them?

The way we organize ourselves evolves as the purpose of our settlements and cities evolves.  Over the next several posts, I will describe how the purpose of cities evolves and how our choices in how we organize ourselves reflect those purposes.  There are patterns in this understanding that highlight how as citizens – including the formal, professional planners – we shape our very habitat to meet our needs, and these needs change constantly.

I am not convinced that the word planning is the right word to describe the work we do collectively to create cities that serve us well. It may be the right word for a profession that does some of the planning work on our behalf, but not for our collective activity to create cities for today’s purposes.

I expect I will hold onto this question about planning or organizing for several posts.  To begin, in the next post I will explore this question: What shapes the purpose of a city?

Source – 

Whyte, David, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship, Riverhead Books.  New York (2009)

 

The city as a nest

Thinking of our cities as nests means we understand that our cities are what we build for ourselves.  Like other species we build our most immediate habitat: our shelter from the elements.  We also build structures that, once our survival needs are met, nurture our families and our well-being.  As a collective, we build larger and larger communities that address the needs of more than just a family.  Over the course of our evolution we build infrastructure to protect ourselves and our livelihoods (fortifications) and we build infrastructure to ensure order (transportation systems, government facilities).  We also build infrastructure to enjoy the opportunities that present themselves to enjoy life (recreation facilities, art galleries, sports arenas, etc.).  All of this is enabled because of our relationship with the resources that surround the beginnings of settlement and the subsequent work we have developed and expanded over decades, centuries and millenia.

Consider a simple definition of nest – a place or structure made or chosen:

  • in which to lay and incubate eggs or give birth to young
  • where a number of animals of the same species and their young occupying a common habitat: an ants’ nest
  • where an animal or insect breeds or shelters: an ants’ nest

The qualities of a nest are various.  A nest has some density.  Perhaps as a snug retreat, or tucked away all by itself, it is where a concentration of a species calls home.  A nest is also warm, safe and comfortable.  Whether a nest for birds, or a nest of shredded paper to hold a fragile bowl, a nest is a container that holds, protects and supports its contents.  A nest is pocket-like, usually a more or less circular structure.  It is a refuge from the elements.  It is home.

At a basic level, “nest” describes the habitat humans build for themselves very appropriately.  Our cities are made by us.  We build our homes and cities for ourselves as a species and with each generation.  More and more humans are choosing cities as their habitat.  In addition, cities provide heightened care for our young (specialized health care).

The qualities of a nest also coincide with those of a city.  People conglomerate in the city.  The city – at its best – provides shelter for more and more humans as more and more humans make cities their home.  At a minimum, we go to cities with the intention of making a better life, pursuing our work, looking for opportunities.  Geographical constraints aside, our cities take a circular form.  Cities are the habitat that holds, protects and supports the generation of new ways of thinking, making and doing new things.  Cities cultivate innovation, the very thing we need to ensure the cities we build are able to hold, protect and support us, citizens of the city.  We make the nest – the city – in which we settle.

In exploring definitions of nest, I found that as soon as the word nest is associated with humans, a shadow side emerges: a place filled with undesirable people, activity or things; a place or situation that is full of bad people or activities; or a place that fosters something undesirable.  The examples: a nest of spies, a nest of thievery.  It certainly is the case that as more and more good things happen in the city, more bad things will also take place.  The city is not a perfect phenomenon.  Our work in cities must acknowledge and attend to the healthy and unhealthy aspects of our nest.  Which do we wish our city nests to nurture?

We build our nest cities to serve ourselves – to survive and thrive.  We build our nest cities to allow us to grow and develop – to emerge into what we need to be in order to survive and thrive.  We have a choice about whether to create cities that serve us poorly or well.  They are the place from which we leap to new ways of thinking, making and doing new things.  They are the place from which we fly to new nests, as we reshape our cities and what happens in them now at an unprecedented rate.

Figure A

As we think about our nest cities and our relationship with them, we must consider the nested hierarchy of systems that make up the city (Figure A).  (Three posts have explored the nested hierarchy of city systems: Work at scale to serve the city, The development of cities is a survival skill, and Cities: the result of our evolving interaction with our habitat.)  A city is full of similar things of different sizes that fit inside each other, where the smaller element fits in a lower position in a hierarchy: a nest of tables, organisms classified in a series of nested sets.  This involves a set of things in graduated sizes that fit together.  The notion of hierarchy offers yet another way of looking at the city and its systems.

There is a lot for a Nest City to hold.  It is simple and complex and it is ever changing.  Knowing this changes how we look at our cities.  It changes how we design our cities.  It changes the very process by which we create our cities.  Nest City requires us to host ourselves and our evolution well.   

Nested elements of a city: economic, social and physical

Resources that may be of interest

Definitions:

Synonyms:

Evolving cities is a survival skill

Over millennia, settlements and cities have started and thrived when and where the physical context was right, in an appropriate ‘habitat’.  They have declined – and ended – when the physical habitat changed and the city didn’t or couldn’t adjust.  A city may decline when the economy struggles, but the ultimate decline comes when there are physical limitations, such as no food or water.

A city and the citizens that make up the city rely on its physical habitat for its wellbeing.  We rely fully on our physical inheritance and the decisions we make about what to do with our inheritance.  Authors James Lovelock, Bill McKibben, Jared Diamond and Tim Flannery argue that as a species we have overextended ourselves; we have overused our inheritance.  The result may be an over correction, as nature does with any species that reaches too high a population.  It is not difficult to imagine this possibility given the rate that our population growth (overall and in cities) is accelerating.

Perhaps, unlike other earlier civilizations, we will cultivate our capacity to be conscious to what is happening around ourselves, to adapt, and survive.  The stakes, though, are higher this time.  This time the physical context we have to adjust to is planetary in scale, not local.  The floundering of ancient civilizations did not mean the extinction of the human species.

In the 1960s, Lovelock first articulated Earth system science in what became Gaia theory.  Seeing Earth as a living system, he defines our home as “not the house or the street or the nation where we live, but the Earth itself.”[1]  Earth, or Gaia, is an emergent system on which climate and organisms are tightly coupled and evolve together.”[2]  As things change, we adjust to them.  Gaia does the same thing.  We change her and she adjusts.  Lovelock’s point is that she will self-regulate to survive.  She doesn’t care if we survive or not, so if we wish to survive we need to heighten our abilities to adapt to the changing world.  To do that, we need to heighten our abilities to notice our habitat.  If cities are engines of innovation – and innovation is the engine of cities – our understanding of cities and habitat must advance.

Keeping an eye on our habitat, and responding appropriately, is a survival skill – one that we as a species can choose to hone.  Earlier this week, I wrote that the development of cities is a survival skill.  Perhaps this would be better stated this way: the evolution of cities is a survival skill.  Ancient civilizations met their demise because of a lack of ability to adjust to changing life conditions: weather, food supply, environmental disasters or economic conditions.  Our habitat can change for years over large geographies, such as the North American drought of the 1930s.  Our habitat can change in hours, such as the forest fire that swept through the town of Slave Lake, Canada in the summer of 2011, destroying a third of the town.  In the longer term, there is debate about whether we are on a trajectory of environmental demise as a result of climate change caused by human activity (which I do believe).  But the debate is moot.  Regardless of the cause, using any metric, it is hard to ignore that the world is no longer the place with which we have become familiar and that it is constantly changing.

The very nature of cities is changing.  As cities grow, the very systems we put in place to organize ourselves, both consciously and unconsciously, are in flux.  The physicality of cities (what we build) is changing. Cities grow and adapt to the needs of citizens over time.  The economic systems we create also change constantly: sometimes dramatically.  Our social systems are also changing.  All of these systems emerge as a result of our work.  As much as these systems and structures create who we are, at the same time we are creating them.  We shape ourselves in relation to our environment, our physical, economic and social habitats.

So far, I have explored our economic life and it’s relationship in a physical habitat.  In my next post I will add a third city habitat – the social habitat – and lay out the dynamic relationship of these three city habitats. 

 


[1]   James Lovelock, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, p. 2

[2]   James Lovelock, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, p. 113

 

 

My gatekeeper tension

The tension is growing within me.  I am in the inner circle.  Five of us decide who gets to play in our community of practice playground.

Our purpose as a community is to create space and place to practice being (and being in) learning living systems as social innovators.  As I imagine the playground down the street and the various collections of small people during recess, they choose who they spend their time with.  Sometimes the choices are clear and easy, other times agonizing.  And the choice is ultimately about resonance and attraction.

I struggle with being in a position where I am expected to accept or reject the people interested in playing in our playground because it interferes with resonance and attraction.  A couple of months ago, I glibly referred to the inner circle as the gatekeepers.  Today, my curiosity about the word ‘gatekeeper’ compels further exploration: what it means, how it shows up, and whether the purpose of the gatekeeper is aligned with the purpose of our community of practice, and emerging operating principles.

What it means

The Collins dictionary on my shelf, a gatekeeper comes with a gate and a wall, defined thus:

  • Gatekeeper – ‘a person who has charge of a gate and controls who may pass through it’.
  • Gate – ‘a movable barrier for closing an opening in a wall, fence, etc.  It is an opening to allow for access’ (and egress).
  • Wall – ‘a construction used to enclose, divide or support, often to protect and surround a position or place for defensive purposes’.

How it shows up

The gatekeeper, the gate and the wall show up in how we organize our community of practice.  Simply:

  • The ways we enclose, support and protect ourselves are the wall.
  • The people (inner circle) who determine who may pass through the wall are the gatekeepers.
  • The criteria for passage are the gate.

The quality of the relationship between these three elements is crucial for them to work well together.  The purpose of the wall must be clear to articlate the criteria for passage.  The criteria or passage must be clear to determine who may pass through.  If not, both the gate and the gatekeeper are not able to ensure the intention of the wall is realized.

Alignment of purpose

How well a wall functions is connected to the clarity of the wall’s purpose.  The purpose will dictate how permeable the wall needs to be – what, who and how much the gate and gatekeeper will allow to pass through.  To understand the purpose of the wall though, the purpose of the community of practice must also be clear.

Our emerging purpose:  To create space and place to practice being (and being in) learning living systems

Our emerging superordinate goal, to which our purpose serves, is to:  Be a meshwork of social innovators who create conditions for the continued evolution and growth of life

So what role does a wall in a community of practice play in light of these two statements?  To what degree does a wall separate us from others? Contain us?  Restrict us?  Support us?  Protect us?   Each of these can roles naturally occur in living systems.  They each can restrict us from, or release us to, our growth and evolution.

At this juncture, our gatekeeper practice does not align with these statements.  We judge interested play mates for fit, without criteria.  We are not clear what we are looing for – or not looking for.  We trust on our intuition, but likely also our insidious bias and limiting beliefs.  We decide if they fit before really letting them in and limit our opportunities to be surprised.  We may at some point also be distracted by another gate, ‘the number of people admitted to a sporting or entertainment event, and/or the total amount of money received from them’.

What I value in our community of practice is our trust in self organizing systems.  I value our keen attention to creating minimal structure to allow what needs to happen just happen.  I value our interest in creating dissonance for our selves and each other since we recognize that that is what we need to learn and grow in our life and work.  These qualities are welcoming and expansive in nature.  Our behaviour at the gate does not exemplify our ‘inside’ behaviour.

Emerging operating principles

My emerging operating principles for how I wish to operate as a gatekeeper at the gate in the wall around in a community of practice with the above purpose:

1.     Trust – We trust that the people who are attracted to this playground bring something that our community needs.  We may not know or understand what that is as they pass through the gate, but we trust that if what we do resonates with them, there is a relationship worthy of exploration.

2.     Resonant permeability – The gate is open to those that feel called to play in our community of practice playground, whether they have been explicitly invited or not.  The gate is also open to those that feel called to step away.

3.     Evolution is expansive – Being welcoming to all who express interest in what we do is expansive.  Putting our attention to qualities of expansiveness will increase our expansiveness.

4.     Our space and place thrives when we are who we really are – There is no threat in trusting resonance and attraction.  Only those for whom our community of practice resonates will linger.

5.     The wall is a source of intelligence – A wall serves as the transition from one space to another.  The gate is simply where this transition takes place.  What, precisely is the transition, and the nature of it?  In the living system of a human body, a cell membrane serves as a wall.  Bruce Lipton (The Biology of Belief) even notes that the membrane may be the real source of intelligence in a cell, not the nucleus.  The wall may be the brain, as we have come to know it.  What if the real intelligence in our community of practice is in the people who choose to transition in and out of our community?

The gatekeeper in me welcomes all who pass through – the gate ‘as a mountain pass, especially one proving entry into another country’…

The gatekeeper in me is brave enough to share what is behind the wall.