As part of how I relate to my city, I participate in a community of practice with fellow citizens. We explore what it means – and what it takes – to be a citizen offering our full potential to the world. Each of us, in our way, is helping shape our city with our work in every moment every day.
Here is my harvest from our gathering last night. We were exploring Parker Palmer’s work on seasons.
Sprouts in Edmonton, April 17, 2013
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This post is part of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
something transacted; especially: an exchange or transfer of goods, services, or funds
the often published record of the meeting of a society or association
an act, process or instance of transacting
a communicative action or activity involving two parties or things that reciprocally affect or influence each other
Transact (Merriam-Webster):
to carry on or conduct to a conclusion or settement (dictionary.com)
to carry on business
to carry on the operation or management of: do
to carry on business
The webs of transactions across a city are everywhere and at every scale. They may appear small, such as a the payment I make to my dentist, but when I take a step back I can see all the choices I have for a dentist across my city and all the transactions that took place for my dentist to become a dentist and set up her clinic. She needed to grow up, housed, and fed and schooled. She needed to acquire a specialized education. She needed to find staff to work with her and she needed to find a building and furnish it with basic furniture, but also the specialized equipment she uses in her practice. And all that equipment needed to be created and delivered. My simple transaction is simply one end of a huge web of webs: a meshwork.
So where does the citizen fit into this?
A single citizen is in many places all at once in this meshwork. Take my dentist for example. Laura offers specific services to her clients and that is one of her transactions, but like every other citizen, she also needs shelter and food and she makes regular transactions on that front. She also has a family who enjoys life in the city. They play sports, take in the arts and enjoy the latest in movies and video games. People everywhere are creating these opportunities for them in their work.
Everyone, everywhere, is creating city life.
What do you do to create city life?
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This post is part of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
Last fall, I co-hosted two workshops with The Natural Step Canada to engage multiple generations in a discussion on what makes a neighbourhood awesome. Here is a link to the summary report, full of Edmonton’s local knowledge.
The workshops were experiments. Rather than a conventional format where the experts send information to participants, we designed workshops that allowed the participants to design neighbourhoods and then notice the characteristics of what they built. They found their own sustainability principles and you can find them, along with a description and photos of the process, in the link above.
It was a fun couple of days, stepping back from the glorification of busy, to explore what is alive and well in us, and what we have to offer our city. By naming it, it will come into being. And as usual, time for big questions to surface is time well spent too. Like this one:
This post is part of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
Last week, as I was playing the role of MC at a gathering of 170 city officials and the development/building community I found myself with a decision: read the poem I just wrote or sit on it.
We had just spent the afternoon talking about all the initiatives where people who usually bang each other’s heads have started to work together. It’s certainly a work in progress. Relationships have started where there were none. Understanding of each others’ priorities, and the worlds in which each other works has begun. And a sense of the different roles that city hall and the business community play – and the legitimacy of those roles – is also emerging.
As I enjoyed 7 fellow Edmontonians and their Pecha Kucha presentations, some of their words jumped out at me and I found myself organizing them, making meaning of what they were collectively offering us, the audience. As MC, I had one final duty: thank them and pass the microphone over to the last speaker who would thank all participants. I squirmed in anticipation: would I read and share the poem, or leave it in my notebook.
A four letter word kept popping up all day: RISK. I chose to risk it.
Here is what I heard Todd Babiak, Michael Walters, Tai Viola, Ray Watkins, Nancy Domijan, Simon O’Byrne and Tegan Martin Drysdale say (their words, my assembly into a poem):
I offered myself and what I see. That’s what we do to make our cities as good as they can be.
Where are you stretching beyond your comfort zone to pursue what you love to do?
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This post is part of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
Tonight I conclude my work as president of my neighbourhood association, Glenora Community League. And as I do so, I am reminded that our work as volunteers is as important as our paid work – it all shapes our individual, family, neighbourhood and city lives. It even changes our planet.
All kinds of work matter because the work we do creates our cities. Very simply, when a city starts, we create work using a resource (coal, water, fishing, farming) in a particular setting. A settlement starts where the natural habitat provides us what we need. Our work, then physically changes that place. From there we see new ways to think, make and do new things, always driven by a desire to improve the habitats we build for ourselves. And as the work diversifies and recombines, and as more people migrate to cities to pursue work, these settlements become cities.
Today, as we continue to pursue the work we are passionate about, we evolve our selves and our cities. This is a survival skill, yet building our cities is a quest to do much more than survive. We work to thrive, and as we each do so we create the conditions for everyone to thrive for our individual work accumulates into the city habitats we now live in. We are building the nests we need.
Volunteering to maintain and create places for neighbours to gather is work. Helping your child with homework is work. Feeding your family is work. Pursuing your passion in nanotechnology is work. Writing stories is work. Making art is work. Cleaning the school is work. Building a home is work. Planting a garden is work. Fundraising for homeless shelters is work.
All work shapes our cities
All work matters.
How do you shape your city to meet your needs?
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This post is part of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
Hazel realized wearily that Bigwig was probably going to be troublesome. He was certainly no coward, but he was likely to remain steady only as long as he could see his way clear and be sure of what to do. To him, perplexity was worse than danger; and when he was perplexed, he usually grew angry.
~ Watership Down, Richard Adams
The exchange that takes place in a city revolves around three elements – self, other and place – at any scale. Just as I need to have a sense of my purpose, so too does my city. As I work toward my purpose, I am in relationship with others and the places around me. Place is the habitat I find myself in, and that too is at scale. It is the office I work in, my home, my block and neighbourhood and city, as well as my country and my planet. At every turn, there is an exchange that takes place between me, others and place.
In a simple statement, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach articulates a pithy question that leads to purpose and destination. This is a question that can be put to me and my city with equal import. Richard Adams articulates the struggle of the human condition when we are unsure of what to do, and the emotional charge embedded in uncertainty. Cities are no different – when we lack a sense of purpose to our cities, we certainly feel the emotional charges. It shows up in our exchanges in others, and the quality of the habitats we build for ourselves.
This post is part of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
Cities are about getting where we want to go – at every scale.
As individuals in cities, when our basic needs are met, we are able to pursue our passions. We pursue opportunities to dig deep into the work we love. We pursue improvements that will make life better. We contribute all of this to the city-life experience. Its a messy place, often making us feel uncomfortable, but it spurs us on to a never-ending quest, should we choose, to think, make and do new things.
How can we know if we are making the cities we want and need? By choosing to build cities purposefully, a necessary transaction emerges: we need to know if we are getting what we are seeking. The next series of posts explore the relationships between citizens and cities – the city making exchange – and the feedback loops we need to make cities that serve us well.
What do we need from our cities?
What do our cities need from us?
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This post is part of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
In Part 3 – Nestworks, the three circles of destination, journey and emergence introduced in Part 2 are integrated, resulting in three cog-like features of city nestworks: city making, civic practice, and the city emerging. At the heart of the city’s nestworks is a sweet spot at the center – the city impulse that is explored in Part 1 – City Patterns:
Part 3 – Nestworks looks at the how the circles interact with each other:
Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange is about getting where we want to go. How can we know if we are making the cities we want and need? By choosing to build cities purposefully, a necessary transaction emerges: we need to know if we are getting what we are seeking. This chapter explores the feedback loops and mechanisms to notice if we get what we want.
Chapter 9 – Enduring Civic Practice explores how citizenship affects our ability to create cities that serve citizens well. How we ‘show up’ has an impact on the well being of ourselves and our city. Our practices create the conditions for us to each offer the diversity of work needed for the city to be able to met the needs of its inhabitants. There is a deeper knowing in us in our work and life – what will it take to find it?
Chapter 10 – The Emerging City asks how our collective practice creates cities that serve citizens. Humanity has a great desire to live life beyond mere survival.We desire, deeply, to thrive and this is why we build cities. As past civilizations have fallen, so too will ours without making the necessary connection between our economic life and our social and physical habitats. We can choose to create the conditions to thrive in ways we have yet to contemplate by searching for processes that allow us to aim for a destination – even if we do now know exactly what it is.
Chapter 11 – Nest City wraps up this endeavour – for now. The sweet spot in the nestworks is scalar – it is found in individuals, families, neighbourhoods, cities, regions, continents, etc. It is elusive, but it is the place that knits our journey with a destination and the surprise of things that emerge. It is where we notice the kind of city we wish to create and the practices that are needed to move in that direction. It is about noticing what we need to thrive and organizing ourselves to create cities that will support us on our evolutionary journey.
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Nest City is organized into three parts, each with a collection of chapters. Here are some plot helpers:
Photo taken by my friend and fellow cornice traveller, Ron.
I climbed up, beyond the highest reaches of the ski lift, up onto a cornice of snow on Marmot Mountain in Jasper National Park. For years I have watched in awe as skiers appear as little specks as they climb, linger, and drop with smooth and curvy beauty down the mountain. Last week, I was one of those wee specks and I now know why they linger.
As I gained altitude, so too did my anxiety. I realized that going down the way I came up could be potentially worse than the ski jump down. Was skiing down truly something I could do?
After the climb, the view itself reminded me to pause and gather myself. The view served as a wonderful distraction from the feat that lay ahead. I could see the whole landscape – the mountain tops and the valleys that are unseen from the lower altitudes I inhabit.
Mountain tops beyond the edge of the corniceThe upper reaches of Portal Creek and the Tonquin Valley
And with my friends, from 9 to 55 years old, I stood on a threshold: go back the way we came, or find a new way. We chose to go over the edge. When it was my turn, I chose to jump over the edge.
As I embark on my exploration of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange with you, these words from John O’Donohue’s blessing, For the Time of Necessary Decision, ring true:
Trust that a richer life awaits us there,
That we will lose nothing
But what has already died;
There are times when jumping over the edge is the right thing to do. As I reflect my sharing my writing in progress with you, I know far less about this last third of the book than the previous two. I am jumping into Nest City’s third part and trust that I will learn what I need to learn.
What are you jumping into?
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This post is part of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
As I begin blogging parts of Nest City’s third part, I realize that I am at a point in writing where I feel the least comfortable with the terrain I am about to cover.
The ‘front end’ of my work, Part One – City Patterns was the most clear. It builds a broad foundation for my argument, that cities build evolutionary capacity. I introduce foundational impulse patterns that explain why cities exist, how they are created and the underlying values that evolve within and with us as our cities grow and develop. The content I was going to explore was clear and it was a matter of making it clear – a most useful blogging exercise.
As I embarked on Part Two – Organizing for Emergence, which explores the organizing patterns of humans as we create and live in cities, I had a frame that needed to be fleshed out. We organize to reach a destination, we experience uncertainty along the way, and the future that comes to pass is something unexpected at every turn. This is how the nest works: destination, journey and emergence. Compared to Part One, I content ‘ready’ to write and explore in blog posts; it was messy and disorganized. I didn’t know exactly how it would turn out.
Part Three – Nest City embodies the ’emergence’ piece of the dynamic explored in Part Two. I have a destination in mind (the frame for Part Three), I am on a journey publicly learning here with you while I write, and I have no idea exactly how this will turn out.
The direction I am moving in, however, is integration of destination, journey and emergence. I see a “nestwork”, a cog-like relationship of these three organizing patterns, and a sweet spot, that will shed light on how to co-create cities that serve us well. That is what I will be sharing as I explore, publicly, Part Three – Nest City.
My next post will recap the chapters of Part Two – Organizing for Emergence.
The following post will lay out the shape of Part Three’s four chapters.
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This post marks the beginning of Part Three – Nest City. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
