A reminder that my posts are not appearing here on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays in September. My writing attention for these days is going to the Integral City Expo and eLab, where I am providing a written harvest for each day of the conference.
I realized last week that this is a paying gig to write about what I am passionate about – our evolutionary relationship with cities. It’s not lucrative, but there is a transaction. I write and I will be paid. I write and it will be read. Even better – I get to have a front row seat on what’s happening, even be the interviewer for 7 sessions.
This is a marathon endeavour for the month of September and it is a thrill. The Integral City Expo involves 50 visionary speakers in 36 sessions over 12 days. Each day focuses on one of the 12 evolutionary intelligences of cities. I am tired at the end of day 2, and I have yet to write today’s harvest.
Go to this link to register and listen to the 30 remaining sessions live as part of the Expo. For a small fee, you can get MP3 downloads and my take on each day’s intelligence.
Even when a trail is obvious, it may not be clear where it is going.
This weekend my husband and I went for a walk through the woods from the cabin to the village. There are a few options for trails and each trail clearly is going in the right general direction. Until the trail we chose appeared to come to an end. There were paths to take, but none were a continuation of the trail itself. So we choose different paths and off we went. (He choose the road and I choose to go off-road.)
I have to confess that my off-road choice involved a little bit of trespassing. I have travelled through here before and my trail-sense knew that if I went a little further I would be in familiar territory. I just had to traverse some land that a developer had put a road on (and removed the trail). Before long I was on the trail in the picture above.
It is a beautiful trail, fully alive. I immediately spotted two deer on the move. Then a rabbit stopped to look at me. I came upon a wonderful fallen tree full of fungi and a wasp nest. I even noticed that as I came closer to civilization there were benches.
So a trail is always going somewhere, but is it going where you think? In my case I knew I was going to end up at the store. And I did and found my husband there.
What I found along the trail was significant for me personally. I started to think about trail markers and their role. I have contemplated their role before, but this was a timely reminder.
It occurred to me that as I write every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this month for the Integral City Expo and eLab, as part of the emerging Integral City Collective, I am serving as a trail marker. Our on-line conference aims to make meaning of what we are learning along the way, and my job is to begin the process of harvesting the meaning we make each day, each week and for the month of September. (The event lasts Sep 4-27).
It is my job to help provide maps and markers for people as they make their way through the oodles of content coming each day and the comments, questions and observations that people will be sharing this month.
Maps and markers. This is a big job and I am looking forward to it.
_____ _____ _____
For readers interested in the Integral City Collective and our September activities, please explore our website. 50 visionaries are joining us to explore the evolutionary intelligences of the city.
Earlier this week, in Writing from the red chair, I relayed how I have found a bench along Edmonton’s river valley on which to sit and write. The view is fantastic:
As I sit here I can hear the city and nature as well. In the bottom of the valley, slightly to the left, I can see the river flowing through the city. I feel the air float by and I can hear bird’s wings as they fly overhead.
Yesterday was a wet day in contract to today’s sun, but the power of sitting here at the edge of the city right in the middle of the city is remarkable. It is as though the city just wants to tell me all about itself.
When I first came upon this bench I stepped in front of it to enjoy the view and very briefly read the inscription placed on it.
When I finished doing some morning stretching exercised (ITP Kata) and a little meditation on the edge of the bench, I sat in it and talked to myself. I sorted out that I needed to be able to write here, not just talk. I resolved to get a notebook a I stood up and prepared to leave. Then I realized that I had read the inscription on the bench incorrectly.
Here is what it says:
Art is the expression of man’s delight in God’s work.
I thought it said:
Art is the expression of God’s delight in man’s work.
The game my mind played with the words made this little message jump out at me. I have been musing about how I create the conditions for my creative self to flow freely. It may or may not be ‘art’ per se, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if I believe in God, a higher power, a Spirit, a Creator or the creative Essence of my Self. These words are powerful.
Art is the expression of our delight in the world.
Art is the expression of our world’s delight in us.
The words are attributed to Bill Lumsden, 1928-1997. I have neighbours with the surname Lumsden, and while I have no idea if they are related, I can’t imagine that they are not. I felt as though my very neighbourhood was speaking to me, asking me to look at things and look again. Take the meaning of something and see if there is even more meaning.
My home, my nest, is getting an overhaul. And it has a hole in its roof. The truth is, we put the hole in on purpose, which is a little counter intuitive. But we have our reasons.
Our home is a post-war building with very little insulation, and little or no ventilation, so we are installing a new roof on top of the old roof to improve the building’s ability to keep itself and it’s occupants warm and dry.
We decided not to simply replace the shingles, for that only solves a portion of the building’s challenges. We have chosen to improve how the whole roof system works for the building. We decided not to build a whole new nest; we are making an investment in this one. She has lots to give us yet if we look after her.
So the whole in the roof…
There is a part of us that would love to make massive changes to the building. We realize that the space gained with an addition will not be needed in less than a decade (kids are 12 and 14). We also don’t have the strength to organize ourselves for a big reno. We also don’t wish to put our money in a big reno. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t want to treat ourselves. We chose a skylight to light up the stairwell and serve as a solar chimney on hot days. So our contractor cut a hole in the roof.
As we stood in the stairwell today, the kids and I looked through the roof out, over the neighbourhood, right through the fresh air. In the evening it is covered with a tarp, but as we move up and down the stairs we can hear the hum of the city. When it rained last night, it sounded like we were sleeping in our tent.
As I was falling asleep last night listening to the rain I realized that roof has an important job. For our species, we need to have somewhere warm and dry, our shelter, to survive. The very roof we choose to build on our shelters reflects our life conditions. Our home was built in a time when energy to heat homes was abundant and cheap. Energy is more scarce and more expensive and we are compelled to improve our building. Our context changes and we eventually change too, and our structures, our physical habitats, with us.
It took a hole in the roof for me to realize that the new roof is really about, at a family scale, fixing our nest, our family habitat. We are doing what we need to do to make sure the building functions well. We are also moving beyond pure function and sorting out as a family how we can ‘dress up’ the building so it conveys our style, our identity.
We have a chance to put our mark on our nest. As we come and go from our nest, we come and go from a place we have created for ourselves. A home can pull on the heart strings and we are choosing colours and materials that pull on our heart strings. We are also adding to the neighbourhood’s identity of itself. Collectively with our neighbours, we make our streets and neighbourhood. Everyone’s choices accumulate to a feeling about our place and our collective identity.
When we chose to put in a skylight, it felt gratuitous. But I am glad we put the hole in the roof.
Every time I travel the stairs I will be able to see the neighbourhood, the treetops and the stars from a new vantage point.
I realized last night, as I was falling asleep at 12:05, that I had not posted a blog yesterday. Since May 1, my commitment has been to post every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I have done that up until yesterday.
While I violated the specifics of my commitment, the intention was not broken. I did write yesterday; I just wrote in a different place. I think I just ended up outsmarting myself.
This last Sunday, while I was sitting on a bench overlooking the McKinnon Ravine in Edmonton, I made a decision to start writing to myself more. As a way to talk to myself. I also made a decision on Monday to go and get myself a little red notebook in which to do this. A little red notebook that conjures a sacred red chair that I played in as a child under a big spruce tree. A little red notebook in which I will write my Self’s wisdom to me.
Yesterday, I went to get this little notebook. And last night I spent some time with it, following which I went to bed. It completely threw me from my “blogging game”. Totally, but meaningfully, distracted.
So I figure it is only fair to share with you what I was writing last night.
My little red notebook is when and where I choose to settle in and spend some time with myself, allowing the Essence of me to become more apparent to me. My little red notebook is where I take the time to notice what I am noticing. It is where I explore synchronicities and wonder at how the universe works. Much of what pops up either in the little red notebook, or what I write in other places that are in the spirit of the little red notebook will show up in my blog. I have made a decision to share more writing that is personal in nature, trusting that what I explore within me also has a place in the world outside me.
My intention is to more fully align my inner perspective with how I show up in the world. The only way to do this is to very explicitly share my inner journey with the outside world, and writing here feels like a wonderful place to do this. I trust that writing here, sharing what I write while I write it, will help me find others operating on the same ‘frequency’ so that we can join in our explorations together.
As part of the Integral City conference, I have four roles: co-design the eLab program with Marilyn Hamilton, interview many of the 50 visionaries we have gathered, speak to participants about the role of the Integral City master rule (take care of self, take care of others, take care of place), and harvest the meaning we make of what we are learning.
As we have been working on the conference, we have been struggling with making sure that we create the conditions for the transfer of wisdom from people who have been living the 12 evolutionary intelligences to participants. These are the 36 live sessions that form part of the conference. We are also aiming to create the space for an asynchronous community space that allows the participants to meet each other and make meaning together. Holding this latter intention as been my role as the Harvester.
Up until today, I have had no idea how our harvest function was going to take place with our technology choice. I have willfully held on to the intention to create the conditions where the emerging Integral City Collective is able to connect as a collective, rather than as individuals. We wish to create the conditions to see the collective, to discuss within the collective. To interact with the collective. To be a collective.
The way to go about creating this kind of space has been very slow in unfolding. I have had to be patient as we made decisions about the technology we use and whether it can hold the dream of a collaborative space that can hold us in our exploration really well. Our challenge is that the technology platform we are using is moderately good at setting up individuals to connect with each other. Not more. And at this stage in the game we are not in a position to change our platform so we are making lemonade out of lemons, as one of my colleagues puts it. We will make great lemonade together.
Whether we meet face to face or virtually, the quality of our interaction comes with what we each bring and the spirit in which we conduct ourselves. Regardless of the structure, physical or virtual. This is how we will make lemonade. And the lemonade will nourish the next iteration of the technological structures that we need to serve us well in our virtual worlds.
The lemonade will serve the next unfolding.
_____ _____ _____
7 free interviews are posted on the Integral City Collective website. Go to the conference page, scroll down to the bottom of the page to register for the free Integral City expo and you’ll have access to the interviews. This is free time to learn with Don Beck, Ann Dale, Ann Duffy, Barrett Brown, Buzz Holling, Hazel Henderson and Terry Patten. Enjoy
Go to the conference link above, then click on this button...
Every once and awhile city infrastructure needs a little help from its citizens.
We had a lot of rain and hail come down in a short amount of time this afternoon. Flights circled overhead as the storm blew threw. 23 manhole covers blew off. On my simple little street, the water filled the street and jumped the curb.
As Mother Nature cleaned her trees of leaves and twigs, the city’s infrastructure couldn’t let them through on its own. The leaves and twigs collected and blocked the water’s passage down the drain.
The city’s infrastructure needed some help. I had three choices:
Do nothing.
Call the City to fix it.
See what I could do.
I chose the latter. I donned my rubber boots and raincoat and headed out the garage to find a helpful tool. (I have to chuckle that I was more excited than my kids about going out to muck about in a big puddle!) What fun! The water was aching to make its way down the drain. When I moved a wee bit of the blockage the drain sucked the water. Almost violently.
The city’s infrastructure was aching to do its work. It just needed a little assistance from a citizen to perform today. As I citizen, I often forget how closely linked my life is to the vast infrastructure we create, generation by generation, to create our city habitats. Our work has specialized to allow us not only to build, operate, maintain and renew this infrastructure. That is the work that some citizens do for cities, explicitly building the city.
Citizens who perform other kinds of work in cities are still closely connected to our infrastructure. Everything we do depends on it. And from time to time it needs very basic attention, for which no engineering expertise is required.
Sometimes the infrastructure system we have made for ourselves needs a little help from citizens. No expertise required.
_____ _____ _____
If interseted in the relationships between citizens, city infrastructure, and city decision-making, you may be interested in the Integral City Expo and eLab from Sept 4-27, 2012. I was the program co-designer and will be interviewing many of the 50 visionaries that will be participating.
This little piece of wood is an error, despite its check-mark shape.
I came across this little piece of wood unexpectedly, in a place I should not have found it. It should not have been made like this. It should have been like its companions:
But somewhere in the manufacturing process, the error was made and the little piece of wood was lost, headless and bent among its mates.
Sometimes, as we make our way through the world, we find ourselves looking a lot like everyone else, but yet fundamentally different. We fit in the box, but we are not built fundamentally for the same job as everyone else.
But being unable to do its particular job does not mean that our little piece of wood is not able to do other things. It may be the catalyst for fire in just the right place. It may be a shim to help something get to a new height.
We have no idea what a little piece of wood can do or be, just as we have no idea what each of us can do or be. We have no idea what power we can have. We usually have no idea what purpose each of us has, but we don’t need to know. We have a choice about what we wish to believe in, however.
This little piece of wood went into the fire, just as it was getting started. Along with the kindling and the wood, it played a role in getting the fire started in our fireplace this morning. The fire probably would have started without this one little piece of wood, but fire would not have lasted (safely) without wood. Each little piece has its place.
Each of us has our place, regardless of our shape or whether we appear to be fit for the job.
As citizens and cities, we have choices at every turn to create places and spaces for people to be everything they can be. Every citizen has her/his place. We don’t need to leave anyone lost and headless.
_____ _____ _____
Join me and my colleague Marilyn Hamilton as we host 50 visionaries in the Integral City 2.0 expo and eLab from September 4-27. We aim to reinvent the city.
In our city life, is the city the antagonist or citizens?
It’s hard to say. Consider this passage from Lynn Coady’s The Antagonist (p. 234-5):
I am starting to view my past in a different way these days. Strange to say under the circumstances, but I think now that I used to see my past as a book – a story with a beginning, middle, and end, all of which I knew by heart, and therefore had no reason to even crack the spine. But now I am starting to see it as something more like a frontier – a landscape I have spent my life cultivating, fortifying against the random elements. But the landscape is alive, is what I am realizing – is a thing unto itself – and if you’re brave enough to ever leave your house you start to see this. In fact, the landscape consists of multiple things, multiple wills that shift and change and occasionally assert themselves in force. None of this, you eventually understand, belongs to you – not a rock or flower a broken branch – no matter how you work it, no matter how much scrub you clear. The ground could decide to open up above your head.The world is independent. It moves, and moves on, with or without you.Everything, that is, except that which you make die. What you’ve killed is yours, forever – a trophy picked off from the landscape and hung up on your wall.So you can greet one another each day.
The city, and city life, could be viewed as a story with a beginning, middle and an end. It could be a story with all three of these elements know (or thought to be known) or it could be a story that has started and we just don’t know the end yet. Just as the protagonist in The Antagonist, though, I too am starting to see city life as a frontier. City life both cultivates random elements and fortifies against random elements. City life is alive.
City live generates new conditions and problems to which we have to adjust. It causes us random elements. As the generation of new habitat causes us to adjust and innovate, this is the very skill we need to fortify against random elements. And as we do this work, endlessly because the story doesn’t have an ending that we can grasp, if there is one.
Just as the protagonist above, our city life consists of multiple things, multiple lives, multiple forces that ‘shift and change and occasionally assert themselves in force.’ As much as the city belongs to us and is created by us, it is not created by me. No matter how hard I work as an individual, ‘no matter how much scrub [i] clear,’ I do not have control over it. We create it and we can shape it. It may or may not work for me. Whether I am alive or dead, the city will move on with or without me.
What is clear to me, is that while I am in relationship with my city (from within or from afar), I do have control over what I keep from having a full life in cities. While this may appear to be a negative thing, it is crucial. I can choose, with every interaction I have with others, to allow the full potential for cities and citizens to emerge. I can help my city and citizens be fully alive, if they so choose.
Each of us have this decision – make things die or create the conditions for things to thrive.
When the city challenges us, it feels like the antagonist. This a crucial role, creating the challenges and tensions we need to grow. When we choose to make things die, we are the antagonist, for we keep citizens and the city from reaching their full potential.
I recognize that I can be the kind of antagonist that provides constructive tension. (Citizens create the very conditions that we have to respond to as a city!) I also recognize that I can be a destructive antagonist. When destructive, I aim to be conscious and see the trophy’s on my wall. I aim to see them and get to know them so that I may learn to serve myself, my fellow citizens and my city well.
I embrace the city and its challenges as a constructive antagonist in my (our) life (lives). The city creates the life conditions we and I need to grow and evolve. City life puts us on the frontier.
Thinking, making and doing new things can happen at any time. It just takes a change in perspective.
As I was heading back out to the lake yesterday from my home in the city, I had to stop in pick up bicycle helmets from the garage and harvest my garden’s tomatoes. The door to the house was locked so I didn’t have a bag or bowl for the tomatoes.
I was stopping at the garage on my way to the garden and I picked up my son’s helmet first. As it hung upside down on his handle bar, I could see the perfect bowl. So I went to the garden to harvest my tomatoes and put the helmet and tomatoes in the back of my car.
As I walked away from the garden, this logic struck me:
The purpose of a helmet is to protect heads
Heads are precious cargo
Tomatoes are precious cargo
While unconventional, it makes perfect sense to use a bicycle helmut to carry tomatoes
Believe it or not, this is an example of what makes a city tick.
Our economic life – our ability to generate new work – is the force that generates cities. The development of new work is fundamentally our ability to think, make and do new things. At heart is the ability to take something, say a bicycle helmet, and use it for a new purpose. Like flipping a helmet upside down to carry tomatoes instead of strapping it around a human head.
One of Jane Jacobs’ main ideas is that all new work takes place on the shoulders of existing work. New ways of thinking, making and doing new things always use existing work. Just like using a helmet to carry tomatoes.
To grow cities that serve citizens well, we need to draw on the innovation that cities generate. To do this, we need to grow citizens that serve cities well. This requires a citizen practice where we remain open and curious to possibilities and potential.
We need to be forever looking for ways to make use of our helmets.
_____ _____ _____
Join me and 50 visionaries to re-envision the future of city at the City 2.0 EXPO, September 4-27, 2012. We are gathering leaders and city-zens the world over for an unprecedented – and free – virtual conference.
