Cities are alive

In the second last of my series of posts on Marilyn Hamilton’s 12 evolutionary intelligences for cities, I explore living intelligence.  For Hamilton, a city is considered alive because it is has the ability to:

  • survive
  • connect with its environment
  • replicate its capacities
This leads Hamilton to two critical questions:
  1. How can we optimize the life of people in the city?
  2. How can we optimize the life of the city in people?
The possible answers to these questions give us a sense of the kind of feedback we should be seeking as we navigate towards cities that serve us well (and citizenship that serves cities well).  Drawing on evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris, Hamilton asks a series of questions that I reframe here as qualities for our cities that serve as likely ‘destinations’.  We desire our cities to be able to:
  1. Sustain healthy bio-physical, psychological, cultural and social life
  2. Create and replenish the life conditions that support life
  3. Know where and how to renew
Our ability – collectively and individually – to do the above is an indicator of health, illness or death. The cycle of life is alive in cities, just as it is in us.
I believe that cities are alive.  Just as we can recognize in ourselves, they are “constantly learning to adapt and survive under all possible life conditions: stable, stormy/unsettled, turbulent, clear [1].”  Cities battle to be healthy and thrive.  Cities battle forces that work against them from time to time and when savvy will adjust to changing life conditions to survive and thrive.  This is complex work for cities, as they are complex systems.  Nothing linear is at work here.  It is a web of meshes that is full of both hierarchies and self-organizing systems.  Order and chaos.

My next post will explore the last of the 12 evolutionary intelligences – evolving intelligence.   After that, I sense that I will need to reorganize these intelligences to present them in a simpler format.  That will be my challenge for next week…

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[1] Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 95

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If you are interested in learning more about evolutionary intelligences relating to cities, you will be interested in the Integral City eLaboratory – Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive

Feedback for purposeful navigation

Over the course of several posts I have been exploring, one by one, the 12 evolutionary intelligences for cities proposed by Marilyn Hamilton.  I have three left.  Today’s post is about navigating intelligence: whole-system feedback processes.

As I have been exploring the qualities of cities and what drives their evolution, there is one very clear pattern: feedback.  Feedback ensures that we are able to know and understand our world, and this is a very important factor when we consider that our world is always changing.  It is crucial that we understand the changes that are taking place, understand the adjustments that are needed, make those adjustments and confirm if the adjustments have the desired effect.  None of this is possible without feedback.

My view of how cities work (and evolve) looks like this:

Our work, our constant efforts to think, make and do new things, drives our economic life and is, in fact, the force that creates cities.  This takes place in the context of our physical habitat.  Cities start where they make sense, where there is water, shelter, food and a resource on which to build an economy.  As the settlement grows, our work also becomes the physical making of the city.  Our social habitat is the glue – it is where, and through which, feedback travels, telling us when times are changing and new methods of farming are needed, or that communication via computers is possible, etc.

Feedback loops are absolutely critical in the relationship between humans and our habitat.  The quality of our habitat depends on it.  The quality of our lives depends on it.  Our ability to thrive depends on it.

We are moving into a new era where the possibilities of having the means to monitor how are cities are doing is totally possible.  Cities I worked with several years ago slaved to have performance indicators to tell them how there were doing in relation to housing, water quality, education, etc.  But it was hard to get that data and confirm that it was accurate and politically defensible.  As data becomes more and more open, there will be more and more citizens and organizations examining the dynamics of their cities and pointing out what works and what does not.  A new era of noticing city dynamics is soon upon us.  A new era of feedback on how well our cities serve us is coming.

Here is  nifty 5 minute video on Analytics 101 you might find helpful.  As you listen, think about how the vast amount of digital data can help us create savvy cities.  For example, Daniel Haight, founder of Darkhorse Analytics, found that closing emergency service stations in cities results in better service.  There is insight in data, should we choose to look and ask questions.

There is insight in data, and we now have an abundance of data and abundant access to data.  The next question is what we hope to do with the data we have.  What questions should we ask?  What insight do we want and need?  Where do we want to go with our cities (ie purpose)?  What do we need more of to get there?

This whole business if feedback requires us to be prepared to ask questions and receive answers.  And also prepared to respond as needed. It requires bravery and courage.  It is a necessary skill to ensure that we are able to navigate our way to cities that serve citizens well.  The hard part will be articulating the purpose of our cities – our destination – and what success looks like.  Then we will be equipped to navigate our world and dynamically steer our cities into the future.

My next post will focus on living intelligence and the insight of life cycles in cities.

 

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If you are interested in learning more about evolutionary intelligences relating to cities, you will be interested in the Integral City eLaboratory – Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive

Meshing hierarchies and self-organizing

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-11/video-3-d-brain-image-highlights-neuronal-circuits-highest-resolution-ever
Photo Credit: Stanford Medecine

This image is from a 2010 article on 3D imagery showing the brain’s circuitry in the highest resolution yet (follow this link to Stanford Medicine’s YouTube video.  Essentially they have taken 700 nanometer slices of a mouse’s cortex and mapped the connections.  Even with the new imagery, the result is a level of complexity seen in the brain that is hard to comprehend. Our cities, as our creations, are as complex.  There is much that we can’t see, and lots of what we can see is hard to comprehend.

Here’s what Stanford professor Stephen Smith has to say about this, according to writer Rebecca Boyle:

“A human cerebral cortex holds about 125 trillion synapses, which are connections among neurons, packed into an ultra-thin layer of tissue. That’s equivalent to the number of stars in 1,500 Milky Way galaxies…These electrical interfaces are found throughout the brain, control our thinking, feeling and movement.
“The sheer number of synapses makes it nearly impossible to see them – even the best traditional-light microscopes cannot resolve them all… A single neuron might have tens of thousands of synaptic contacts with other neurons.”

When I look at cities, I have the same imagery in mind.  Just on a different scale.  These images of brains bring to mind images of cities.  Here is a photo of cities in China, taken from the International Space Station in December 2010 (Photo Credit: NASA):

Photo Credit: NASA

Whether looking at our brains inside us, or the cities we build outside of us, it is clear that despite the fact that there is no one element or person that is in charge, clear patterns emerge.  All of our brains are so alike that we recognize ourselves as a singe species.  Our cities also take remarkably similar shapes independently.  The pattern that emerges from both of these environments is that chaos and order exist simultaneously.

Meshworking is the ability to hold both hierarchies of order and self-organizing systems.  Marilyn Hamilton began using this term to describe the work that she does in cities.  Typically a term used in brain science, she applied it to cities, where she noticed that “the city integrates enabling hierarchies and self-organizing webs of relationships by aligning different capacities, functions and locations so they can be of service to a purpose and each other [1].”

The city, just like a brain, needs hierarchy and order to build itself.  The order is scaffolding.  Once the scaffolding is in place, the city self-organizes itself in numerous, infinite ways by making connections.  It is an amazing combination: the ability to forever reinvent as well as the ability to sort and choose [2].

The value of meshworking – the ability to make catalytic connections – in cities is that it enables whole system thinking.  This is work that naturally takes place in our cities and it is a work that we can choose to enhance to nourish our cities’ emergence into what they next need to be for us.  It requires establishing new order when old hierarchies are in need of recalibration.  It requires establishing new connections at every turn to nurture our self-organizing.  All of this is about our collective learning together to create habitats that meet our needs.

Cities are full of hierarchies and self-organizing systems. The challenge in our work is to find the balance, each and every moment, that meets our life conditions.  Always at the appropriate scale.

There is so much more to say about meshworking.  You may be interested in Hamilton’s work: click here for her web sitehere for her book.  As I conclude this post, I realize that yesterday’s post about inquiry intelligence, and this post about meshworking intelligence, are two types of evolutionary intelligence that nourish the city that is wanting to come into being.

We are in a new era of communication (think social media, internet etc) that is building whole new ways and kinds of connections between cities.  This is certainly a new form of scaffolding (order) we are building for ourselves in our cities.  It is also creating the conditions for new ways for citizens to self-organize.  A new city is emerging.  I wonder what it is.

Tomorrow’s post will explore another evolutionary intelligence for cities: navigating intelligence.

 

 

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[1] Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 221-222

[2] Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 223

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If you are interested in learning more about evolutionary intelligences relating to cities, you will be interested in the Integral City eLaboratory – Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive

Inquiry intelligence nourishes cities

This post is about inquiry intelligence – our capacity to release potential – one of 12 evolutionary intelligences identified by Marilyn Hamilton in her Integral City work (click here for her web sitehere for her book).  Her work is based on the premise that cities are intelligent human systems.  I share that belief and her quest to unlock the potential of cities.

The essence of inquiry intelligence lays in appreciative inquiry, a practice of exploring that integrates many perspectives.  It is a practice that looks for surprise.  In cities it is a practice that notices what works in our cities, the things of which we would like more.  Our potential lies in what is working and the new paths that will emerge.

We get more of what we put our attention to, so stopping to notice what we appreciate in our cities is a good practice.  It serves two purposes – we  recognize what works and we recognize what we want more of.

Inquiry intelligence takes this wisdom and looks at it with curiosity.  When I began the Nest City posts I explored the nature of work, and how we regularly look for new ways of thinking, making and doing new things.  This is inquiry intelligence at work.

Marilyn Hamilton flags how questions play a key role in unlocking the potential of cities.  Particularly questions that are appreciative in nature.  Asking a question such as, ‘What are the strengths of your city?’ will reveal what Hamilton calls the ‘cadence’ of the city, when we are able to see the variety of values evident in how we see and experience the city.

To see our potential, let alone achieve it, we need to create the conditions that allow us to see what works and what we want more of, and to inquire about what our cities naturally need next.

The power of inquiry is simply in asking and exploring questions, endlessly. It is a key intelligence that brought our cities to where they are today because it is a learning intelligence.  It allows us to know and understand things differently.   Inquiry nourishes our selves and our cities.

Tomorrow’s post will explore meshing intelligence, our capacity to hold both order and creativity simultaneously.  

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If you are interested in learning more about evolutionary intelligences relating to cities, you will be interested in the Integral City eLaboratory – Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive

Culture of relationship intelligence

The culture of the city represents the lived values of its citizens.  It is the perpetual barometer of ‘what’s important around here.’ [1]

I began this series of posts on evolutionary intelligences with integral intelligence (part 1 and part 2).  In these two parts, four maps were shared that help us see our cities as wholes.  One of those maps was the integral map with four quadrants (see part 2).  Marilyn Hamilton imagines the four quadrants as four intelligences for an Integral City (her book, her website).

This is the last of four posts that look at four of the evolutionary intelligences for the city from the vantage point of each of the four quadrants.  The last post, building intelligence, explored the lower right quadrant – building intelligence.  Today, we look at the lower left and our capacity to feed the spirit of the city and each other in cities.

The culture of cities is about relationships – and the relationship of cultures.  For Hamilton, “The relationships of the city’s cultures can be heard and felt [2].”  They are ‘tangible’ on the collective level the same way our emotions within ourselves as individuals are tangible.  They are real and alive.  The strength of this intelligence from the lower left quadrant is dependent upon the quality of relationships among our cultures.  In fact, as Hamilton puts it, relationships may the be prime currency of the Integral City, a city that integrates the range of evolutionary intelligences.

Hamilton highlights three kinds of relationships[3]:

  1. Simple transactional relationships, where an exchange is made, but neither part to the relationship are changed.
  2. Transformative relationships, where the exchange causes one or both parties to recognizably change form.
  3. Transmutational relationships, the parties are fundamentally recombined into something completely new.  A new pattern emerges.
New patterns are critical to evolutionary intelligence, for it is the emergence of new patterns that signal our evolution, our response to changing life conditions.  The three relationships above are simple, complicated and complex.  The complex relationships are the ones that lead to new patterns.
Recall Spiral Dynamics, one of the four integral maps to see whole systems of a city (click here for a primer on evolutionary expansion and here for a recap of the integral maps).  Our movement up the Spiral is a result of new patterns, new ways of being in relationship with our surroundings.  Our relationship with our surroundings – at the scale of the individual and collective – is at the heart of our drive to survive.  At every turn we see new things that need to be done and we seek to improve them.  At every turn our context changes and we seek to improve it.  And as we grow our values shift and adjust in response.

At the heart of this intelligence is our need to thrive with each other.  We are in cities to create the conditions to thrive.  We choose cities to create the conditions to thrive.  Our relationships are getting more and more complex and we continue to evolve.  We have no idea where we will go exactly, but we are going on.  We will continue to thrive.

My next post will offer a recap of the four integral city voices: citizens, city managers, city developers/builders, and civil society.

 

 

 

 

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[1] Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 206

[2] Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 179

[3] Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 182

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If you are interested in learning more about evolutionary intelligences relating to cities, you will be interested in the Integral City eLaboratory – Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive

Building structural intelligence

I began this series of posts on evolutionary intelligences with integral intelligence (part 1 and part 2).  In these two parts, four maps were shared that help us see our cities as wholes.  One of those maps was the integral map with four quadrants (see part 2).  Marilyn Hamilton imagines the four quadrants as four intelligences for an Integral City (her book, her website).

This is the third of four posts that look at four of the evolutionary intelligences for the city from the vantage point of each of the four quadrants.  The last post, embodying intelligence in action, explored the upper right quadrant – outer intelligence.  Today, we look at the lower right and our capacity to create structures that meet our needs in cities.  In particular, this intelligence is about building structures that flex and flex and flow in response to our changing needs.

The city is a built environment.  It is built by us for us.  It is built to serve our needs, whether we do this consciously or not.

When I first started the Nest City Blog back on May 1, I traced the migration of humans from a small settlement in Africa to the expanse of our planet.  As we migrated, we physically built everything from makeshift shelters and eventually cities.  We also built social structures to organize ourselves to meet our needs.  As we build cities, we build physical artifacts and social systems.

The relationship between physical and social structures is critical.  As Hamilton puts it: “… the alignment of infrastructure and human organizational structure optimizes intelligence [1].”

Building intelligence is part of the story of the evolution of St. John’s, Newfoundland that I relayed in my posts entitled Is the uplanned city unplanned? Part 1part 2, part 3, part 4).  In these posts I write about how as the purpose of a settlement evolves, the structures (physical or social) evolve alongside (see part 3).  These structures will respond to the life conditions of the time – and our value systems as they are evolving.  This is the essential relationship between us and our habitat, and one of the results is our building intelligence.  (For more on evolving value systems, please visit A primer on the emerging spiral.”

So our structures reveal our values.

Edmonton’s City Market Downtown is vital to the exchange of goods in the city, particularly between the city and its region:

 

This reliable, sturdy building houses accountants in Toronto:

The Art Gallery of Ontario exhibits creativity and entrepreneurship:

The physical shape we give our cities reflects our values, as do our social structure choices.  This is how our building intelligence of the lower right quadrant materializes in cities; “Structures become a visible history of human intentions, choices and relationships [2].”

What we build (physically and socially) always adjusts over time in response to our needs.  Our ability to do this rests not alone in the building intelligence of the lower right quadrant. It has everything to do with our ability to adjust our intentions (upper left) and our actions and choices (upper right) that result in what we build (lower right).  The integration of these integral city perspectives is what creates the conditions for cities and citizens to thrive – particularly when this intelligence can flex and flow with the changing conditions.  

My next post will highlight the lower left quadrant – story intelligence – and how we culturally feed each other in our cities. 

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[1] Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 160
[2] Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 167

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If you are interested in learning more about evolutionary intelligences relating to cities, you will be interested in the Integral City eLaboratory – Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive

Embodying intelligence in action

I began this series of posts on evolutionary intelligences with integral intelligence (part 1 and part 2).  In these two parts, four maps were shared that help us see our cities as wholes.  One of those maps was the integral map with four quadrants (see part 2).  Marilyn Hamilton imagines the four quadrants as four intelligences for an Integral City (her book, her website).

This is the second of four posts that look at four of the evolutionary intelligences for the city from the vantage point of each of the four quadrants.  The last post, conscious capacity, explored the upper left quadrant – inner intelligence.  Today, we look at the upper right and our capacity to turn our intention into right action – outer intelligence.

If inner intelligence is about seeing the collective intention, or purpose, of a city.  Outer intelligence, in the upper right quadrant, is about embodying that intention.  It is about making the intention come to life; making it happen.  As intention changes over time, outer intelligence is about changing our behaviours to align with changes in a city’s purpose as we evolve.

In yesterday’s blog, Hamilton briefly describes the role of demographics in outer intelligence.  Just as a human body acts and behaves, so too does the city system.  Just as the human body has networks of feedback systems, so too does the city.  Understanding the characteristics of individuals and groups in the city will help us make decisions about how to ensure, as a collective, we are providing for our biophysical needs (air, water, food, clothing and shelter) and beyond.

In a city, one of our feedback mechanisms is the myriad of data that surround us.  Demographic information provides with feedback on our city system.  So too do other emerging sources of data.  Here’s an interesting piece of urban research in The Economist: The laws of the city – A deluge of data makes cities laboratories for those seeking to run them better.  Here are some highlights:

  1. Larger cities are likely to be richer
  2. Bid cities decentralize as they grow
  3. Transport, telecom networks and social media spawn new data
  4. Urbanites consume less and produce more
  5. Cities foster the exchange of ideas
  6. A new science of the city is emerging – like physics or biology
  7. One day city hall may be packed with screens like a Formula 1 pit
We are just beginning to learn about how the deluge of data will change how we see our cities – and how we manage them.  In what ways can we use data to see if our actions are aligned with our intentions as we choose, increasingly, to live in cities together?
Drawing on the four quadrants, I can see that the city managers (upper right) can use this emerging deluge of data to track our collective actions.  I can imagine city builders using it as they decide what to build.  I can imagine civil society (lower left) contributing its understanding into the mix.  I can imagine citizens (upper left) reflecting on data to ascertain if our intentions are appropriate and adjusting as necessary.
The feedback loops that allow the city to sense itself play a significant role in city life.  Right now, with the development of new data sets and the practice of analytics, we are just scratching the surface of a whole new way to see how the city system acts and behaves.  The city is actively evolving with us right now, creating the conditions for us to evolve and thrive.
My next post will explore the lower right quadrant – building intelligence – and the structures that allow us to flex and flow in our cities.

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If you are interested in learning more about evolutionary intelligences relating to cities, you will be interested in the Integral City eLaboratory – Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive

Conscious capacity – a city intelligence

I began this series of posts on evolutionary intelligences with integral intelligence (part 1 and part 2).  In these two parts, four maps were shared that help us see our cities as wholes.  One of those maps was the integral map, shown like this (illustrated by Brandy Agerbeck):

This, and the next three posts, will each focus on one of these quadrants, as applied to the city.  Author Marilyn Hamilton calls this Integral City (her book, her website).  For our purposes, imagine the four quadrants like this:

Four of the evolutionary intelligences identified by Hamilton are from the vantage point of each of the four quadrants.  Today, we look at the upper left – inner intelligence.

As we explored emerging intelligence, I made the case that the city is alive.  Alive also means consciousness, a key aspect to Hamilton’s inner intelligence.  When exploring emerging intelligence, I also introduced the notion of the city as a whole system made up of smaller whole systems, such as individuals, families, neighbourhoods, organizations, etc.  Each of these whole systems are holons, each with a conscious intention.  From the vantage point on inner intelligence, Hamilton states that “individual citizen attention and citizen intention lie at the heart of the intelligent city and at the center of the city’s capacity to sustain itself [1].”

It is from our inner intelligence, that together, as a social holon, citizens of a city discern purpose.  Again, Hamilton: “For a city to function optimally, its citizens need to practise, manage and lead from a sense of purpose in their collective lives.  Such an awareness could coalesce the intention of all learning systems with the relevant application of resources in the city [2].”

As we choose to live collectively in the city, we do so with purpose – to create the conditions for us to thrive.  And the very purpose we see for our cities evolves along with us.  It emerges.  Remember the purposes of the city of St. John’s, Newfoundland, and how we conceive the purpose for the city is in relation to our life conditions.  We evolve and what we need from our cities also evolves.

City Purposes

What we need form our cities comes from the inner intelligence of our individual intentions.  In the holon of the city, this is the intelligence of collective citizenship.   This collective sense of purpose of the city is actually a big mess.  “A citizen in any given city will hold a spectrum of values to which she pays attention and for which she will form intentions and purposes [3].”  Compound this with all the citizens of a city and the values and intentions and purposes end up being potentially quite diffused.  Yet, as Hamilton points out, when enough people share their dreams the cities vision, or mission, or purpose can emerge.  It emerges from the inner intelligence of citizenship.

Our inner intelligence is growing.  Our conscious capacity is growing. As we grow and evolve with our cities we learn new capacities at every turn.  We are learning to grow our capacities to be conscious of our habitat and respond appropriately.  Our inner intelligence is growing so we can be the citizens our cities need.  

My next post will explore outer intelligence, the upper right quadrant, and our capacity to ’embody right action.’

 

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If you are interested in learning more about evolutionary intelligences relating to cities, you need to know about the Integral City eLaboratory – Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive

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[1] Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 102

[2] Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 105

[3] Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 111

Emerging intelligence of the city

This post is the 5th in a series outlining Marilyn Hamilton’s 12 evolutionary intelligences.  We have seen how integral intelligence and ecosphere intelligence are crucial to the successful evolution of cities.  Both of these intelligences, for Hamilton, are critical to learning a new language about cities that helps us contemplate cities as whole systems of integral systems.

Emerging intelligence is about seeing wholeness and aliveness in the city.  It is also about looking for more than we usually see.

In this post, I will highlight the sense Hamilton makes of this form of intelligence and reveal the sense that I make about how this intelligence shapes our work in and for cities and citizens.

First, consider that cities are alive.  Hamilton draws on scientists such as Fritjof Capra (his book Web of Life), and what he tells us about the qualities of aliveness.  To be alive means that a system:

  1. survives,
  2. connects to its environment, and
  3. regenerates
Reflecting on my previous blogs, I can see that cities as systems behave this way.  So let’s contemplate each of these three elements of the city as a system.

The city survives

Each city is a whole system that survives.  Cities have survived for many generations, decades, centuries and millennia. If it survives, it is alive.  It is, as a system, also an alive ‘whole’.  Another scientist comes into Hamilton’s view: Arthur Koestler, who coined the term ‘holon‘ to describe a whole system.   Each whole is a holon.  The holons of the city are articulated in Hamilton’s nested holarchy of city systems.

The city, as a holon, is made of other several smaller wholes, or holons.  Each their own whole, identifiable system.  Seeing the city this way it is easy to discern what Hamilton calls the “massive interconnections” between the holons that make up a city.  It is a series of relationships that are both dynamic and stable.
The alive city is not made up of parts that can be easily disassembled and assembled.  The city is “a whole system of the human species that has characteristics as a whole that transcend but include communities, organizations, groups, families and individuals and the built environment that we have created to contain us [1].”  Cities are alive because they are made of wholes that are alive.

The city connects to its environment

Hamilton astutely ascertains that the second quality of aliveness is really about adaptiveness. Cities are very connected to habitat; their existence relies on our ecosphere intelligence.   As I explored in Chapter 1, everything we think, make and do is our work, our economic life, and it is always in response to the changing conditions around us.  In particular the physical conditions we are given or created by us.  We are the mechanism by which cities adjust.  As individuals adapt to internal and external life conditions, so too our neighbourhoods and cities[2].  In part and in whole, citizens and city aim to survive and we regularly adapt to ensure our survival.
This back and forth relationship between ourselves and our habitat is what creates our resilience – in ourselves and our cities.  Our adaptiveness is our “capacity to survive under conditions of stress [3].”  This back and forth is also what allows evolution to emerge.

The city regenerates

Our evolving relationship with our city habitat also results in the regeneration of our cities.  Our internal relationships with each other, the makers of cities in all our wholes, are what create city regeneration: “regeneration occurs through inner renewal, shared learning and teaching and coaching others in roles, competencies and capacities, inevitably in collective groupings [4].”  The city’s adaptiveness depends on the adaptiveness of the holons that make up the city.

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Emergence is about the creation of new capacities to respond appropriately to the changing conditions around us.  Hamilton questions whether the “emerging city” might have more traction than the “sustainable city”.  It just might, particularly when “emerging” connotes adaptiveness.  But this is new, unfamiliar language.  “Sustainable Development” was also at one time new, unfamiliar language, but perhaps it isn’t about naming the language just yet.
Our work is about naming the intention – to be keenly adaptive to our changing conditions.  Hamilton issues a more distinct intention than this: “to add value to life on Earth that is both sustainable (not over-using resources) adn emergent (always creating new capacities from existing resources) [5].”  This is our emerging intelligence.  It is what allows us to thrive.
My next post take a closer look at first of the four quadrants of integral theory applied to the city: inner intelligence and conscious capacity.  
 

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If you are interested in learning more about evolutionary intelligences relating to cities, you need to know about the Integral City eLaboratory – Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive

 



[1]   Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 30-31

[2]   Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 28-33

[3]   Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 35

[4]   Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 37

[5]   Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 49

 

Evolving ecosphere intelligence

Ecosphere intelligence is both our ability to locate human settlements in appropriate locations and our ability to shift and to forever adjust with changing conditions to our habitat.  As a species, we clearly exhibit this intelligence as we continue our migration across the planet and into cities.  (Please see early Nest City posts: Are people growing cities or are cities growing people? and Driven to do more than merely survive.)

At every turn, we have chosen places to settle depending on geography, for example.  These choices have life and death results.  The choice to settle in St. John’s, Newfoundland had everything to do with ecosphere intelligence: an ice-free, protected harbour at the eastern most point of NorthAmerica with abundant fish stocks.   Much as Jane Jacobs wrote, Hamilton notes that our cities have begun in relationship with their specific physical habitat.  We choose places to settle because they make sense.  This relationship with our habitat continues, even if we have stopped noticing.  At every turn our cities are adjusting:“…the stability of our cities is forever dynamic.”[1].

Figure A - City Dynamic

Our ecosphere intelligence applies both to establishment of a settlement and to a city’s ongoing existence. The fundamental relationship is between everything we do – our work – and our habitat (Figure A – City Dynamic).  Cities are the result of our evolving interaction with our habitat.

To continue, our cities need quality feedback from our habitat to ensure that we are able to adjust.   The quality of the relationship between our economic life – our work- with our social and physical habitats dictates our ability to generate cities that meet our economic, social and physical needs.  The feedback loops within this dynamic are what give us our ecosphere intelligence.   Without the feedback, we do not have this intelligence.

Figure B - City Dynamic (with feedback activity)

Here is a big question – How do we organize for ongoing, quality feedback for our cities?  the good news is that we already know how to do this.  We have been doing this for thousands of years.  Every time, as a species, we set up a new settlement and every time that settlement has shifted to accommodate changing conditions, we exhibit this intelligence.  We adjust to the changing weather conditions over the short and the long term.  We adjust to the physical changes we ourselves make to our habitat and we keep growing.  We know how to do this.

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This post is the third instalment in a series of posts about Marilyn Hamilton’s 12 evolutionary intelligences for the Integral City.  The first two posts outlined four ways of looking at cities as whole human systems: integral intelligence part 1 and part 2. The four integral maps in these posts are critical to understand the future development of our ecosphere intelligence.  Our cities are becoming more complex, which is in itself a life condition to which we have to respond.  Our usual ways of obtaining feedback about our cities are of an era of earlier complexity.  Think about the census as opposed to the practice of analytics now, where data is everywhere. more and more open to the public.  Public decision-making is becoming more public.

I don’t know what ecosphere intelligence will look like in a few short years, but I know we will use it.  It’s what we do.  As we organize ourselves in cities, we will use this data to create feedback loops to form and  inform our decision-making in cities.  It is time to create the conditions for us to dynamically steer our cities to the future.  This is what it will take to create cities that serve us well: being in tune with our habitat and forever evolving with our habitat.  

Tomorrow’s post is about Emerging Intelligence – seeing wholeness and aliveness in the city

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If you are interested in learning more about evolutionary intelligences relating to cities, you need to know about the Integral City eLaboratory – Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive



[1]   Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 16