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 1, part 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.
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:
survives,
connects to its environment, and
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.
_____ _____ _____
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.
I once heard Don Beck explore the difference between the words ‘change’ and ‘adjust’. What he said made perfect sense at the time and then moments later I lost track of why it made sense. I have been trying to figure it out for a couple years. Today, I now realize that these words are all about our efforts to thrive – with efforts to survive, as appropriate, in the mix.
Change is movement on the Spiral
Adjust implies tinkering. Change implies something more significant. Both are relevant and needed, but they are not the same. The difference lays in our life conditions and the degree to which we are open to change (see the last two posts on the principles and patterns in/of the Spiral, and the conditions that enable movement up the Spiral).
If adjustment is tinkering, then that means creating new ways of doing things within the current vMEME. It is a way of making the current value system work. It is a way of allowing the current value system to take into account any inconsistencies. Change, however, arises when the value system itself is challenged to the point where a whole new view comes into being. This can be up or down the Spiral – upward to a new perspective, down to a previous perspective. Change is movement on the Spiral from one vMEME to another vMEME – either up or down. While change means movement on the Spiral, adjustment means staying put.
Figure A - Movement on the Spiral
Two directions of movement on the Spiral
When life conditions change around me I react in some form. If I experience sufficient discomfort, I may be compelled to look at the world quite differently. I may experience – and begin to live – a new, higher, view on the Spiral. Depending on the degree to which I am open to the potential for change (see condition 1), I may be unable to see the new conditions and be closed to this change, I may need additional discomfort before so I am partly open to change, or I may be ready and open to doing things in a totally different way (open). All three scenarios are open to me at any time. Yet just because I am open to change does not mean that movement on the Spiral is necessary – adjustments that maintain the status quo may be fully appropriate.
There are two directions for movement on the Spiral: up and down (Figure A). As circumstances dictate, coupled with our openness to change, we move up and down. When moving up the Spiral we are expanding our perspective and understanding, inclusive of all the levels below. When moving down the Spiral we are constricting, or hunkering down.
When we first starting using automobiles few rules were needed. As more vehicles came into use and as they moved faster and faster we noticed that life conditions were changing. The RED world of impulse led to accidents and death and injury. Society began to see that BLUE rules were needed: speed limits, laws of the road, enforcement, road design standards, etc. Speed limits and road design standards would not have emerged if there was no discomfort with the RED conditions. A change came about and we moved up the Spiral.
Similarly, when the forest fire hit Slave Lake, Alberta in May 2011 and destroyed most of the town, any roadway rules were put aside. (See How could a whole town burn?) Life conditions changed quickly and citizens hunkered down to ensure their survival. A change came about and folks moved down the Spiral.
Movement up and down the Spiral takes place when life conditions change around us, compelling us to change. It also takes place when we are open to the change and are able to make the change (for more on the conditions that allow change, please read yesterday’s post). At every threshold we are a point of allowing our very expansion and evolution or of constricting it. Yet, there are also times when constriction makes perfect sense. The trick is in being fully aware of the situation and noticing what the context is really demanding of us. The easy route may be in being closed to change and hunkering down. The tough route may be in facing what we are fearful of. This is hard enough for us as individuals, let alone as a collectives the size of cities. This is big, important work to undertake within ourselves as we build cities for ourselves.
Adjustment is in one spot on the Spiral
Recognizing when it is time to move up or down the Spiral is one decision. Another significant decision is when it is time to stay put and tinker with things as they are. This is another totally appropriate response to our world – when life conditions are appropriate. In one organization I worked with, our leader looked to us to tinker with policies and procedures (BLUE authority) when the organization was in crisis and our attention needed to be put on the things that were driving people out of the organization. In contrast, I have watched how the National Building Code has been adjusted over the years in an effort to raise construction standards relating to energy efficiency. While each adjustment is not revolutionary, over time the standard of constructive is considerably different. Tinkering resulted in a recalibration of the rules over time.
We need to be skilled at changeability and adjustability – recognizing when it is time to tinker and when it is time to expand and when it is time to hunker down. Taking wise action in any of these directions requires significant self awareness. Over time, we will find that the most appropriate response is lower on the Spiral – when our attention is on surviving. Once things settle, things recalibrate and we again begin our journey upward – where our attention is on thriving (Figure B). Every action on the Spiral – even the pauses to adjust and the moments when we need to hunker down – is in service to our upward impulse to thrive.
New value systems are emerging as each of us as individuals, and in our city life, evolve. In my last post, A primer on the emerging spiral, I described Spiral Dynamics, a way of seeing the pattern in our emerging value systems. Seven principles describe the core intelligence of Spiral Dynamics and frame the emergence of new patterns, paradigms, theories, etc. As Spiral Dynamics authors Beck and Cowan put it, the principles uncover the deepest trends that generate trends.
1. Humans are able to create new vMEMES. Looking back over the history of the human species, Beck and Cowan track the emergence of each vMEME[2]: 50,000 years ago PURPLE emerged as we formed tribes, experienced magic, art and spirits. 10,000 years ago the RED world emerged with warlords, conquest and discovery. 5000 years ago BLUE emerged with literature, monotheism and purpose. 1000 years ago ORANGE mobility, individualism and economics came to the fore. 150 years ago the GREEN vMEME emerged as human rights, liberty and collectivism. YELLOW emerged 50 years ago with complexity, chaos and interconnections. TURQUOISE emerged 30 years ago with a new discourse on globalism, eco-consciuosness and patterns.
2. Life conditions awaken vMEMES. VMEMES are a product of our interaction with the life conditions that we face in the world. This is not a scripted biology, but rather a result of dynamic interaction between our internal states and our external world. The age we live in, the place we live in, the problems we face and the social circumstances we find ourselves in shape our beliefs, ideas and values. For example:
3. vMEMES alternate between ‘me’ and ‘we’ focus. Imagine a pendulum that swings between two poles. As the pendulum approaches each pole, it generates life conditions that can only be addressed with solutions from the other. Here are the two poles and their characteristics:
4. vMEMES emerge in waves. Beck and Cowan describe this best: “New vMEME systems come in like waves to a beach. Each has its own ascending surge… At the same time, each also overlaps the receding waves of the previous system as they face. Sometimes the interference generated as the new systems compete in their ascendancies slows the overall Spiral’s momentum, even shoving it backwards. At other times, the vMEME waves resonate and reinforce one another to speed the evolution of thinking along.”[3]
5. Higher levels of complexity emerge along the Spiral. There are four characteristics[4] of this flow:
Expansion of psychological space – toward more multifaceted personalities, diverse organizational forms, and a much more complicated planet
Expansion of conceptual space – toward bigger picture views, wider span on influence, and extended time frames
A progressive increase of alternatives – toward more choices to make from a broader menu of ways to do a thing
A progressive increase in degrees of individual freedom – toward more possibilities in terms of how to be, ways to display emotions, acceptable kinds of human interrelationships
6. vMEMES co-exist. We have the capacity to think in many different ways about many different things all at the same time. While I may be very competitive (RED) on the soccer field, I am also conscious and respectful of the rules (BLUE) and the diversity of skills (GREEN) of my teammates. I notice the strategic (ORANGE) choices our coach makes about who plays where, how and when on the field, and I appreciate the sense of belonging we have created as a team (PURPLE). How bright each of these vMEMES shine depends on the life conditions – at a game, RED will be brightest. As I write, PURPLE is surging as I notice the fond connection I have with my teammates.
7. There is a momentous leap after the first 6 tiers. The first six vMEMES, BEIGE through GREEN, are the culmination of our primate nature. They are the 1st tier of human development and focus on human subsistence. The 1sttier vMEMES have very little tolerance for each other. They conflict and clash, and these are the seismic battles we experience in the world.The leap to the 2nd tier offers a shift from subsistence to ‘being’ – which means appreciating the wisdom of each of the first six vMEMES. Beck and Cowan advise that the momentous leap is characterized by a dropping away of fears and compulsion, an increase in conceptual space, an ability to learn a great deal from many sources, and a trend toward getting much more done with much less energy or resources.[5] The words of Clare Graves:
After being hobbled by the more narrow animal-like needs, by the imperative need for sustenance [BEIGE], the fear of spirits [PURPLE] and other predatory men [RED], by the fear of trespass upon the ordained order [BLUE], by the fear of his greediness [ORANGE], and the fear of social disapproval [GREEN], suddenly human cognition is free. Now with his energies free for cognitive activation, man focuses upon his self and his world [YELLOW, TURQUOISE, etc.].[6]
Summary of the principles
The seven principles provide insight into how the Spiral works. We are able to create new vMEMES and we do so in response to our life conditions – our habitat. As we do, the focus of the vMEMES swing back and forth between ‘me’ and ‘we’. New vMEMES arrive like waves on a beach – always in relation to the other waves – with each wave upward bringing a high level of complexity. As these vMEMES awaken, all the previous vMEMES remain in tact. And until such time that a momentous leap is made from the sixth (GREEN) to the seventh (YELLOW) level, where we recognize the value of each perspective, there is great conflict between the vMEMES.
The emerging value systems highlighted by the Spiral are so clear in city life at many scales – self, family, neighbourhood, organization, city, province, nation, continent, world. Readers interested in an example may be interested in the series of posts on St. John’s, Newfoundland: Is the unplanned city unplanned? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. In the meantime, the next post will look at how we move up and down the Spiral.
[6] Clare Graves as cited by Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 274. Graves’ use of the masculine in this explanation is indicative of his life conditions and the times.
There is a pattern in human activity that reveals how our intelligence evolves (Figure 1). The story of St. John’s emergence as a city in Chapter 2 – The Planning Impulse highlights this evolution in the creation of a city. The purpose of this post is to provide a primer in one way of thinking of evolving intelligence: Spiral Dynamics.
Spiral Dynamics
Imagine the double-helix spiral of our DNA and the work that has been done to catalogue our genes – the codes that guide our physical being. Imagine a similar spiral with our cultural codes: our organizing principles.
Don Beck and Christopher Cowan, drawing on the work of Clare Graves in the 1970s, have revealed how the organizing principles emerge in humans, and how they glue together our social systems. This area of work is called Spiral Dynamics. The organizing principles are found in levels of value systems that emerge as we evolve. They are called value memes, or vMEMES for short (rhymes with genes), as coined by Richard Dawkins.
vMEMES are codes, or behavioural instructions that are passed on from generation to the next, social artifacts, and value-laden symbols that glue together social systems.[1] Beck and Cowan:
These vMEMES include instructions for our world views, assumptions about how everything works, and the rationale for decisions we make.[2]
We evolve and grow through these vMEMES – as individuals, as families, cultures, workplaces, cities, nations and as a species. Here is a summary of the eight vMEMES that have appeared to date in humans – our ideas and beliefs gather around each of these:
The spiral of city purposes in Figure 1 is an interpretation of the vMEMES described above. Here is another take on the spiral with some key words you will recognize as the structures and processes associated with ways of thinking at different levels of the spiral:
Highlights
The first six vMEMES, BEIGE through GREEN, form the first tier of value codes. Their focus is subsistence. Very simply: BEIGE, is explicitly about surviving. When our basic needs are met, in PURPLE we survive together and make sense of the magical world in groups. When resources become scarce, our groups compete for independence (RED). When we recognize that stability is needed, BLUE surfaces and we establish institutions, protocols and rules with purpose. When those rules get in the way, ORANGE shows up as an entrepreneurial, creative spirit. When uncomfortable with achievement orientation of ORANGE, GREEN emerges and seeks caring and socially responsible communities.
These first six vMEMES have very little tolerance for each other; we see great conflict between the values of competition and community, or the power of the individual vs the role of the collective. A second tier of vMEMES (YELLOW, TURQUOISE) surfaces when we desire to integrate the first six.
It is critical to note that none of these vMEMES are better than another. They simply reflect different perspectives on what the world and its complexity .[3] Each vMEME builds on the one(s) before. Each building block arrives as we adjust to new levels of complexity. Each transcends and includes the previous vMEMES, responding to increased complexity in the world, meaning that the building blocks already created remain in us.
vMEMES are types of thinking in us, not types of us.[4] As a body of work, Spiral Dynamics notices the patterns in human development, and recognizing the pattern allows for deeper views of the role of cities – and ourselves – in human development.
How does the Spiral work? The next post will describe seven principles that frame the emergence of new patterns. As Beck and Cowan put it, the trends that generate trends…
If the purpose of cities is to grow and evolve the human species, then it is necessary to understand the evolutionary forces in play. There are huge implications for our relationships with each other as we create cities that support our efforts to learn both as individuals and as a species
In today’s world we are in the process of recalibrating how we relate with each other. We are adjusting our relationships with smartphones, texting and social media. We are in contact with each other, both locally and globally, in whole new and unforeseen ways. Information is distributed very quickly. We are both more informed and misinformed. We are deeply engaged in life and rewiring the nature of our engagement with self and other and the city in our city life.
The advent of social media does not remove our desire to create cities that serve us well, or minimize our desire for face-to-face contact. We still hunger for it. We use social media to organize ourselves – to share information, to rally, to have fun. Ultimately it is a form of connecting. As communication sparked an evolutionary burst in humans 60,000 years ago, and with the printing press more recently, we are sparking another evolutionary burst now – where do we need to put our attention to ride it out safely?
Figure 2 - City "Nestworking"
Organizing ourselves into and within cities is a process of organizing human intelligence. Looking back at Chapter 1 – The City Impulse, we can see that we are organizing our economic life in the context of our physical habitat. We are doing this by creating a social habitat that allows for feedback and integration (Figure 1). There is no ‘plan’, per se, but as my colleagues Don Beck and Marilyn Hamilton would say, there are patterns in the life conditions. One of the patterns is the activity of planning our cities. In Chapter 2 – The Planning Impulse, I propose that planning is one of many activities we undertake to organize ourselves. The Venn diagram in Figure 2 articulates the planning of our cities as an activity that is non-linear, messy and uncomfortable work for an uncertain future.
Our attention needs to be on cities – because cities are a source of innovation. The development of cities is a survival skill for the human species. Moreover, as we organize ourselves in cities, we need to pause and learn about ourselves and our evolutionary trip before diving further into the Nest City model (Figure 2). That is the focus of the upcoming series of posts that form Chapter 3 – The Thriving Impulse, where I will describe and explore:
Evolutionary intelligence
Evolutionary intelligence in the city
Protocols and practices that support the evolution of the city
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:
Provide the answers – traditional, linear, planning expertise.
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.
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.
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:
The historic times we live in (the era)
The geographic place (the physical conditions)
The challenges we face to exist (priorities, survival issues, threats to safety); and
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.
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.
