Integral City 3.7 (Book 3)
Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia's Human Hives
by
Integral City 3.7 considers a series of apparently intractable challenges that all cities face because the world has become so complex that cause and effect are rarely directly linked. This third book in our series explores three themes that are eternal practices for designing a collective life that works for all life; namely, Caring, Contexting and Capacity Building. The challenges cities face today result from the intertwining impacts of multiple life conditions, perspectives and capacities and can only be addressed by reframing them within an Integral City model that honors the plural realities, recognizes their developmental and evolutionary relationships and does not conflate differences. Book 3 applies and expands in multiple directions the 12 intelligences described in Book 1, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive and builds on the field work described in Book 2: Integral City Inquiry & Action: Designing Impact for the Human Hive.
Terry Patten, Author A New Republic of the Heart: An Ethos for Revolutionaries wrote:Only an integrally pluralistic theory and practice like Integral City can reframe complexity into a genuinely integral approach that serves our most complex human systems.
Paul van Schaik, Founder IntegralMENTORS wrote:Book 3 of the Integral City Series explores three practices for designing a collective urban life that works for all life; namely, Caring, Contexting and Capacity Building. It expands in multiple directions the 12 intelligences described in Book 1, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive and builds on the field work of Book 2, Integral City Inquiry & Action: Designing Impact for the Human Hive.
Ian Wight PhD FCIP GTB, Senior Scholar City Planning, University of Manitoba wrote:Marilyn’s Integral City 3.7 and the other two earlier volumes are part of the evolving process that defines the actions we all need to be involved in if our cities are to be places we love to be a part of.
Alexander Laszlo, PhD, 57th President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) and Chair of the Board of Trustees wrote:In bald terms the call in this book is to aim for an overview that is not only an integration-in-action but also a spirituality-in-action. As a grandmother caring deeply for the world being bequeathed to her granddaughter, the author models ‘integral’ as a reframe of ‘professional’, and we wonder—who might be inclined to follow her example?
Hamilton’s third book is a handbook for stewards of the growth and structure of living cities as well as for curators of complex evolutionary learning communities. Her work explores the scientific bases for the emergence of collective wellbeing in hypercomplex human communities and their potential for expressing intelligence through networked connections between and among them. In a VUCA age, Hamilton’s work is an essential guide for understanding the evolution of a city as a learning system and how to fulfill it’s potential as a true expression of Gaia.
