Integral City

Cities function unintelligently when their parts are disconnected. The integral city meshes or multiplies city intelligences by integrating capacities, functions and locations into a whole system, like a human hive. Everything counts.

An integral city exists as a whole living system within the context of a specific natural environment, climate and ecology. The city, like a human hive, dances with a complex concentration of energies. As a natural system with intellectual, physical, cultural and social intelligences, it adapts to all the same issues, factors and challenges that affect the evolution of life anywhere: how to integrate information, matter and energy.

Integral City applies an integral paradigm for appreciating the city. Numerous graphs and specific examples describe integral processes and tools for change. This is a global, whole, multi-perspective way of looking at the world. Chapters explore:

• Four-quadrant map of reality
• Cities as concentrators of complex wealth
• Mapping intelligence capacities
• Mapping infrastructure for resource allocation
• Designing appropriate governance systems
• Relating the exterior environment to interior city life
• “Meshworking”
• Integral vital signs monitors.

Integral City will appeal to anyone interested in creating conditions in which our cities can evolve intelligently beyond the challenges of the 21st century.