1. integralMENTORS
20
IntegralUrbanHub
Accelerating CityChange in aVUCAWorld
Thriveable Cities
Urban
Hub
a meta-pragmatic approach

2. “This is a truly brilliant and much needed presentation. The author
has brought together an extremely intelligent group of writers and
thinkers to apply Integral principles to the problems and creative
openings of city, regions, ecosystems, and the biosphere itself.
Each one of these areas is treated as a living, complex, integral
system, and the ways that they all mutually interact are fully explored,
with the added benefit that they are all looked through an integral
lens, insuring that a fully whole and complete path is taken.
There is really no other approach like this available, and certainly none
that give as full and comprehensive and inclusive an account. I can’t
recommend this approach more highly, it truly touches a level of
genius.”
Ken Wilber
—Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; The Integral Vision

3. Urban Hub
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Thriveable Cities
Marilyn Hamilton
Guest Curator
Integral UrbanHub
20

4. Copyright ©©integralMENTORS– April 2020
ISBN-13: 978-166-0970339
In fullness and freedom
A series of graphic papers from integralMENTORS integral UrbanHub work on Thriveable Cities
Founder and Managing Curator
Paul van Schaik

5. “A city is more than a place in
space, it is a drama in time”
Patrick Geddes

6. Content
Foreword Paul van Schaik, UH Founder and Managing Editor
Introduction Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City Meshworks Guest Curator
Caring for Planet
Jude Currivan Restory and Restore
Karen O’Brien Climate Challenge Community Learning
Marilyn Hamilton Spirituality Optimizes Integral City
Daniel Christian Wahl Salutogenic Cities
Peter Merry Information & Energy Fields
Caring for Local/Place
Stephan Martineau Slocan Integral Forestry Cooperative
Andrew Becker & Danielle Huffaker Integral Project Design
Sean Esbjörn-Hargens Wisdom Economies
Beth Sanders Nest City Serves Citizens & City
Lev Gordon Living Cities Association
Taisa Mattos, Anna Kovasna & Kosha Joubert Global Ecovillage Network
Mark DeKay Integral Sustainable Design
Diana Claire Douglas Systemic Constellations for OneCity

7. Caring for Others/Collectives/Groups
Miriam Mason Martineau Parenting as Integral Evolutionary Activism
Miriam Binder-Lang Integral Coaching for Sustainable Change
Synnervate - Ard Hordijk & Allard De Ranitz Organizational Collaboration
Edward Fitsell Integrating Civil Society
Kara Stonehouse; Anne-Marie Voorhoeve & Morel Fourman Meshworking for Thriving Cities
Ian Wight Making a Place We Can All Call Home
Caring for Self
Jon Freeman Intelligence in Living Systems
Marilyn Hamilton Leadership in a VUCA World
Ellen Van Dongen Lifemaps for Integral City
Prototype City Transformation
Marilyn Hamilton Storyboard Design for Meshworks
Duncan Crowley & Constança Belchior Creating a Sustainable & Just Lisbon
Contributors
Books

8. Ambiguous
You can easily find convincing but totally contradictory information for
any assertion. Because of complexity and unpredictability the ubiquitous
availability of information has created a mist in which it becomes
increasingly difficult to find clarity.
V
U
C
A
Volatile
Things change continuously. What is true today isn’t true tomorrow. Even
the nature and dynamics of change change.
Uncertain
More than ever, we live with a lack of predictability and a prospect for
surprise. It is impossible to predict how projects will evolve.
Complex
Simple cause-and-effect chains have been replaced by complex
interconnected forces and events. Interconnectedness makes all things
increasingly complex.

9. Foreword
Urban Hub 20 - Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
is the twentieth book in the series from Integral Urban Hub and
IntegralMENTORS. For the first time we have asked a guest
integralist to curate a book. And it is appropriate that for this
20:20 vision of our VUCA world that we have asked the creator of
Integral City Meshworks Dr. Marilyn Hamilton to take on this task
as guest curator.
Marilyn has a vast experience in this area with a great network of
fellow integralists.
She has been inspired by the pioneer of city planning and
sociology Patrick Geddes. His Outlook Tower, Camera Obscura
and Summer Schools renewed old Edinburgh. We hope that the
results of this highly readable and informative volume can renew
and regenerate cities today.
Together we have imagined how an Integral City Meshwork
enables us to respond in a wholistic way to the life conditions of
our VUCA world
We hope you enjoy our co-creation and share it widely.

10. Introduction

11. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
People do not perceive worlds but enact them. Different mindsets bring forth different worlds.
Introduction
How would a group/collective/team of integralists Accelerate
Transformation for their City in VUCA times?
How would Integralists Meshwork themselves to serve the City as
Gaia’s Reflective Organ in a VUCA situation like Climate Change or
Coronavirus?
Those are the questions I have been asking since I have observed
the Integral Capacity arise in many practices, professions and
places.
But most of the Integrally-informed practitioners live in many
different places around the world – so it is hard to imagine how
many of us have now emerged who could be called to be the
City’s organs – just as Cities have become Gaia’s Reflective Organs.
How could we tap into our 12 Intelligences, 4 Voices, and Master
Code of Care?
But what if we all lived, worked, played and co-created in one
place? How might we gain an overview of our gifts, talents,
services and strengths? What would happen if we called these
forth in one place in service to the wellbeing of one City?
That is what this Urban Hub 20 book is about. We have called
together in these pages a potential Meshwork of Integralists who
can share their approaches. Each of these is valuable in
themselves, but when they are linked together in a “supply chain”
organized as a Meshwork of a Master Community of Carers, we
amplify each link. Furthermore, we provide a path/direction/ of
Care for all Voices in the City to interconnect as a living system of
Care.
In these VUCA times of Coronavirus and Climate Change and
other threats and challenges these are the “Capacitators” who can
help us understand Context and catalyze Care to Transform Cities
as Gaia’s Reflective Organs.

12. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
People do not perceive worlds but enact them. Different mindsets bring forth different worlds.
Master Code of Care
This book is organized into 4 sections. Each one holds the
insights, practices, contexts and priorities for one or more of the
levels of Care:
• Caring for Planet
• Caring for Place
• Caring for Others
• Caring for Self
In actual practice, this Code of Care grows as Capacities we
practise from the smallest fractal of Caring for Self through
Caring for Others through Caring for Place and then Caring for
Planet. So, this book can be read in either direction – from Planet
to Self for Context and from Self to Planet for Capacity
Development.
Taken as a whole these 4 sections offer a kind of Sacred
Meshwork that helps us imagine how each level of Caring is
holographic and fractal. We can see how the City is a living
system, where individuals and collectives seek to survive,
connect with their environment of Place and Planet (internally
and externally) and regenerate. Each generation adds to the
lineage of city life that it receives as a legacy, and in turn creates
capacities for future generations to continue Life.
We suggest to our Prototype City of Lisbon these initiatives to
accelerate transformation of Care, Context and Capacity in these
VUCA times.

13. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
People do not perceive worlds but enact them. Different mindsets bring forth different worlds.
Caring for Planet
In this section we gain the Overview of a Living
System Cosmology that embraces all of the Cares
into ONE planet.
We discern the deep connections of Planetary Care
in VUCA times – using Climate Change as an
example that calls on the collaboration of
individuals and collectives wearing the hats of the
Practical, Political and Personal.
We appreciate the power of Spirituality to bring
optimism alive and optimization to empower our
practices.
We learn how a Salutogenic sense of Wellbeing
creates the conditions for a Planet of Cities
interconnected through science and spirit.
We gain insights through the powers of
ECOintention to change whole systems through
sensing the energies of person, peoples, place and
planet.

14. Re-story to Restore
Jude Currivan

15. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Re-story to Restore
The stories we tell about ourselves and the world are the
stories we live by.
Our world-views and beliefs drive our behaviours.
Our collective and fragmented world-view, maintained by a
materialistic and reductionist scientific paradigm, has been
reflected in our dysfunctional behaviours.
If we are to heal and restore our relationships with
ourselves, each other and our planetary home, Gaia, we
need to re-story our understanding of reality itself.
At this critical time, in answer to this need, a new and yet
ancient story is emerging.
Leading edge science across all scales of existence and
numerous fields of research is converging with universal
spirituality into an integral model of unified reality.
It reveals our Universe as composed of meaningful in-
formation holographically manifested, and so exquisitely
fine-tuned that it exists TO evolve:
- This emergent wholeworld-view imbues our entire
Universe and ourselves with inherent meaning and
purpose.
It invites us to understand, experience and embody unity
awareness and to Think Cosmic, Feel Global and Act Local.
Jude Currivan PhD

16. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Evolving Evolution
Our Planet is calling to us to WAKE UP: rapid climate
change and environmental destruction is reflecting the
need to expand our awareness.
Our unsustainable interactions with each other, resulting in
inequality, injustice and conflict are calling us to GROW UP
and change our behaviours.
Think Cosmic, Feel Global, Act Local
The integral wholeworld-view story helps us understand
our unique diversity within the unity of reality and the
evolutionary impulse of our Universe. It helps us to tune
into the evolutionary meaning that is unfolding and
flowing around us in these transformative times and
empower hope in action.
A WholeWorld-View, by serving our understanding,
experiencing and embodying unity awareness, aims to
empower all the above and facilitate us to LINK UP and
LIFT UP to consciously evolve.
The damage we have caused to ourselves and our
planetary home, Gaia, is calling us to regeneratively
CLEAN UP and co-creatively SHOW UP.
Jude Currivan PhD

17. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Think Cosmic – Unified wholeworld-view
As a species, never before have we had so much scientific
evidence that we are living in an interdependent, in-formed
and holographically manifested Universe that not only exists
and evolves as a unified entity – but exists TO evolve.
After 13.8 billion years of evolution, our Universe has
birthed us as a self-aware species. We now have a choice to
become unity-aware beings and conscious co-creators and
evolutionary partners with our Universe and its ongoing
evolutionary impulse. As we collectively re-member the
multi-dimensional and unified All of the Cosmos, we can
choose.
We are coming to realize that mind and consciousness
aren’t something we have but rather what we and the whole
world are. That our Universe is a great thought rather than a
great thing and that we are its micro-cosmic co-creators.
From such unity awareness comes a realisation that
separation is an illusion.
We are alive in a critical evolutionary moment.
Jude Currivan PhD

18. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Feel Global – Unity-aware care for our planet Gaia
We are all indigenous to Earth–we, and all the plants and
animals that share our planetary home, are Gaia’s children.
Like a healthy resilient ecosystem, within the wholeness of
the all, our global experience is manifested through the
radical diversity, and purpose of me and we.
The illusionary story of separation is breaking down. We
either evolve globally together or become extinct as a
species. In these pivotal times of breakdown and
breakthrough, we can re-member and ‘feel’ our inherent
connection to each other and Gaia, and co-create a thriving
future for all. It is time to evolve through love, from the inside
out.
While the process of re-membering unity is unique to each
individual, all are paths on the same journey of inner and
outer evolution. We can choose to become unity aware
beings, and in acting local and feeling global, experience
and embody wholeness. We are indeed in this together.
And we always have been.
Jude Currivan PhD

19. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Act Local – Linking up and lifting up for transformational change
Locally, individuals and communities are embarking on
quests and practices of ‘sacred normality’–reconnecting to
each other, Gaia and the universal pulse of evolution that
flows through us. We are re-membering what it means to
co-create lives of meaning, purpose and responsibility.
Communities are rediscovering their ability to find local
solutions to global challenges. Crisis breeds opportunity
and innovation.
As we expand the spiral of compassion to include Me, We
and All, cities can be transformational accelerators for how
we do this together.
In acting local whilst feeling global and thinking from a
perspective of unity in diversity, cities can lead the way
forward in transforming our human capacity and facilitating
our conscious evolution.
In the coming years, the choices of each and all of us will
determine the fate of our species and potentially all life on
Gaia.
Jude Currivan PhD

20. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Re-story to Restore
The existential challenges we face today and in the
coming years ultimately have arisen from a common
cause:
- our fragmented understanding of reality and our
collective belief in the illusion of separation.
Increasingly compelling scientific evidence is converging
with universal spiritual traditions to reveal that this
perception is fundamentally wrong.
Instead discovering an emergent wholeworld-view of
unified reality and a living Universe imbued with meaning
and evolutionary purpose.
We now have the opportunity and the choice to re-story
our understanding and re-member and restore our
understanding and experiencing its innate unity:
- We are invited to experience and embody its hope in
action through a spiral of compassion that embraces:
- Caring for our Planet
- Caring for our cities and communities
- Caring for ourselves
Jude Currivan PhD

21. Climate Challenge Community Learning
Karen O’Brien

22. 1.THECLIMATECHALLENGE:TAKINGTRANSFORMATIONSTO SUSTAINABILITYSERIOUSLY
Is it possible to realize the goals and targets of the Paris Agreement
and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Or maybe this is
not the right question. Perhaps the question to ask is not whether,
but how we can reach these goals. To bend the emissions curves at
the rate and scale needed to limit warming to 1.5C (see figure)
requires dramatic transformations. The coronavirus crisis and the
economic crisis reveal that dramatic transformations are possible. Yet
it is not only the direction and amount of change that should
concern us, but also the quality of change. How we transform will
make a difference to what the future looks like. If we value an
equitable and sustainable world, it is important to take
transformations seriously.
“To catalyze rapid and large-scale systems change will no doubt
involve multiple approaches, some radical and conflictive and others
incremental and collaborative, and there will be both intended and
unintended consequences. Although roadmaps and pathways for low
carbon development are important, the paradigms, perspectives and
power of the mapmakers and pathbreakers are seldom neutral —
with the best of intentions they often perpetuate old paradigms and
ideas, pave overly deterministic pathways that risk becoming self-
fulfilling
prophecies, and exclude other ways of framing and approaching
problems and solutions. Generating rapid social change involves
broader and deeper approaches to transformations.” (O’Brien 2018,
pp. 157-158)
Photo by Lucas Albuquerque on Unsplash
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Karen O’Brien

23. 2. TECHNICAL PROBLEMS AND ADAPTIVE CHALLENGES
The social, economic, political, cultural and environmental
consequences of transformation processes will have profound
impacts for the way that society evolves over the next
centuries. There are numerous ways to approach
transformations within the context of climate change, and not
all of them will lead to the same results. How we frame the
problem will influence the types of solutions that are identified
and prioritized.
In their work on Adaptive Leadership, Ronald Heifetz and his
colleagues (2009) make a distinction between technical
problems and adaptive problems. Technical problems are
those than can be successfully addressed by applying more
knowledge, know-how, expertise, innovation, and
management. Adaptive problems draw attention to the
personal dimensions of change, particularly mindsets, which
include the beliefs, values, and worldviews. They are also
political, as they often involve challenging social and cultural
social norms, forms of governance, and engaging in collective
action. Adaptive challenges also have practical dimensions
that require techno-managerial and behavioral responses.
Individuals, groups, and organizations tend to avoid adaptive
challenges when they introduce too much disequilibrium.
Instead, the problem will be treated as a technical one, or it
will be ignored or avoided. Climate change is an excellent
example of an adaptive challenge (O’Brien and Selboe 2015).
Three Dimensions of Adaptive Challenges
Practical
What to do?
How to do it?
Poli)cal
How do we organize?
Who decides?
How do we challenge the
status quo?
Personal
What do I/we value?
How do I/we see the
world?
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Karen O’Brien

24. 3. THE THREE SPHERES OF TRANSFORMATION
The Three Spheres of Transformation is a simple
heuristic that provides an accessible way to think
about transformations to sustainability (O’Brien and
Sygna 2013). It is an adaptation of Dr. Monica
Sharma’s conscious full spectrum response, which is
based on empirical work in the field of development.
Although many existing and emerging theories of
social change recognize interactions among multiple
spheres, there is a tendency to prioritize only one or
two dimensions. Transformation processes that
simultaneously engage with all three spheres of
transformation have been shown to generate results
(Sharma 2017).
The labels for the spheres do not correspond directly
to the economic, social and environmental spheres
of sustainability. The word ‘spheres’ is instead used
figuratively to represent areas or domains that are an
intrinsic part of a larger whole. The approach aligns
with Integral Theory, which recognizes that
behaviors, systems, culture, and experiences are
interdependent, and that mindsets and paradigms
influence how systems are viewed, which theories,
relationships and goals are deemed legitimate and
desirable, and which behaviors and technical
responses are prioritized (O’Brien 2018).
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Karen O’Brien

25. 4. TH R E E SP H E R E S IN T E R A C T IN G SP H E R E S
Practical Sphere Political Sphere Personal Sphere
The practical sphere is at the core of
the figure, and it represents specific
actions, interventions, strategies and
behaviors that directly contribute to a
desired outcome, such as the 1.5 C
target (e.g., solar panels, plant-based
diets, bicycles). Results here can be
easily monitored and measured by
indicators.
The political sphere represents the systems
and structures that facilitate or constrain
practical responses to climate change. These
include social and cultural norms, rules,
regulations, institutions, regimes and
incentives that influence how systems are
designed, organized and governed. These
are often created, codified and managed
through political processes, including
through collective actions.
The personal sphere of trans-
formation relates to the individual and
shared beliefs, values, worldviews and
paradigms. This sphere acknowledges
different understandings of causality,
levels of social consciousness,
perceptions of agency, and assum-
ptions about leadership.
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Karen O’Brien

26. 5. Leveraging Systems Change
The three spheres of transformation map on
to the 12 leverage points for systems change
identified by Donella Meadows (1999), which
is considered a useful framework for
conceptualizing transformations. Interventions
related to the practical sphere leverage have
lower leverage than those associated with the
political sphere, such as policies that
strengthen or weaken feedbacks, information
flows, and most importantly, through the rules
of the system and those who have power to
change the rules.
Meadows (1999) argues that the most
powerful leverage points are the goals of the
system and ‘the mindset or paradigm out of
which the system — its goals, structure, rules,
delays, parameters — arises’. She considers the
highest leverage point to be the power to
transcend paradigms. This falls into the realm
of the personal sphere. When new thought
patterns contribute to actions that are based
on universal values, such as equity, dignity and
compassion, cultures and systems will be
transformed to support a world that is both
equitable and sustainable (Sharma 2017).
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Karen O’Brien

27. Frameworks and heuristics are not enough to address the adaptive challenge of climate change. Yet how do we move from intellectual
understandings to consciously generating transformations? The cCHALLENGE – a 30-day experiment with change -- was developed as a
reflexive and experiential process exploring the relationships between individual change, collective change, and systems change.
Experimenting with change provides the interactions among the practical, political and personal spheres of transformation. By committing
to one small change for thirty days and treating it as an object for study and reflection, participants gain insights into how change happens
and how to see opportunities to create change
6. INTEGRATING KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Read more: www.cchallenge.no Karen O’Brien

28. Heifetz, RA, Grashow, A, Linsky, M. 2009. The practice of adaptive
leadership: tools and tactics for changing your organization and the
world. Harvard Business Press.
Meadows, DH. 1999. Leverage points: Places to intervene in a
system. 1999,
O’Brien, K. 2018. Is the 1.5°C target possible? Exploring the three
spheres of transformation. Current Opinion in Environmental
Sustainability, 31, 153–160.
O’Brien, K.L., Selboe, E., 2015. Climate change as an adaptive
challenge, in: The Adaptive Challenge of Climate Change.
Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, pp. 1–23.
O’Brien, K., Sygna, L., 2013. Responding to climate change: The
three spheres of transformation, in: Proceedings of Transformation in
a Changing Climate. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway, pp. 16–23.
Sharma, M., 2017. Radical Transformational Leadership: Strategic
Action for Change Agents. North Atlantic Books.
6. REFERENCES
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Karen O’Brien

29. Spirituality Optimizes Integral City
Marilyn Hamilton

30. We Are Accomplices of the Divine
As we survey the trouble spots of the world – mostly
located in cities – we face challenges that seem
overwhelming with seemingly no precedents for easy
solutions.
Recovering from coronavirus, regenerating communities
for climate change, challenging terrorism, dealing with
homelessness, facing a deluge of refugee migrations . . .
We do not know if the choices we make – will lead to
desolation or prosperity.
We are called to be of service to the Highest Good.
We cross a threshold that moves us beyond ego into
something deeper, more alive, more awake, more
demanding.
• Our practice of contemplation, our opening to a
collective intelligence, our commitment to a never-
ending path of learning extends our circles of care to
embrace the whole city.
• We sense the Divine embracing the whole planet. We
can be of service in allowing the Divine to use us.
• There is magic in the Master Code – to Care for Self,
so that we can Care for Others, so we can Care for
this Place, so we can Care for this Planet.
• This practice impacts the city and the world with the
Grace of the Divine and makes us accomplices of
Goodness, Truth and Beauty beyond our
understanding.
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Chihuly Glass Museum, Seattle, Photos: by Marilyn Hamilton Marilyn Hamilton PhD

31. How Can We Optimize Integral
City Impact as Spiritual Practice?
As intentional Practitioners we are
called to develop expertise to do three
things:
1. Relieve external problems to the
best of our ability as “barefoot
doctors” or “Spiral Wizards”.
2. Heal the internal sources of
problems in our own psyche, the
anguish of others, or across cultural
divides. As we widen our circle of
compassion, we are more able to
be the non-anxious presence who
can offer a calm and grounded
centre to be together in difficult
circumstances.
3. Bring more integral and Integral
City frames to bear on the work we
do.
When we treat this question as a Wisdom Query, it
becomes a kind of koan, that takes us deeper into
ourselves/Self and reality.
Dr. Roger Walsh
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Marilyn Hamilton PhD

32. As pioneers of a new
paradigm for the city we
engage spirituality in
multiple contexts
• In our personal reflective
practice
• In the workplace
• In our communities (of practice
and place)
• On behalf of the city as a whole.
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Marilyn Hamilton PhD

33. Integral frameworks are now
emerging in most domains
of human understanding
• psychology, medicine,
education, sexuality, history,
geography, systems, culture
• We are recalibrating our ability
to design habitats for
wellbeing and relieve dis-ease
in all its manifestations.
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Marilyn Hamilton PhD

34. An integral mindset
is able to flex and
flow
• In a stream of awareness we
open eventually into a
transcendental awareness.
• In this flow spirituality in the
Human Hive is an alive re-
sourceful condition.
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Marilyn Hamilton PhD

35. To optimize Integral City impact,
choose a path of never-ending
maturing
• Regularly dive into inner work as
deeply as you can.
• Dr. Roger Walsh calls this “karma
yoga”.
• Our work in the world of Integral
Cities becomes a spiritual practice
itself (as illustrated in this book).
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Marilyn Hamilton PhD

36. Salutogenic Cities
Daniel Christian Wahl

37. Salutogenic Cities as catalysts of bioregional regeneration and
planetary health
One aspect of taking a dynamic and evolutionary approach to cities in
their regional and planetary context is to go beyond asking ‘what
would a healthy city look like?’ or ‘how can we create sustainable
cities?’ If we understand cities primarily as a process and the physical
infrastructure of cities as temporary manifestations or footprints of that
underlying process, can we begin to explore the potential of cities to
contribute to the health of individuals, communities, ecosystems and
the biosphere?
Can we re-conceive cities as catalysts for whole systems health? In
doing so we would make urban development a healing profession.
This offers an invitation for urban design professionals to take a form of
Hippocratic Oath: Do no harm! I personally believe we do urgently
need such an oath for urban development and all forms of design.
The notion of Salutogenesis —improving dynamic health — as distinct
from a pathogenic approach to health that starts with symptoms or
‘problems’ was pioneered by the Israeli health scientist Aaron
Antonovsky (1979). My 2006 doctoral thesis on ‘Design for Human and
Planetary Health: A Holistic / Integral Approach to Complexity and
Sustainability’ applied the Salutogenic approach to health to the field
of design.
Inspired by the work of Janis Birkeland (2002), as well as, Sim Van der
Ryn and Stuart Cowan (1996), I used the notion of ‘scales of design’ and
‘scale-linking design’ to explore design with a big ‘D’ (see graphic).
Salutogenic Design aims to regenerate health, vitality, transformative
resilience and adaptability at personal and collective levels. It takes a
glocal (global and local) approach that pays attention to facilitating
health across scales. Place is always a fractal with local, regional and
global significance in affecting systemic health.
The measure of good design is whether it improves systemic health
reflected in the health of individuals, communities, ecosystems and the
biosphere.
The Western Mediterranean at night from the International Space Station mage Credit: ISS - ESA / NASA
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
The Salutogenic Design practitioner has to develop the skill of
considering all design decisions as affecting and being affected by
interconnected scales of green chemistry, product design, architecture,
community design, industrial ecology, urban planning, bioregional
planning, and national and international collaboration.
If we want to redesign the human presence and impact on Earth from
being degenerative and exploitative to being regenerative and healing
we have to re-match human activities to the golden rule of biomimicry:
“Life creates conditions conducive to life” (Janine Benyus, 1996).
Regenerative practice and Salutogenic Design ask us to pay attention to
the material manifestations of design at all these scales while actively
transforming the underlying processes, worldviews, value systems and
narratives that give rise to these manifestations in ways that add health
and value to the nested wholeness in which we participate.
At the bioregional scale we can reintegrate urban development into the
bio-physical processes that maintain ecosystems health and stabilise
climate patterns. We can do so in place-sourced ways that pay attention
to manifesting the potential inherent in the bio-cultural uniqueness of
people and place. Each bioregionally integrated city makes essential
contribution to systemic health. A Salutogenic City serves its inhabitants
by improving their health and as process of bioregional regeneration
contributing to planetary health.
Daniel Christian Wahl, PhD,

38. The Scales of Design & Scale-linking Design for Whole Systems Health
reproduced from ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
The bioregional scale is the scale at which we can increase the
resilience of communities, cities and their region in the face of the
catastrophic climate change we are already committed to. Past
emissions will cause continued warming for the coming decades at
best. We need to act decisively now to avoid irreversible climate
cataclysm and a worsening of the extinction crises driven by
cascading ecosystems collapse. Creating Salutogenic cities that
catalyse the improvement of ecosystems and planetary health is
grounded in place and participation and focusses on the local and
regional scale. Yet, it also needs to be enabled through collaboration,
solidarity and open knowledge exchange at the national and
international scales, in order to be inclusive and reduce inequality.
Salutogenic Design helps us move beyond sustainability to
regeneration
The most critical intervention point to affect design at and across all
these physical scales is to pay attention to the processes and patterns
underlying their physical manifestations. It is critical to follow design up-
stream and pay attention to how different worldviews, value systems,
organising ideas and mental models shape our perception of reality.
Together they inform how we ‘bring forth a world together’ (Maturana &
Varela, 1992).
I believe it will be the upstream change in the stories we tell about
(literally) what matters and how we make meaning together that will be
the most effective catalyst in the transition towards diversely expressed
and bioregionally adapted regenerative cultures everywhere. Only once
we learn to assume our own potential for healing and being agents of
healing will the Salutogenic Cities we participate in realise their potential
as patterns that contribute to bioregional and planetary health.
In my 2006 doctoral thesis I explored the upstream end of the design
process under the notion of meta-design: the design that affects
worldview and value systems and hence the why of design—and through
that what we design and how. One example for a powerful Metadesign
shift is the change from the arrogance of claiming dominion over nature
while understanding nature as divorced from culture and only of
instrumental value to human beings, to understanding nature and life as
a planetary process of which we are emergent properties and in which
we are co-creative agents, dependent on the health of the whole.
In acknowledging our inescapable agency in nested complexity we
begin to understand that “everything is an intervention” (Gerald
Midgley)—all our thoughts, words and actions matter! This insight invites
us to take responsibility for how we individually and collectively
contribute to the emergence of health as a scale-linking emergent
property at and across all the fractal scales of dynamically transforming
wholeness.
Daniel Christian Wahl, PhD,

39. The Regenerative Design Framework (based on the work of Bill Reed, Carol Sanford, and
Regenesis Group) - reproduced in this adapted version in ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’
Graphic reproduced with permission from John Stewart
‘The direction of evolution: The rise of cooperative organisation’
Biosystems Vol 123, 2014
relationship that enable our communities and cities to flourish while
driving the regeneration of the bioregions and ecosystems we inhabit.
The ‘reconciliatory’ step which reintegrates humanity into life as a
planetary process is possibly the crucial Metadesign shift that will
enable us to understand our action not as something we are doing to
nature, but rather to pay special attention to how our doing and being
are expressions of design as nature. As parts of and participants in
nature we can learn to nurture health, resilience and adaptive capacity
within the Socio-Ecological-Systems we participate in.
Evolution is a process of diversification and subsequent integration of
diversity at higher levels of complexity. Such integration tends to occur
as life evolves new patterns of cooperative organization (see graphic).
Cities are an example of such integration at high levels of complexity.
Every day there are many more cooperative than competitive
interactions in the world’s cities. The challenge now is to reintegrate
cities into the living fabric of their bioregions within the context of
regenerating ecosystems and planetary health.
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
I see the ‘regenerative design framework’ developed by Regenesis
Group and Carol Sanford as another example of Salutogenic
Metadesign. It invites us to think beyond sustainability by exploring our
individual and collective potential to have restorative, regenerative and
healing agency. I first came across this work in an article by Bill Reed
(2006) entitled ‘Shifting our Mental Models’. By putting conventional
practice, green, sustainable, restorative and regenerative on one
spectrum we can learn to value all of them as steps on a journey.
We have done so much damage to the systemic health of the biosphere
and to our communities and societies that simply being sustainable —
while still representing an important bridge we have not crossed yet —
will no longer be enough. We need to restore ecosystems and planetary
health and regenerate the patterns of
Daniel Christian Wahl, PhD,

40. On a predominantly urban planet, cities will need to adopt circular
metabolic systems to assure their own long-term viability as well as that of
the rural environments on which they depend.” He suggests: “Policy
makers, the commercial sector and the general public need to jointly
develop a much clearer understanding of how cities can develop a
restorative relationship to the natural environment on which they ultimately
depend” (Girardet, 2010). The graphic on the left shows how the transition
to regenerative cities with a drastically reduced ecological footprint will
require a redesign of the material and energy flows that cities depend upon
primarily at the scale of their region.
In Creating Regenerative Cities —a book based on Girardet’s work with the
World Future Council—he describes the evolution of cities from ‘agropolis’
to today’s ‘petropolis’. To create ‘ecopolis’ as cities that are restorative and
regenerative by design, we need to learn from the cascading and circular
flows of energy and matter within ecosystems. Applying these patterns to
how we organise cities can help us reduce their ecological footprint. The
aim is to optimise the urban metabolism by designing for circular resource
and energy flows and reliance on renewable energy and resources
(Girardet, 2015).
From linear to circular urban metabolisms
(reproduced with permission from Herbert Girardet and Rick Lawrence
in ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures by Daniel Christian Wahl 2016
Salutogenic Cities are regenerative by design
Town planning pioneer, Sir Patrick Geddes, stressed in Cities in Evolution
(1915) that effective urban planning must be based on a detailed survey of,
and integration with, the surrounding region. As a biologist, Geddes is also
credited as a founding contributor to the fields of sociology and town
planning. His work in the Old Town of Edinburgh was an early example of
slum redevelopment through the active participation of residents which led
to the creation of the world’s first student union housing. The Edinburgh
Summer School —today ‘The Edinburgh Festival’ — started by Geddes was
an interdisciplinary exchange of some of the leading thinkers at the time
and served as an opportunity for public education. The ‘Outlook Tower’ at
Ramsey Gardens established by Geddes invited the visitor to contextualise
their city within Scotland, the United Kingdom, Europe and the World, with
each floor focusing on one of these inter-connected scales.
Almost 100 years later, Herbert Girardet wrote in a World Future Council
report on Regenerative Cities: “Planners seeking to design resilient urban
systems should start by studying the ecology of natural systems.
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Circular Metabolism Cities Reduce Consumption and Pollution,
Recycling and Maximise Renewables
Linear Metabolism Cities Resources and Create Waste and
Pollution at a High Rate
Daniel Christian Wahl, PhD,

41. Girardet’s book is a great place to start exploring how cities can become
Salutogenic processes that support the health of their inhabitants and of
people in their bioregion while actively restoring healthy ecosystems
functions and regenerating planetary health. We would however do well to
also go back to Geddes’ original work and pay attention to the crucial role
that civic participation, public education and individual and collective
capacity building will play in this transformation. The work of Marilyn
Hamilton and her ‘ Integral City’ trilogy (2008, 2017, 2018) offers important
insights and processes for how we might go about facilitating such
profound change towards Salutogenic cities.
‘Ecopolis’ – the ecologically as well as an economically restorative city - Source
https://www.worldfuturecouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/WFC_2010_Regenerative_Cities.pdf
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
City as Process: breakdown & breakthrough in Socio-Ecological-
Systems
To understand cities as processes embedded in bio-physical patterns of
change and transformation requires new frameworks for thinking about the
patterns of periodic collapse and disturbance as critical aspects of
innovation, transformation and evolution.
Based on and adapted from Gunderson & Holling (2001), reproduced from
Designing Regenerative Cultures
Daniel Christian Wahl, PhD,

42. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
The three aspects of resilience—persistence, adaptive capacity and
transformability—describe important capacities of living systems: i) to
resist collapse and maintain vital functions, ii) to adapt to changing
conditions (learn and self-organise) and iii) in the case of Socio-
Ecological Systems to apply foresight and anticipation to transform the
system towards increased health and an improved capacity to respond
wisely and creatively to disruptions and change.
This dynamic understanding of resilience as the capacity to persist,
adapt and transform is akin to Antonovsky’s Salutogenic approach to
health. Rather than waiting for symptoms or (problems) to occur and
then treat or solve those for the affected, the Salutogenic way of working
builds individual and collective capacity to realise the potential for
positive health. Antonovsky’s work also identified the importance of
social cohesion, shared frameworks of meaning and mutual support as
key factors for positive health.
The adaptive cycle is a model of natural patterns of change in
ecosystems and eco-social systems. It consists of four distinct phases:
‘growth or exploitation’ (r); ‘conservation’ (K) of established patterns
Based on and adapted from Gunderson & Holling (2001), reproduced from
Designing Regenerative Cultures
and resource distribution; ‘collapse or release’ (Ω); and reorganisation
(α). The adaptive cycle is often drawn as a Möbius loop that joins these
four phases.
Gunderson and Holling explain that the word ‘panarchy’ describes
nature’s (w)holistic hierarchies and the complex dynamics that link
different spatial scales and their fast- and slow-moving processes into an
interconnected whole. The panarchy interlinks adaptive cycles occurring
at multiple temporal and spatial scales simultaneously. It elucidates the
interplay between change and persistence in scale-linked socio-
ecological systems.
The model can help us visualise the scale-linking complexity of natural
processes. Facing this fractal complexity of interacting transformative
processes — nested adaptive cycles spanning across temporal and
spatial scales — invites us to stay mindful of the limits of prediction and
control that we face as participants in such complexity.
The figure above is a visual representation of panarchy. Fast-moving
cycles at smaller scales are more likely to innovate and test innovations.
While slow-moving cycles at larger scales “stabilise and conserve
accumulated memory of past successful, surviving experiments. The
whole panarchy is both creative and conserving. The interactions
between cycles combine learning with continuity” (Resilience Alliance,
2015c).
An understanding of cities as Salutogenic processes must embrace that
“death is Nature’s ingenious device to create plenty of life” (Goethe,
1829). Periodic disruption, and the dissolution and breakdown of
ossified structures that no longer serve are important aspects of dynamic
change in natural systems — cities included! Salutogenic cities as part of
bioregional Socio-Ecological-Systems in transformation need to persist,
adapt and transform in response to changing circumstances. Often it is
the breakdown of rigid old structures, outdated patterns and processes
that no longer serve that actually enable the breakthrough to new
patterns of health and regeneration”
Daniel Christian Wahl, PhD,

43. “Re-inhabitation”: Return to bioregional futures
Sir Patrick Geddes (1915) suggested that cities should be planned within
the biological, ecological, geological, hydrological, climatological, and
socio-cultural context of their region. The great American urbanist Lewis
Mumford (1961) was very much influenced by Geddes and in turn inspired
the work of the landscape architect Ian L. McHarg, who’s book ‘Design with
Nature’ (1969) and TV show ‘The House We Live In’ on CBS contributed
significantly to the first rise of environmental and ecological awareness in
the 1970s. His ‘over-lay mapping’ approach followed Geddes’ suggestion
and eventually evolved into the Geographic Information System (GIS)
software that is now used by planners everywhere - sadly not with a focus
on regional regeneration.
The world's rivers flow lmapped by Hungarian cartographer Robert Szucs, who sells these maps as art for
download on Etsy. The maps are scientifically accurate, with the thickness of each line representing the
size of each waterway. Different drainage basins are captured in different colours.
See: grasshopergeography.etsy.com/RobertSzucs/BNPS
Watersheds are a useful starting point for exploring bioregional boundaries and situating cities within the
context of their bioregion. Clearly some watersheds of the world’s major rivers are so large that the
appropriate scale for bioregional context for cities within them might require defining sub-regions within one
large watershed.
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
A large part of our species history is based on bioregional patterns of
inhabiting the Earth in close reciprocity with the opportunities and
challenges of particular ecosystems. Whether during the many millennia of
our Nomadic existence or among the early settled cultures, our patterns of
living were closely matched to the uniqueness of the places and regions we
inhabited. Bioregional patterns of organisations are not something new.
We are invited to combine the wisdom of indigenous cultures with the best
of modern (appropriate) technology to rematch our human presence into
the bio-physical realities of regions within the limits of planetary
boundaries (Rockström et al, 2009). It is at the local and bioregional scales
that we can transform the impact of the world’s cities. With more than half
of humanity living in urban areas the creation of bioregionally
Daniel Christian Wahl, PhD,

44. The island of Mallorca has a cosmopolitan yet relatively small city of just under half a million inhabitants
on a landmass of 3640 km2 with a population of just under one million. Along with its extremely
diverse Mediterranean climate pattern and an exceptionally high food plant biodiversity make the island
an excellent case study for bioregional regeneration and the transition to regionally focussed circular
biomaterials economies.
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
regenerative cities will be a critical contribution to the redesign of the
human impact on Earth from being exploitative and degenerative to
being regenerative and healing!
“Those who envision a possible future planet on which we continue […],
and where we live by the green and the sun, have no choice but to bring
whatever science, imagination, strength, and political finesse they have to
the support of the inhabitory people—natives and peasants of the world. In
making common cause with them, we become ‘reinhabitory’.”—Gary
Snyder, 1976
The process of healing our relationship with each other, with the Earth
and the wider community of life is a process of “re-inhabitation.” The poet
Gary Snyder saw this rematching of human affairs to the uniqueness of
each place and its story as the central aim of bioregional regeneration.
Snyder worked closely with the early bioregionalists Peter Berg and
Raymond Dasmann of the Planet Drum Foundation.
Islands as case studies for bioregional regeneration
The Planet Drum Foundation (1973) described a bioregion as “a distinct
area with coherent and interconnected plant and animal communities,
and natural systems, often defined by a watershed. A bioregion is a whole
"life-place" with unique requirements for human inhabitation so that it will
not be disrupted and injured”.
There is no one-size-fits-all blueprint for Salutogenic Cities within
regenerative bioregional economies. If we aim to implement this vision
we have to do so in deep connection to a place and its people.
Regenerative practice aims to identify the unique essence of people and
place and enable their contribution to improved health. To find this
essence we need to pay attention to the ‘story of place’ (Regenesis Group)
and work from the potential of people and place rather than fall into the
habits of ‘problem solving’ in a piecemeal fashion.
Regeneration starts with personal development, including individual and
collective capacity building. This, in turn, creates a culturally
creative field effect that reorientates our ‘doing’ and ‘being’ toward the
process of ‘unveiling’ or ‘manifesting’ latent potential sourced out of the
bio-cultural uniqueness of each place.
I believe, working with cities to transform them into Salutogenic processes
and weaving the complex cross-sector, multi-stakeholder collaborations
that are necessary for bioregional regeneration requires us to work
patiently over the long term. Initially we need to pay less attention to the
physical design decisions or infrastructural changes that are clearly
required and focus instead on patiently nurturing the emergence of
regenerative cultural expressions — isolated at first and then woven into an
infectious story.
Daniel Christian Wahl, PhD,

45. The global Extinction Rebellion movement has made the above one of their core principles. I was
delighted to see them use a direct quote from my book ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’ as their
inspiration for this principle, and have recently engaged them in a positive conversation about why the
plural in ‘regenerative cultures’ matters. A healthy world will thrive on diversity and regenerative cultures
will express that diversity sourced out of the uniqueness of place and nourished by the essence of the
people (re)inhabiting that place.
Working with people, inviting them into dialogue, education and
capacity building, awareness raising, creating public spaces where
people can explore the questions they hold about their children’s future
and the future of their place, listening deeply to their stories and how the
place speaks through them, paying close attention to what wants to
emerge are all foundations of such culturally creative work.
I moved to Mallorca in late 2010 to begin my own process of re-
inhabitation: to grow roots, community connection and create a home
for my family while aiming to be of service to this place and its people. I
did so in part because of the unique opportunity that islands present to
work on bioregional regeneration. It helps that their boundaries are so
clearly defined. After 10 years, I feel positive that we have connected a
sufficient diversity of locally committed people
Dr. Daniel Christian Wahl — www.danielchristianwahl.com — Salutogenic Cities
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
into an emerging culture of regeneration that the next decade will be
marked by surprising systemic transformations stemming in part from
these collective efforts.?
Each place and each culture is different. Here on Mallorca, turning
Palma into a Salutogenic city to enable regional regeneration also
requires engaging the tourism industry that affects 80% of the island’s
economy into a conversation about ‘regenerative tourism’. An
important part of working regeneratively—practicing Salutogenic
design—is to re-perceive what is framed as a problem as a potential
solution pathway. Every day there are more of us asking the central
question:
How can we enable a culturally creative process of engagement—
between people and with this place — in ways that manifest the
potential of this city-region to become Salutogenic by enhancing the
capacity of everyone to find and express their unique essence and
contribute to systemic health and regeneration?
Daniel Christian Wahl, PhD,

46. Information and Energy Fields
Peter Merry

47. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Peter Merry
Copyright © 2020 Ubiquity University, Inc.
All rights reserved
There are methods for experienced practitioners to work with the energy and information fields of large
systems like cities and organizations within cities to increase vitality, coherence and performance.
Working With Information and Energy Fields for City Coherence
ECOintention is a method with 20+ years of researched and validated experience.

48. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Copyright © 2020 Ubiquity University, Inc.
All rights reserved
You can think of reality as having three levels of architecture – the material that we can
see, the quality of relationships and the energy/information fields.
Peter Merry

49. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Copyright © 2020 Ubiquity University, Inc.
All rights reserved
Anything with a name and a boundary (e.g. a city) has a field of information and
energy associated with it that can be worked with consciously.
Peter Merry

50. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Information and energy fields are impacted by the intention of the person or people
who are responsible for the entity (e.g. city).
Proven by 28 years of research at the Princeton
Engineering Anomalies Research project
Matter
Mind
Moves
Peter Merry

51. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
There are principles for those responsible for an entity (e.g. city) that enable them to
keep the information and energy fields coherent.
For example:
Boundaries
Attention
Intentions
Forms
Peter Merry

52. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Organizations like Impact Hub in Amsterdam have used the ECOintention balancing
process to help them move to a more complex operating system within their city, to
serve more effectively in a VUCA world.
Peter Merry

53. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
People do not perceive worlds but enact them. Different mindsets bring forth different worlds.
Caring for Place
In this section we start with appreciating the City as a
Whole Living System in an eco-regional context
through the evolution of Sifco forest management over
the last 20 years.
We expand our perspectives of 10 City Assets and
Capitals with Wisdom Economies that co-relate Supply
Chain stakeholders.
We learn how to design Project Management inquiries
and Project Manager capacities in a VUCA world of
ever-increasing diversity.
We realize that citizens serve cities and cities serve
citizens in the Nest City exploration of work.
We see a whole nation of cities in Living Cities
emerging because they are building on the 4 Voices
and Master Code of Integral City.
We explore how a whole planet of Ecovillages organize
Cultural, Social, Economic and Ecological capacities for
all village scales, including Urban Ecovillages.
We ground our Sustainable City Design with an
architecture of Regional-Climate Responsiveness.
We discern the insights from the Knowing Field and
subtle realms with a Systemic Constellation of OneCity.

54. Slocan Integral Forestry Cooperative
Stephan Martineau

55. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Stephan Martineau
SIFCo as a living case study for creating integral change
The Context:
We are facing challenges of unprecedented complexity and scale, to
the point of exponential existential threat to human civilization.
From exponential technology to overshoot in Climate Change
Modelling, these challenges are coming at us faster than expected:
We, therefore, need a response that is fast, precise, and radical, and
that takes the following into consideration:
• Human capacity and willingness for change
• Economic systems that support necessary change
• Ecosystem capacity for adaptation
• On-the-ground examples of such change happening in real time
that are replicable and scalable
• Acknowledgment that these challenges are global in scope - we are
in this together
Image: Scripps InsCtuCon of Oceanography, University of California –
San Diego (scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve)

56. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
SIFCo as a living case study for creating integral change
The Journey – Key Steps to implement integral change:
1. Identify the various value systems you will be working with. In the context of a city, it is the full spectrum.
2. Work with each value system individually at first; resist the "everyone in the room/round-table” habit!
3. Inquire and listen deeply. Seek to fully understand and appreciate the world through the lens of each value system. Inhabit the varying values and action
logics as much as possible. Keep awakening and engaging your inquisitive self.
4. Learn the language of each action logic and bring flexibility to your use of words (speak their language).
5. Capture the thread of truth that each value system and action logic carries. Leave your preferred outcome at the door, suspend your personal desires.
6. Create solutions that include all of these threads of truth and insight. Identify elevator threads that run through the whole system; those that tie all the
value-systems together.
7. Acknowledge the imperfection of integral solutions and recognize the evolving nature of both the solution and the process.
8. Present one step at a time, while keeping in mind the full spectrum of change that needs to happen over the long term. Speak about year 1 while
knowing it is a 25-year journey that considers the next 100 years of change.
9. Never cement your movements forward, always make each step
capable of evolving, otherwise your positive move of today may
become the stumbling blocks of tomorrow. Acknowledge that
however great the step forward is, it is only one step – there is no
arrival point.
10. Remember that systemic changes interest only about 2% of the
population. Get those individuals on board first. The rest will easily
support the changes as long as they recognize themselves in the
proposed solutions.
11. Creating change is not a personal thing. To be an integral change
maker you need to leave your personal hopes and desires at the door;
central keys to success are humility and ongoing inquiry.
Stephan Martineau

57. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
SIFCo as a living case study for creating integral change
An Example of ImplemenOng Integral Change in Forest Management in Canada,
BC.:
First, some background – The historical context and conflict
1980-2003 – The conflict
• Hundreds of local residents blocked access to their watersheds and were
arrested because of corporate logging.
• On the other side, a Union of workers that feared loss of jobs, and a provincial
government that did not want to create a precedent by agreeing to residents’
demands for community control of local resources.
• In addiaon, a First Naaon that was seeking recogniaon, and eight government-
sponsored iniaaaves to solve the conflict (millions spent, without successful
resoluaon)
A solution
• 2003 – Integral Forestry is proposed as an approach to navigate
this conflict and find a way forward that acknowledges and works
with all perspectives involved.
• 2005 – The Slocan Integral Forestry Cooperative (SIFCo) is created.
• 2007 – Following 4 years of negotiations, an Agreement is reached
between SIFCo, corporations and the provincial government on a
tenure transfer (success due to slide #2)
SIFCo's vision
• To transcend and Include all perspectives
• Ecosystem-Based Management
• Climate Change Adaptation and Wildfire Mitigation
• Meaningful employment
• Education
Stephan Martineau

58. SIFCo’s Unfolding:
Year 1 (2008): The first step was to address the need for systemic change using
a meta-perspectival lens on the agreement with government and identifying
fulcrum points that could have long-term leverage. This included, for example,
broadening the acceptable species of trees on the land base to account for
Climate Change, changing stocking standards in wildfire-prone ecosystems, and
reducing the Annual Allowable Cut to account for ecosystem diversity and old
growth retention.
Year 2 (2009): We did an Ecosystem-Based analysis of the land base, set aside
old growth management areas, included the protection of riparian ecosystems,
and began Wildfire Mitigation work in a small area close to supportive
members of the community to begin on-the- ground demonstration and
education on Climate Change adaptation.
Year 3 (2010): We signed a 99-year lease with government, expanded our
Wildfire mitigation work, and gave our first provincial presentation on the
approach and concept of SIFCo. Our conclusion? The world is not yet quite
ready for our approach :)
Years 4-6 (2011 – 2013): We expanded our work: we grew our on-the-
ground workforce, educated the public, reached 95% support from the
local community, and participated in a comprehensive study of Climate
Change in the region, looking at different scenarios of how this will affect
our future and what the range of variability is.
Years 7-8 (2014-15):
We imported leading-edge software (developed for US Forest Services) and
built a simulation of potential fire behavior characteristics under varying
conditions. After thousands of virtual fire ignitions, we identified main
travel corridors in the landscape. From these findings, we created a
Landscape Level Wildfire Mitigation Plan for the Slocan Valley (first of its
kind in Canada).
Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
SIFCo as a living case study for creating integral change
Stephan Martineau

59. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
SIFCo as a living case study for creating integral change
Year 9 (2016): We released this plan and received our first million $ grant for its implementation. We gave numerous presentations at the provincial level
and got the sense that the mainstream was almost ready.
Year 10 (2017): British Columbia had its biggest wildfire season in recorded history; the province wakes up to the scale of the issue. SIFCo’s work becomes
highly relevant and interest in its approach is high.
Year 11 (2018): Government approaches SIFCo to co-sponsor a conference: 225 delegates from all levels of government, industry and NGOs are present at a
sold-out conference. 2018 is an even a bigger wildfire year than 2017, and now the needs for decisive action has become obvious at a provincial level. That
year also marks the beginning of SIFCo’s reintroduction of prescribed fire in fire-prone ecosystems. A series of documentaries are released by SIFCo. SIFCo’s
negotiated Stocking Standards, acceptable species & other sustainable standards (from 2007) are now standards for all tenure holders in BC.
Year 12 (2019): SIFCo begins a new phase of the work by
forming a coalition of three municipalities with the goal of
making them more resilient to climate change. The
program includes: community education - emergency
preparedness - inter-agency collaboration - wildfire
mitigation work - private land incentives. SIFCo makes their
film crew available to other organizations and begins
shooting videos on river restoration, lake stewardship, and
wilderness education.
Year 13 (2020): In addition to continuing the work above,
this year begins a new research project: The relationship
between carbon emission, wildfire mitigation and forest
ecosystems. We are now three years away from completing
our initial Landscape Level Climate Change Adaptation and
Wildfire Mitigation plan started in 2008. Our prescribed
fires file is growing, with 700 hectares planned for this
spring. The journey continues. Interest in our work is now
very high, with ongoing requests for consulting and
replication.
Stephan Martineau

60. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
SIFCo as a living case study for creating integral change
With all this work underway, we are aware that our efforts are helpful but not sufficient, given that we are part of a global ecosystem.
As a global community, the following steps are necessary as we lean into the future:
Onward and forward – next steps:
§ Change agents need to become champions at collaboration, and we are terrible at it. The problem is not ‘Trump’ or the ‘others’; the real challenge is us
– people with capacity, yet not able to cooperate with each other at a meta-systemic level, not being able to really embody the insight that every
perspective holds gems and that it is these gems we need to focus on, to blow wind into, to utilize to tie us together. We need to FULLY realize that our
own perspective is partial; from this we can gain a humble, courageous, inquisitive stance. Change happens when stress (like the Coronavirus) and
readily available solutions combine. We need to work on solutions prior to the stress coming on, and as humans we tend to respond only when the
stress is in our face. Thus we need to “pre-sense“ – to be in touch with the future in order to ready ourselves.
§ We need to deeply learn and implement the key steps in slide #2
§ Ego will kill us if it can. Ego gets more subtle as consciousness evolves, so we need to be aware of how we tend to sabotage evolution, even with great
intentions. The more consciousness, the more responsibility we have. Let’s look at what needs to evolve in us. Let’s teach by example and remember
that the solution is all-considerate and non-rivalrous.
§ We have most of the solutions today; the real challenge is for people capable of seeing these, to come together and begin implementing them. Notice
in your life how your perspective competes with others, what is at the root of this?
§ The larger systems that are both holding societies together as well as considerably slowing down our evolution (Economic - Education - Energy -
Transportation - Communication - Governance) have been pretty much created and practiced in their current forms over the last 150 years. Considering
our exponential capacity, both in consciousness and technology, vectoring them toward a saner world should not take much more than a decade or two
if we learn to collaborate – that is the great task at hand.
§ Finally, solutions will not come from the same consciousness that created the challenges. Solutions to today’s problems are found in meta-modern
perspectives. We need to think outside the box and realize that the box only actually exists through the power that we collectively give it.
To learn more about SIFCo’s and Stephan Martineau’s approach to accelerating change in a VUCA world, please visit: www.sifco.ca
Stephan Martineau

61. Integral Project Design
Andrew Becker & Danielle Huffaker

62. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Integral Without Borders

63. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Integral Without Borders

64. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Integral Without Borders

65. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Integral Without Borders

66. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Integral Without Borders

67. Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World
Integral Without Borders

68.