Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive

Why is it time to provide a meta-framework for looking at the city as if it were a whole system? In 100 years cities may, like beehives, be classified as just one of two kinds: wild or designed. Wild cities will be like the cities most of us know today — mostly unplanned, self-organizing, ever-evolving, suboptimal habitats of swarming humanity. But will designed cities be more than the cities that are starting to emerge from the deserts of United Arab Emirates or flicker as CAD/CAMs on the computer screens of developers, architects, engineers and visionaries? Artfully crafted, functionally aligned, technologically advanced and culturally and socially hollow? Or will we have to transcend and include what we assume are the design elements for creating optimal human living environments? Will we need to invite into the design space the very cultural and social people who will occupy the design and so should be the primary co-creators of the city?  In this Executive Summary to Dr. Marilyn Hamilton's new book Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, you will find out.