Welcome to the Mind-Lab

a.k.a. LUCI – Laboratory of Urban Collective Intelligence

Welcome to the Mind-Lab – a space for experimentation on collective intelligence – a.k.a. ‘Laboratory of Collective Intelligence’ or Collaboratorium .  And welcome to Synergistics – the art and science of building synergy by collective intelligence, for sustainability, prosperity and resilience, in turbulent times – not only by evolution but co-evolution…  The source text is a ‘handbook for the 21st century’ – ‘Deeper City and the pathways from smart to wise’  (see some reviews).  

On this site you will find 4 main menus, as per overviews below –

• Collaboratorium  – an experimental zone for learning & thinking on collective intelligence.
• Themes – 4 main programs – ‘Smart-wise’ – ‘City-wise’ – ‘Eco-wise’ – ‘Foresight-wise’
• Projects – current & recent projects which explore & test the collective intelligence potential
• Toolkits – a set of practical methods, tools, examples and guidance:

Also you are invited to join the Mind-Lab community for updates & invitations

News & events

• Cities from smart to wise – learning with Curitiba:  How to connect education, climate, transport, business, digital governance & the civic university? Welcome to this interactive workshop on the most sustainable city in the Global South, home of ‘urban acupuncture’ etc.  Weds 15^th April 2026, 3-5.30.  Details on Curitiba smart to wise
• ‘Foresight with monsters’ – how to run cities, regions and countries in an age of populist power-grabs: interactive seminar with Prof. Yanuar Nugroho:  Monday 27th April 3-5pm:  Signup – https://tinyurl.com/yp3m39sw  Details – Foresight Indonesia
• New blogs… ‘from urban silos to joined up city – who runs this place?’ (Manchester Urban Institute)
• From smart cities to wise (SAMI Consulting)
• ‘From Smart to Wise Cities’ – keynote for Climate-Tech Driving Urban Transformation– 19th March Amsterdam:  
• New MUI blog – ‘from urban silos to joined up city – who runs this place?’  
• Foresight-CHAI (‘collective human-artificial intelligence’) Forum #4 – 27th April 2026 1200:  how to harness the power of AI as enabler of human intelligence? Here we review leading systems and develop prototypes in an international program – essential for staying ahead in the coming transformation… 
• Collective-climate-intelligence: 28th April – pilot testing of tools for CHAI (‘collective human-artificial intelligence’).  
• Urban Geography Research Group: 28th January 2026, 1300: ‘Cities of Tomorrow: new geographies for a dynamic and dangerous future’ – seminar with Joe Ravetz – Details & signup –
• Natural Flood Management India – Foresight-CHAI – Jan 5-9th – for ‘Community Resilience through Natural Flood Management’:  details Collective flooding intelligence – workshop 20th Jan for the international Foresight-CHAI program, Manchester /  Kolkata / Beijing.   Public lectures follow in Kolkata (details on Collective flooding intelligence ) 
• Foresight-CHAI (‘collective human-artificial intelligence’) Forum #3 – 26^th Jan

World Urban Forum in Baku, May 17-22 2026: planned events – 

• ‘From smart housing to wise’ – ‘Academy’ training workshop with the Citiverse platform & CHAI toolkit (‘collective human-artificial intelligence’)
• Planetary peri-urban: ‘Urban Library’ launch of the ‘Peri-Urban-Rural Linkages’ compendium & global community (hybrid).

New year 2026 greetings with ‘Looponomix 2026’ …. Last year we sketched 4 over-arching ‘Doom-Loops’ of self-destruction – and now these look more dangerous than ever… All the more urgent to find the seeds of ‘Life-Loops’ which can grow towards prosperity, justice & sustainability…  (updates on – https://kumu.io/Joeravetz/loop-onomix-test#untitled-map 

• U4SSC (‘United for Smart Sustainable Cities’): 19^th November 2025:  – https://u4ssc.itu.int/thematic-groups/ :  interactive presentation of Foresight-CHAI work in progress

• China-UK foresight 3.0 exchange program enters a second phase in Beijing, Nov7-14 2025: detailed lecture program as on Foresight-wise CASTED –CASTED http://en.casted.org.cn/ seminar.

• Co-futuring with CHAI Forum #2 (Foresight 3.0 with ‘Collective Human Artificial Intelligence’) – 23rd October 2025…now that AI provides endless content – we need to focus on the CHI – ‘collective human intelligence’.
• European Parliamentary Research Service – Policy Foresight Unit – seminar with Joe Ravetz on Foresight 3.0 in strategic public policy – 24th October 2025
• PURL (peri-urban-rural-linkages) – keynote at the IFURL conference (hybrid) in Songyang county, Zhejiang Province, China:  4-5th November 2025 – details on Peri-wise program
• Co-futuring with CHAI #1 – 24th July 2025. Following the Foresight 3.0 workshop at Futures4europe  – demos and reviews of leading AI-enabled platforms.
• Community Resilience through Natural Flood Management in UK / India – Sept 15th / October 9th 2025 : workshops with the pathways toolkit. 
• Systems thinking for African city governments: the synergistic approach – 22nd July 2025: interactive workshop with the African-cities research consortium
• Joe Ravetz’s ‘journey of ideas’ is featured along with 40 other global thought leaders of the GTI network, in this unique collection – https://greattransition.org/gti-forum/memoirs-global-engagement  
• As a modest contribution to Asia-Pacific futures – the Deeper City book is now available in Vietnamese at Thanh-pho-sau-hon …. (Chinese version is in discussion..)

(for previous events see the news archive)

Welcome to the book

The book is about the Symbio-polis – shorthand for the co-evolution, not only of material cities but the civilization which produces them – of which there are many deeper layers in the deeper city…. 

So the book aimed high – to visualize challenges and forward pathways, in text, system mapping, and visualizations – here are various materials –

• Deeper City quick tour  – overview of ideas, stories, methods and tools

• Deeper City – Reviews – from 12 leading thinkers

• Deeper cities wider views  – Joe Ravetz in conversation with Effie Amanatidou  – for the backstory and forward look

• Deeper City – Ch1 – prologue – bigger ideas, wider visions, FAQs and how to use the book…
• Example keynote: CHAI – ‘Collective Human-Artifical Intelligence’ – for the International Smart City Forum at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference Shanghai – WAIC-Joe-Ravetz.mp4   (with dual language script WAIC-Joe-Ravetz-Chinese-English)

A wider set of resources are shared with the visual thinking ‘sand-pit’ of Urban-3.0 –  further samples from  The Book:    the Mind Games and Political Games with visual storylines : background on the  Synergistics ideas & methods: deeper and wider insights and experiments in Visual Thinking.)

Welcome to the Collaboratorium

In this Collaboratorium / Mind-Lab  we aim to explore the frontiers and principles of ‘collective intelligence’, its methods and tools, and practical applications.  We aim to demonstrate the pathways forward, with analysis, examples, guidance, methods & tools.

Following a first phase of experimentation (2020-22), a forward plan is now forming with 4 main strands:

1. Projects & case studies: experiments & applications, new & ongoing: some have open invitations to participate
2. Community & dialogue: debates and symposia, ‘lab tours’, online comment;
3. Research & publication: compile special issues and a multi-author ‘CI-Book’ (‘collective intelligence book of online knowledge’);
4. Policy & practice: disseminate results, methods & tools, with ‘white papers’ & practical guides.

This is planned as a multi-year program, exploring a range of topics in 4 key themes and their intersections:

• City-wise theme: ‘Peri-urban-wise’ & ‘MCR-wise’
• Smart-wise theme: ‘CHAI-wise’ & ‘Local-wise’
• Eco-wise theme : ‘Climate-wise’ & ‘Bio-wise’.
• ‘Foresight 3.0’ is at the intersection of these clusters, with studies on collective intelligence, futures methods & applications: (also, ‘Pandemonics-3.0’ was a key focus 2020-22). 

Forward thinkers and interested co-authors are invited to join these workshops as they come up on the links. 

For comments or queries, contact joe.ravetz@manchester.ac.uk

Virtual hub

Through the pandemic, the Collaboratorium provided a unique 3D virtual hub / meeting place / coffee bar / water garden and lookout point – (designed by the Visioning Lab/ on a platform courtesy of Mozilla Hubs).

With an inspiring set of spaces, based on ‘earth / air / fire / water’ cosmology, this was perfect for virtual coffee /informal networking after intensive meetings…. We are now launching with FrameIO a next generation virtual space – details shortly…

New projects & initiatives

• Foresight 3.0 Ukraine circular economy – working with UNIDO on the longer term prospects for Ukraine as a innovative and sustainable circular economy
• International resilient cities  – China-UK project: exploring new methods of risk / resilience analysis, to look beyond the city limits at whole urban / peri-urban linkage systems.
• Eco-wars-3.0 – This unique and very topical project explores the interactions of climate tipping points with human tipping points. Each side is hyper-complex, volatile & vulnerable – with the synergistic approach, we invite participants for co-production of a ‘collective climatic intelligence’ .
• Ground zone / Liveable city toolkit:  The Ground Zone project is an Innovation Lab collaboration between the Manchester Urban Institute, and architects / designers Callison RTKL. 
• Local-wise – (Urban participatory research & knowledge loops) – exploring new forms of urban knowledge in Living Lab context, and how they are co-produced between research, policy, business and civil society.