Deeper City

collective intelligence and the pathways from smart to wise

This agenda-setting text – Deeper-City: Collective-Intelligence-and-the-Pathways-from-Smart-to-Wise  is the source & reference point for the Mind-Lab / Laboratory for collective intelligence.

(now in Vietnamese translation – Chinese is in discussion…) –

Also see the Reviews….

Deeper City is the first practical application of new thinking on ‘deeper complexity’ and the collective intelligence.  Faced with grand challenges such as runaway urbanization, climate change, digital take-over, or rising inequality, co-evolutionary transformations may be the only way forward.

Deeper City provides a new methodology and toolkit for this collective intelligence – the capacity for collaborative learning and synergy, in any human system, from cities, technologies, economies, ecologies, to political and cultural systems.

The key is in synergistic design thinking, which can move beyond ‘smart’ systems of ‘winner-takes-all’, towards ‘wiser’ human systems where ‘winners-are-all’.This connects deeper systems analysis with practical and strategic action, with applications from local neighbourhoods to global finance.

From a decade of development and testing, Deeper City combines visual thinking with a narrative style and practical guidance. This book will be indispensable for those seeking a sustainable future – students, politicians, planners, systems designers, activists, engineers and researchers.

What’s a Deeper City? Concepts & FAQs

Here are the basic ideas and frequently asked questions, with a cartoon user’s guide below.

Cities (shorthand here for civilizations) have many layers – social, technology, economics, environment, political – with many ‘synergies’ or inter-connections between them, positive and negative. To reduce the negative (syndromes), and realize the positive potential (synergies), we explore the present and the future, with ‘synergistic mapping and design’.

How to look for synergies

Basically, we explore for possible synergies, beyond the normal horizons, in three key dimensions of any system:

• Deeper: synergies between different domains and value systems (social, technical, economic, environmental etc).
• Wider: synergies between ‘actors’ (people, organizations, networks, communities, institutions).
• Further: synergies between the ‘factors’ or metabolic flows (from upstream causes to downstream effects).

What is smart or wise?

To understand all these inter-connections is beyond any one person or field of knowledge – we need a collaborative learning and thinking, and some kind of collective intelligence to put it all together. This emerges from system transformation, not only in material systems but in cognitive-conscious systems, as seen in three distinct Modes of organization:

• Mode-I: functional growth/change, in a ‘clever’ system: the ‘city as machine’. (Where to put 5000 houses is a Mode-I kind of problem).
• Mode-II: biological evolution, with ‘smart’ systems: the ‘city as jungle’. (How to build houses with more profit is a Mode-II problem of innovation and competition, and ‘smart’ systems for winners often lead to ‘unsmart’ results for the losers).
• Mode-III: human co-evolution, through ‘wise’ systems: the ‘city as civilization’. (How to foster a liveable community is a Mode-III kind of problem).
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What’s a synergistic pathway?

If we know where and how to travel, we could use a ‘route-map’, but if goals are fuzzy and routes are uncertain, we need pathways. A pathway here is based on synergies between two or more domains (social, technical, economic etc), which can bypass or bridge present-day gaps and barriers. For transformation from ‘problems’ or syndromes (generally from clever or smart systems), to ‘responses’ and synergies (generally wise or wiser systems), we look for ‘synergistic pathways from smart to wise’. These are ways of learning and thinking and creating which use collective intelligence to connect present problems with future opportunities. We design such processes of connection with pathway mappings, with the help of cartoons and diagrams. These mappings are generated through a four-stage circular process (with the shorthand ‘4-S’):

• System-mapping (baselines): the existing system and problems on the table (with a process stage of ‘co-learning’);
• Scenario-mapping (changes): the dynamics of change and alternative futures (the ‘co-knowing’ stage);
• Synergy-mapping (visions): opportunities, innovations, transformations (the ‘co-creation’ or ‘co-design’ stage);
• Strategy-mapping (pathways): route-maps, policies and projects (the final stage of ‘co-production’).

These ‘structures of thinking’ – the deeper-wider-further scope, the different Modes of collective intelligence and the 4-S process model – are all combined in a practical Toolkit (Chapter 3). Each of the 40 pathways in this book have emerged through and alongside the Toolkit itself. For others to use the Toolkit in the world out there, see the guidance in Chapter 10 on the Collaboratorium (‘laboratory of collaboration’) and the Multi-versity (a community where everyone learns with, by and from everyone).

40 transformations with practical pathways

The core of the book is the 40 ‘co-evolutions’ / transformations towards a collective intelligence. Each is inter-connected with others, and each comes with a set of practical pathways for mobilizing the synergies. Each is also explored on multiple tracks – text, system mapping, and visual creative thinking.