Deep Listening
Hidden things emerge from deep listening. You can detect the mood and energy. It is unseen and invisible, yet at the Urban Revolution Aurrera! project, I can feel a desire to address big issues that really matter, a desire to act and a desire to walk the talk.
We love cities, but they can also break our heart. Our cities affect us, and we affect the city.
Where are we now with our world and our cities? For a start our earth hurts and is telling us it has had enough – it is fighting back. Our mind hurts when we are trapped in the vortex of the short term and a constant rush and speed, as it does too, when there is so much fragmentation, inequality and loneliness. Yet cities hurt when they are ugly and there is endless concrete and deadening asphalt, when they are noisy and not user friendly – they then draw us into ourselves, yet when they are generous, we open out.
Even the language we use can hurt, especially that of urban policy and strategy, it can be lifeless, soulless and devoid of emotion. It does little to help us flourish, to feed the spirit so that we want to be engaged.
What do we choose?
So, what do we want? What triggers change and what do we need to do? We all know our economic order and way of life is materially expansive, socially divisive and environmentally hostile. That raises the question how urgent is urgent. The consensus was it is very urgent.
What is our desire? This is what I heard: wholeness, feeling complete, being at ease, belonging, to be connected, wanting agency, the ability to act, to have affect, a deeper yearning to align our actions with our values, to feel that ‘I’ and ‘we’ are at one. We want value in our life and values.
We want the way the city is physically put together to focus on proximity – making access to all our needs close by. Everything is near and ideally in walking distance and seamless connectivity the aim, where moving around is easy with many transport options. People want buildings with breathable materials that feel connected to nature and look organic and full of life. They want spaces to be ‘me and we’, and so not alone. There is a sense of togetherness perhaps alone in a crowd.
We prefer the placemaking notion, to that of urban development. The latter accentuates the hardware whereas the former engages people in shaping their spaces and places. Managerially this means breaking the silo with varied department’s needing to collaborate to create the best effect.
Crisis and Urgency
What triggers change that so many want? A crisis? Yes, the pandemic gave us a glimpse of what could be – the noise reduced, you heard the birds sing, the air was fresher but too soon, many hankered after the old normal, which felt like an exotic destination. We did not take advantage of the opportunity and the tension. Urgency is a second trigger with climate collapse increasingly visible and inequality dramatically on the rise. Yet, there is a gap between what governments say and what they do. Concepts and especially generative ideas like the 15-minute city idea can be catalytic and spread like wildfire and become the norm.
Reframing
Reframing is powerful as when you redefine waste as a resource, or moving from linear thinking to circular thinking that can repurpose a whole economic system. Or giving voice to nature, such as giving rivers a legal personality. Or seeing cities from a 360-degree perspective so the city is not a city of isolated, disconnected projects, but the city as a whole is the project.
A key is to create an enabling environment, which provides possibilities and openness rather like in the idea of the creative city. This seeks to establish the conditions for people to think plan and act with imagination in solving problems and finding opportunities.
Intentionality
This can move us from a “no because” to a “yes if” culture. Then, of course, there are personal qualities, such as courage, bravery, a willingness to take risks, determination, motivation and will and a perspective that turns problems into opportunities. That aside there is intention, ambition, ethics, values or a mission with a road map and trajectory to reach a goal ideally with a dedicated mission manager. Importantly a real – delivered – project implemented with the right values communicates intent as can experiment – some of which succeed and some fail. All of this requires agility and a willingness to improvise and to track and to test and trial as that helps us learn.
Not to forget resources like artistic thinking and arts projects. Think here of Olafur Eliasson and his melting icebergs in Paris you could touch. This viscerally communicates the climate dilemma and can change awareness.
Crucially people want a sketch, a story or narrative of what could be that triggers desire in them and is compelling like the best of poetry. This is where you as the listener feel you can become a maker, shaper, co-creator of the evolving vision and where you with others share insights and intelligence. Overall, this can change behaviour.
Orchestration
Perhaps no single element triggers the systemic change required and so orchestration is key. The approach to be strategically principled and tactically flexible is helpful. Those principles, perhaps wishing to become climate neutral are non-negotiable, but how you reach that target requires being alert, agile and flexible. This often means ensuring that the small things we do align with the bigger aims. In addition, understanding the difference between the complicated and the complex is useful. The complicated is knowable and predictable, such as navigating a difficult terrain, whereas the complex is like bringing up a child where you mostly do not know how they will respond.
Pulling the threads together you could detect a glass half-full approach and that whilst we know the problems people felt it is better to have some optimism, as we know we have strengths too. The feeling in the event was more hope than fear and ‘yes we are not scared’.
There are obstacles, of course, and one is forgetting about what has worked well in the past, such as urban patterns that blended well living, work and relaxation. Perhaps the most important barrier to change are vested interests especially those with resources and capital who feel they will lose out in a changed system. They might merely want to greenwash along the lines of: ‘I want to wash but not get wet’. Another crucial issue and obstacle is not asking the right question that can lead us up the wrong path.
Yet the mindset etched into our culture, where we believe nothing can really shift as there is ‘no other way’, is most worrying. Thus, there is a need to unlearn and most importantly to unlearn the worst of capitalism. Instead, therefore, to measure value in a different way and to bend the market dynamic to bigger picture purposes.
In sum, we need to imagine and rehearse the future and to make our invisible intentions visible so as to give people confidence. That picture of what can be means thinking forwards and planning backwards so that the paced and purposeful approach becomes clear. That picture requires a kind of contract. What is a contract with our community, our city, our society? It is a mutual promise.
The idea of the ‘beginners mind’ can help. This is when you look at things afresh as if you were seeing it for the first time. That more emptied mind can dissolve entrenched patterns of thinking and behaviour and visualize better that future we want.