‘Urban 3.0: synergistic pathways for the social-mind from smart to wise’, by Joe Ravetz, to be published by Earthscan / Routledge. It is downloadable here.

Cities are the new pattern-makers of global economies and societies… but they are too often divided and dysfunctional.  There is a huge challenge, in how to foster our cities – communities, city-regions, city-states, or urban civilizations – to ensure survival and prosperity for up to 10 billion people, on one small planet.

This book is about the emerging “Co-opolis-III or City 3.0”  of the next-generation.  Instead of ‘winner-takes-all’ economics and ‘silo-thinking’ government, the Co-opolis-III or City  3.0 model is based on creative synergy, networked collaboration, and social intelligence.  This kind of synergy can then respond to the complex inter-connecting problems all around – climate change, social exclusion, economic vulnerability etc – and turn problems into opportunities.

How to get this synergy working?  There are no blueprints:  but there are new ways of understanding complex inter-connected problems:  and designing interconnected responses, with pathways to mobilize social learning and intelligence.  Co-opolis-III or City 3.0 uses a ‘Synergistic Mapping’ method, to explore the relations between actors and factors, and how value is generated in chains and clusters. And as cities are hubs for many other domains – economic, social, cultural, political, ecological etc – there are 3.0-type concept models in each domain.

• City 3.0: reflexive spatial development:  community empowerment & liveability: responsive housing and transport: One Planet buildings: synergistic planning & regeneration.
• Economy 3.0:  circular local development: social livelihoods / enterprise models: One Planet supply chains: collaborative stakeholder finance: multi-valent macro-economics and prosperity.
• Community 3.0:  social empowerment and inclusion: well-health and inter-connected healthcare: multi-cultural intelligence:  synergistic security and resilience:
• Ecology 3.0: energy and climate change: multi-level food and farming: circular resource / recovery systems: integrated adaptation and ecosystem values:
• Network 3.0:  hyper-digital transitions: from smarter cities to wiser: synergistic science and social learning:  responsive education for social intelligence:
• Governance 3.0: social learning & governance intelligence:  multi-level places & spaces:  beyond market versus state: live-action democracy.

The Co-opolis-III or City 3.0  aims to demonstrate mapping methods, and inspire a next generation to navigate the challenges of the 21st century “one flipchart at a time”. Alongside pictures and conversations, a field manual and many examples, it aims to bridge between vision, theory and practice.  It provides a new kind of ‘pattern language’ for scientists and students, politicians and planners, engineers and philosophers,  innovators and entrepreneurs, and anyone who needs to think ahead.