SACRED CIVICS

Jayne Engle // Montreal

Valuing what matters in cities

As parts of society are held in suspense, we sense major transition toward a new age—one of increasing uncertainty and of long emergencies. At this threshold, there is collective yearning for communitas and a sense of the sacred that would transcend or, as Ursula Le Guin quotes from Moore’s Utopia, that “dissolves the norms that govern structured or institutionalized relationships and is accompanied by experiences of unprecedented potency.”[1] 

Evolving Common Good Worldviews: What matters now? 

Value will change in the post-Covid world… there’s a possibility that the gulf between what markets value and what people value will close.  —Mark Carney, 2020 [2]

An often-overlooked crisis is the Western addiction to a worldview of Neoliberal globalism: the primary ideology of the dominant political and corporate and financial establishment.  This stands in opposition to a global solidarity, or “common good,” worldview. The pandemic lays bare how the axiology of the dominant worldview has as its summum bonum power, speed, efficiency, and productivity, in contrast to a common good worldview, which places human equality, flourishing, and regenerative nature as the apex. Axiology determines behavior, attitudes, thought, and action. The tectonic plates of irreconcilable worldviews are crashing currently, and the wreckage is rapidly exacerbating human inequality, which was already at historic extremes.

To shift mindsets and systems to value human and planetary health, we must build social imagination and grow capabilities for collective sensemaking and collective intelligence. We are currently designing EmergencERoom—an agile platform to build those capabilities and provoke a higher order of collective imagination. [3] Early ideas include investments in regionally distributed civic transition funds that would build local resilience and legitimacy and reassign value to our collective commons. This will require devolving new forms of agile governance and experimentation capacity to strengthen local circular economies, and to address local issues such as food security and the future of education outside the walls of traditional schools. 

Lawing Together: How can law be love?

Nature-based communities don’t have a voice because [modern] governance structures do not have a place for their voices. These ways of living with the land can disappear so quickly when they’re seen as primitive, not innovative. —Julia Watson, 2020 [4]

In many Indigenous traditions, “law” is a verb, and people are responsible to law together. Constitutions and law are living institutions, ever evolving. Indigenous scholar John Borrows centers in his book, Law’s Indigenous Ethics, the Seven Grandmother/Grandfather Teachings: Love, Truth, Bravery, Humility, Wisdom, Honesty and Respect—principles of Anishnaabe law. Such “sacred values” are non-negotiable and protected from trade-offs with non-sacred values such as money because they tap into ethical principles and responsibilities of people to each other and all life. 

How to law together according to sacred values? Rights of Nature and Rights of Future Generations statutes at city, provincial, or national level provide pathways by questioning assumptions: Should people have the right to own land? Are rivers and other natural assets resources to consume, or our relations? How to co-produce city life and economies as if the Seven Teachings were foundations for creating value? We have begun such inquiries in Civic-Indigenous 7.0, to bring Indigenous wisdom to city building. [5] In the short and longer term, we are working with a range of Indigenous partners and settler communities to manifest Reconciliation. Many efforts have policy or regulatory implications, such as commons-based property models [6], Indigenous data protocols for smart cities [7], and new alliances between neighbouring municipal governments and Indigenous communities. [8] All efforts aim to acknowledge and honour Indigenous peoples’ inherent right of self-government.

Building Seven-generation Cities: How can we build as good ancestors?

Our Indigenous teachings remind us that our connectedness and stewardship responsibilities to land, place, kin, community, and the sacred are the roots and foundation that support and cultivate the many community and institutional branches and pathways of our future cities. –Tanya Chung-Fook, 2020[9]

Cities located on what is now called Canada were built on unceded territories of Indigenous nations. For seven generations—the timespan which many Indigenous nations consider in major decisions—our cities have been designed based on logics of land as commodity to consume, and more recently, as car-centric. Modern city form has rarely provided ample space for everyday expression of spirituality and sacred values, which would center nature, including people. City planners have rarely learned to pay attention to the spiritual in our craft. [10]

Future Cities Canada is creating an “Indigenous Reimagining of Cities” platform for collaborative dialogue, convenings, research, and land-based activities that aim to reimagine and transform cities through civic-Indigenous partnerships and Indigenous “placekeeping.” 

In light of Covid-19, our Civic Capital [11] partners are developing a Community Wealth Sharing initiative, initially prototyping crowdfunding models in Ottawa and Alberta to strengthen bonds between residents and community-serving businesses. [12] We hope this will give way to building civic resilience, which will be crucial in the increasingly volatile times ahead.  

The pandemic creates a moment of shifting worldviews, when we recognize our collective suffering—physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual—and what is sacred in all of us. 

A sacred civics would have us collectively shape our settlements as life-centered places, where local residents build regenerative economies, and where we rise to be our best selves, for the good of all.

Notes:

1. Thomas Moore, Utopia, quoted in U. LeGuin, Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places (New York: Grove Press, 1989), 88.

2. Mark Carney, “Mark Carney on how the economy must yield to human values,” The Economist, April 16, 2020, https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2020/04/16/mark-carney-on-how-the-economy-must-yield-to-human-values.

3. The EmergencERoom is a nascent collaborative with McConnell, Dark Matter Labs, MaRS, Century Initiative, and la Maison de l’innovation sociale.

4. Julia Watson, in an interview with Diana Budds in Curbed, about Watson’s book, Lo-TEK. Design by Radical Indigenism, (New York: TASCHEN, 2020). Retrieved: https://www.curbed.com/2020/1/15/21060078/indigenous-design-lo-tek-design-by-radical-indigenism-book.

5. Dark Matter Labs and Cities for People, “Civic-Indigenous 7.0,” Medium, January 22, 2020, https://medium.com/cities-for-people/civic-indigenous-7-0-ec3a9104901b.

6. ‘Property as a micro-treaty’ is an example of the approach. It is being developed by Dark Matter Labs with  McConnell, the Center for First Nations Governance, and others, and will be published soon here: medium.com/cities-for-people.

7. Being applied as part of the Future Cities Community Solutions Network, led by Evergreen and OpenNorth.

8. Many partnerships are facilitated through the Community Economic Development Initiative, a collaboration of Cando (Council for the Advancement of Native Development Officers) and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

9. Tanya Chung-Tiam-Fook is with Evergreen and Future Cities Canada. This quote is from an essay called “How will COVID-19 change the future of cities? An Indigenous re-imagining of cities perspective”, forthcoming on FutureCitiesCanada.ca.

10. A notable exception is training provided by Professor Leonie Sandercock and the team in the Indigenous Community Planning program at UBC.

11. Civic Capital Partners are McConnell Foundation, Dark Matter Labs, Community Foundations Canada, MaRS, la Maison de l’innovation sociale, and Evergreen.

12. “Supporting local merchants and strengthening community resilience during COVID-19,” News, The McConnell Foundation, April 29, 2020, https://mcconnellfoundation.ca/supporting-local-merchants-during-covid-19/.

Author Bio:

Dr. Jayne Engle is Director of Cities & Places at McConnell and Adjunct Professor at McGill. She builds and supports collaboratives: Civic-Indigenous 7.0, RegX and Legitimacities, Participatory Cities Canada, Civic.Capital, Future Cities Canada, and the EmergencERoom. @JayneEngle  @jwmcconnell @cities4people. Our blog: https://medium.com/cities-for-people