Integral — Essential to completeness, lacking nothing essential, formed as a unit with another part.
Integrate — To form, coordinate, or blend into a functioning or unified whole; to unite with something else; to end the segregation of and bring into equal membership in society or an organization; desegregate.
Integrity — Adherence to artistic or moral values; incorruptibility; soundness; the quality or state of being complete and undivided; completeness.
In architecture and urban planning, a revolution has been taking place aiming to heal the wounds inflicted upon the landscape by the Modern and Postmod- ern eras. These wounds are manifested as sprawl, the growing perception of fear, a declining sense of community, and environmental degradation. This design revolution is relatively quiet because its practitioners are not unified under a single banner and because their sensitivity to people and the environ- ment translates into design that may not call attention to itself. Nonetheless, numerous stones have been thrown around the globe, and their still small but growing ripples are beginning to reshape dramatically our physical environ- ment while enhancing our quality of life. In Western society, generally, we are witnessing a gradual reorientation toward valuing slowness, simplicity, sincerity, spirituality, and sustainability in an attempt to restore connections that have been severed over the last century between body and soul, people and nature, and among people. For architects and planners, this has been apparent in the shift from the machine as model (Modernism), to cities of the past as model (Postmodernism), to seeking mod- els simultaneously in ecology and new information technologies (e.g., thresh- olds, ecotones, tentacles, rhizomes, webs, networks, the World Wide Web, the Internet). Along with these new metaphors, there has been a fascination with the border, edge, and in-between, as concepts as well as actual places. In contrast to the earlier models that bespoke aspirations for control and perfection, these current models suggest the importance of connectedness and dynamism as well as the principle of complementarity. On the ecological threshold, where two ecosystems meet, for instance, there is competition and conflict but also synergy and harmony. There is fear but also adventure and excitement. It is not about good or bad, safety or danger, pleasure or pain, winners or losers. All of these occur on the threshold if it is thriving. Widespread frustration with the escapist tendencies of recent urban design along with the sorry state of market-driven urban growth and develop- ment has inspired more proactive approaches. These share an emphasis on reintegration (functional, social, disciplinary, and professional), on permeable membranes (rather than the Modernist attempt to dismantle boundaries or Postmodernist fortification), and on design with movement in mind, both movement through space (circulation) and through time (dynamism, flexibility). From “less is more” to “more is more,” the byword has become “more from less.”1 Louis Sullivan’s dictum that form follows function (1896) was supplanted by the deeply cynical late twentieth-century tendency for form to follow fiction, finesse, finance, and foremost fear (see Ellin 1997, 1999). At the turn of this third millennium, form is once again following function, but function is redefined. Rather than primarily mechanistic and instrumental, function is understood more holistically to include emotional, symbolic, and spiritual “functions,” in fact, Sullivan’s initial (but widely misinterpreted) intent.2 At the same time, the attitude among designers toward rapid change has been shifting. From attempting to deny or control change, an attitude characterizing most of the twentieth century, we are now witnessing an acceptance, sometimes even an embrace, of change. This reorientation carries deep implications for urban design. The result is a departure in theory and practice — in concept and implementation — ranging from small-scale interventions to regional plans. The selective synthesis of exemplary trends presented here offers an overview of recent urban design that supports the complex and wondrous range of human needs, allowing us not only to survive but also to thrive. Integral Urbanism is the rubric under which I gather these creative solutions. Applying Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” advanced in 1943, we could say that these landscapes satisfy our physiological and security needs as well as our higher needs for belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization (see Figure 1). We might define such urban design as the “art and science dedi- cated to enhancing the quality of the physical environment in cities, to provid- ing civilizing and enriching places for the people who live in them.”3 Integral urbanism may also be regarded as the urban design analogue to, or container for, what philosopher Ken Wilbur describes as integral psychology (illustrated by “nested spheres”4) and the “Spiral Dynamics” of Don E. Beck.5 Crises and stress are what incite growth and adaptation in all life forms. The kind of change that occurs, however, may support or detract from the health and well-being of the system depending upon its level of resilience and inherent wisdom. The health and well-being of the human habitat is currently perched upon a tipping point. While proactive practices continue to prolifer- ate, so do obstructionist and reactionary tendencies. By not contributing to the solutions, these latter only contribute to the problems. Ultimately, they are unsustainable. By distilling here the principal qualities of the more sustainable practices, I hope to tip the scales toward proactivity. That is the challenge for urban design today.