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"The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs, is a greatly influential book on the subject of urban planning in the 20th century. First published in 1961, the book is a critique of modernist planning policies claimed by Jacobs to be destroying many existing inner-city communities. Reserving her most vitriolic criticism for the "rationalist" planners (specifically Robert Moses) of the 1950s and 1960s, Jacobs argued that modernist urban planning rejects the city, because it rejects human beings living in a community characterized by layered complexity and seeming chaos. The modernist planners used deductive reasoning to find principles by which to plan cities. Among these policies the most violent was urban renewal; the most prevalent was and is the separation of uses (i.e. residential, industrial, commercial). These policies, she claimed, destroy communities and innovative economies by creating isolated, unnatural urban spaces. In their place Jacobs advocated for "four generators of diversity", writing on page 151, "The necessity for these four conditions is the most important point this book has to make. In combination, these conditions create effective economic pools of use." Mixed uses. Short blocks. Buildings of various ages & states of repair. Density. Her aesthetic can be considered opposite to that of the modernists, upholding redundancy and vibrancy, against order and efficiency. She frequently cites New York City's Greenwich Village as an example of a vibrant urban community. The Village, like many similar communities, may well have been preserved, at least in part, by her writing and activism. The book also played a major role in the urban development of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where Jacobs was involved in the campaign to stop the Spadina Expressway.[1] The book continues to be Jacobs' most influential, and is still widely read by both planning professionals and the general public. Urban theorist Lewis Mumford, while f

The first time ever I understood how to share a diigo bookmank to a Group Hi Ha!!!

The first chapter of what is for me a fundamental book that complements our learning here, and hints at how Social Media might contribute to creating a better World. The article elaborates on how new Social Theory brings new perspectives to finding and implementing solutions to the intractable problems of our time. These ideas originally developped by Mary Douglas, an antropologist, and have been further refined and developped into a fully integrated Social Theory, called Theory of Socio-Cultural Viability, anso sometimes called "Cultural Theory". The lead researcher in this field is Michael Thompson, co-author of this book and chapter. Here are some highlights I have jotted down: Why do well-intended attempts to alleviate pressing social ills too often derail? How can effective and efficient and broadly acceptable solutions to social problems be found? By making sure no voices are excluded. Contrary to the ideas on which current social thinking is based, new research has lead to new theory explaining social systems, showing how deliberative quality is key to sustainable policy-making and implementation. It shows that endlessly changing and complex social worlds consist of ceaseless interactions between four mutually opposed organizing, justifying and perceiving social relations. Each time one of these perspectives is excluded from collective decision-making, governance failure inevitably results. Successful solutions are therefore creative combinations of four opposing ways of organizing and thinking. They always seem clumsy compared to any of the 4 voices' elegant solutions. Yet being broadly acceptable to all they are sustainable and implementable A new way to look at pluralism in organizations, institutions, policy-making, democracy, technology, geo-politics and many other social fields is offered to us by multidisciplinary research and practice by leading political scientists, anthropologists, economists, lawyers, sociologists, geographers, engineer

Hi guys, this might be stuff that is of interest to you...

"How are governments responding to the entitlement, engagement and sharing brought about by the Internet? How can policy "mistakes" be fixed in "high functioning democracies"? Harvard law professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig describes how policy errors in the United States are having unintended negative consequences and he implores "outsiders" to help US to correct its mistakes with balanced, sensible policy alternatives"

May interest you, Laurence Lessig forcefull speach at Picbnic in Amsterdam in September 2011

Very fine talk, as usual with Lessig. I wonder where this anti-corruption drive will go.

Very interesting video collection to understand the policy problems on the commons of education in California... I hear there very practical living testimonies which illustrate the dilemma of the commons, the opposint solidarities in Socio-Cultural viability Theory, the vested interest idssues, the democracy principles who are used as myths and metaphores that are influencing people's thinking... It is life policy making and activism in action

 "To the newsreaders who feel that mental illness is best viewed as an excuse, let me suggest instead that we might more effectually recognize it as a national priority for social policy," he wrote on his blog shortly after the shootings.  "If we care to prevent the next mass shooting, we should concentrate our efforts on getting meaningful diagnoses and resources to the next Adam Lanza."

I have already introduced Cultural Theory in the SMC MindAmp. I called it Theory of Sodcio-Culural Viability. Here's an indication of its reach: Why do well-intended attempts to alleviate pressing social ills too often derail? How can effective and efficient and broadly acceptable solutions to social problems be found? By making sure no voices are excluded. Contrary to the ideas on which current social thinking is based, new research has lead to new theory explaining social systems, showing how deliberative quality is key to sustainable policy-making and implementation. It shows that endlessly changing and complex social worlds consist of ceaseless interactions between four mutually opposed organizing, justifying and perceiving social relations. Each time one of these perspectives is excluded from collective decision-making, governance failure inevitably results. Successful solutions are therefore creative combinations of four opposing ways of organizing and thinking. They always seem clumsy compared to any of the 4 voices' elegant solutions. Yet being broadly acceptable to all they are sustainable and implementable A new way to look at pluralism in organizations, institutions, policy-making, democracy, technology, geo-politics and many other social fields is offered to us by multidisciplinary research and practice by leading political scientists, anthropologists, economists, lawyers, sociologists, geographers, engineers, policy-makers, and other leaders in society. Trust and Social capital are key ingredients for learning and for social media to strive. Here's what the author says: In this article, I trace the contributions that the cultural theory developed by Mary Douglas, Michael Thompson, Aaron Wildavsky and others can make to the debate on social capital. First, I sketch the various revisions of Putnam's social capital-thesis that have been proposed since the publication of Making Democracy Work. I note that these revisions are illuminating in and of th

IThis article, written at the end of her life, presents the Historical Origins of The theory of Socio-cultural Viability by Mary Douglas, who is to be seen as the inspirator of the theory, and to have established the foundational ideas who have been further developped by her students, and later further developped and applied by many scholars across a wide range of disciplines. The first paragraph will hopefully provide some incentive to dig further: Introduction: What is Grid and Group Cultural Theory? How Useful can it be in the Modern World? It is a pleasure for me to reflect on the history of Grid-Group. I first described the idea in Natural Symbols ( Douglas 1970), a kind of necessary sequel to Purity and Danger (1966). I now realise that it was a simple idea presented in a complicated way. After a late start it has been radically redesigned by creative collaborators whose work I will describe. Back in the 1960's social anthropologists still felt it was necessary to vindicate the intelligence of colonial peoples, then known as "natives" or "primitives." A major objective of teaching and writing in anthropology was to attack something described by Levy Bruhl as "primitive mentality," which seemed to mean "primitive irrationality." Malinowski had started in the 1920's showing that the Trobrianders had rational customs and laws. In the 1930's Raymond Firth was original in focusing on the "primitive economics" of the Polynesians and found that the basic laws of supply, demand, and price applied in the rustic economies he studied. Evans-Pritchard made a frontal defence of Azande rationality. After World War II, Nadel and Gluckman followed up with the complexities of Nubian and Barotse legal systems. The very idea that the concept of "jurisprudence" could apply to "the natives" was innovative. In the 1950's and 60's we continued to dismantle intellectual barriers assumed to distinguish "Them" from "Us." The following ex

I believe this to be a helpfull introduction to the study od the Theory od Socio-cultural viability, which, it seems to me, is a usefull framework to look from a new angle to cooperation theory, institutional decision making, democracy and many other fields of social sciences

collective of researchers, practitioners, policy shifters, working together to reimagine learning and education for the digital age.

"ABSTRACT Internet searching and advertising increasingly plays a role in consumer decisions and purchases, yet pertinent information for making value-judgments is currently awkward to ferret out and certainly not universally accessible or useful. There is rarely a feedback loop aligning vendor or manufacturer's environmental, social or governance policies with a shopper's values, so shoppers, over time, rarely cause industries to change their behavior. There needs to be a way for shoppers to aim their purchasing power at achieving social values of highest regional priority. There needs to be a way to accumulate and redeem "social values rewards". What's missing is timely and impactful analysis of a candidate purchases' impact on the Shopper's family, region and planet (expressed according to their values), so that the purchaser can more easily make informed purchasing decisions. With some modifications to Google ads and Google product search, Google could solidify the feedback loop and help consumers, by their actions, build a greener and better world. Speaker: Bruce Cahan Bruce B. Cahan, President Urban Logic, Inc. (a nonprofit organization) Email: bcahan@urbanlogic.org Bruce Cahan is an Ashoka Fellow, a social entrepreneur, a non-residential fellow of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, a lawyer, and a banker."

Interesting-looking talk, but long. Is there a text version?

This is a good summary of the goals of the work of Sagarika Bhatta in support of Nepali agriculture. It describe the idea of community based adaptation (CBA) to climate change and the Indigenous traditional knowledge (ITK).

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"Curation using Scoop.it + Buffer can help non marketers jump on the social media train. Scoop.it is a listening AND a publishing tool. Buffer schedules."

Media in the hands of citizens can rattle regimes. It makes it much harder for rulers to maintain legitimacy by controlling the public sphere. But activists, who have made such effective use of technology to rally supporters, still need to figure out how to convert that energy into greater impact. The point isn't just to challenge power; it's to change it.

Sugata Mitra The Future of Learning At Delft University

Professor Sugata Mitra's lecture in World Renowned Delft University (Technology, Policy and Management ) in Holland. Sugata Mitra is well-known for his concept of "computer in the wall", demonsstrating how fast illitarate children can learn from each other