Holism, collective intelligence, climate change and sustainable cities

As the Earth’s systems are under increasing unsustainable pressures, human security is clearly at stake. Cities are regarded to be increasingly important sites for climate responses, and something can still be solved if humankind acts quickly. Novel methods to long-standing quandaries, such as climate change, can now be applied. It is proposed that city adaptation and mitigation strategies should draw on collective intelligence and an innovative holism multi-systemic approach to the encompassing problem of climate change by breaking it up into smaller, manageable problems and crowdsourcing a way out by means of online argumentation systems, computer simulations, and collective decision making tools. As ‘first responders’, cities with similar location or vulnerability characteristics should also be encouraged to transfer best practices between each other. It is futher argued that the enhancements in efficacy and accessibility of big data can be aggregated at a nationwide level in the shape of economic development and sustainability, and in welfare improvements in developing economies. Furthermore, this critical précis argues that whilst adaptation and mitigation strategies are crucial, at the very crux of it, humankind needs a fundamental change of metaphors: from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a holistic network.