Systems Tools for Institutional Transformation & Viable Urban Settlements

Abstract

The current world/national economy is in increasing trouble. There have been times of major social and institutional change, like 1500, 1776, and 1900, when changes in social ideas and new technologies have driven institutional transformations; this type of major change is called a “paradigm shift.” General Systems Theory is an invented language based on biological organismic behavior that offers an expanding comprehensive logic of scientific analysis for problem solving and large scale design. The need is to transcend the narrow focus of linear thinking dominant since Decartes that has led to recurring and growing difficulties with all of society’s major institutions. New systems thinking offers a platform for viewing social systems as dynamic rather than static structures, such as functional medicine, and Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model. Second Paper: “Viable Urban Settlements”: A systems model of an evolving metropolitan community grounded in an international network of real time information flows offers an alternative future of de-emphasizing the potential for harm by the global/national megathreats. The challenge is to create transitional strategies that weave together and converge into a more viable geopolitical economic system.