Cities last longer than countries

I’m just returning from Calgary where my partner Susan Neden and I have been doing some design and faiclitation work with the imagineCALGARY Roundtable. imagineCALGARY is a 100 year sustainability planning exercise, in the spirit of the Imagine Chicago process.

Last night we took the group through a short Cafe process about their engagment and reasons why the roundtable participants agreed to join the enterprise. In the midst of all the conversation a line stood out for me that rocked me very deeply. In going over the table notes afterwards Susan read out this zinger:

“Cities last longer than countries.”

So true. In 100 years, North America might not host Canada and the United States, but it will still host populations, and it’s more than likely that these populations will still be centered in most of the cities where they now reside. Look at Europe. In some places, people have lived in the same city all their lives, but have been ncitizens of several different countries in that time.

Countries are ideas and so no one does 100 year planning for countries. They depend for their existence on the success of their cities and citizens. Tip O’Neil once said that “all politcs is local” and so too is citizenship. When we ask questions about the future, we do so much more effectively if we can forget about the false and illusive notions of nations and countries and instead look at the concrete places where human beings gather to have their needs met.

It makes me wonder about long range planning for organizations too. Does it make sense to talk about the 50 year plan for XYZ Inc, or ABC Community Services organization? Or instead should we ask questions about what it is that the organizations do? In 50 or 100 years, where will people buy their food? How will they travel from place to place? How will they create culture?

There are real needs and there are illusory structures. We spend an awful lot of time coming up with strategies to prop up houses of cards instead of looking at how our temporary structures meet ongoing and universal human needs. It’s funny what we consider permanent. We think that our organizations will solve problems, that the human needs are temporary and that the organizations will last beyond them. In reality it is the opposite, and useful organizations are those that can grow and shift and be agile enough to continue to serve the constant needs (food, shelter, clohting, expression, community….etc) in an impermanant context.