Healthy Feedback Loops Are Survival Skills
“Our cities are a mass of feedback loops, of many sizes and scales, at many points in time. The city habitats in which we find ourselves shape us; they give us context in which we create work to improve life around us. And as we work, we reshape our cities. This is an ancient and intricate feedback loop.””
At last week’s Street Corner Visiting gathering, we explored a few of the feedback loops we notice in our cities right now, telling us what is working and not working in our cities.
Front and center was Edmonton City Council’s public hearing about defunding police in response to Black Lives Matter protests. Days of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour citizens speaking, of non-BIPOC speaking, of police speaking to City Council.
Public hearings are a feedback loop for City Council to assist them with their decision making, but also to all the speakers listening to each other, and the rest of the city listening in from afar. Other feedback loops in play in many cities about Black Lives matter: media reporting, social media, and protests. These are all ways, as a city, we see and hear ourselves.
When civic elections are in the frame, they too become feedback loops in the city. Each election, and the results, reveal:
What’s important to us: our values and priorities
What we are able to consider in our decision-making
What we are able to tolerate talking about
When we are ready for change (and what kind of change)
Who has power, or emerging power, in our collective decision making
Who does not have power in our collective decision making
We noticed some qualities of healthy feedback loops in the city. They can be:
Close in and intimate. In today’s isolating pandemic context, people refuse to be isolated and find ways to talk to each other, to share information. Even without in-person contact, people find ways to share intimate experiences with phones, tablets and computers in ways we did not dream of earlier this year.
Impersonal. At times, the feedback we receive is not directed at us personally, simply information we need to hear.
Culturally relevant. To notice a feedback loop, it must be in the right language and cultural setting. Culturally specific feedback loops can offer safety, support and healing. They can also foster a sense of identity.
Intercultural. Some feedback loops are between cultures within the city, connecting them to each other to share information: joy and celebration, or hardship and struggle.
Global and local. A feedback loop can span the planet and our species, and/or be specific to a particular location.
Ecological. Feedback can come from the physical world around us. Climate change is an example; it reveals consequences of our actions.
Economic. The system of exchanges we have between us, the work we do for each other, is impacted by our actions. We receive feedback about how well this system of exchange is working as well, whether we feel we have a solid place our economic habitat.
Healthy feedback loops are up to us
“Are we making the cities we want and need? Are we getting the cities we are seeking? ”
In The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning, Jeremy Lent describes the characteristics of complex systems: “They have a large number of elements, each of which interacts with and influences other elements within the system through nonlinear feedback loops. They constantly interact with their environment, and, frequently, they contain smaller systems within them while themselves are being nested within bigger systems. They are never in equilibrium but are constantly in flux, evolving through time.”*
A feature of complex systems, according to Lent, is reciprocal causality: “each part of the system has an effect on the whole, while the system as a whole affects each part. Because of this, a complex system can never be fully understood by reducing it to its component parts.”**
Cities are complex systems comprised of nonlinear feedback loops. Each part of the system, a citizen for example, affects the larger whole—the city—in a dance of reciprocal causality. In turn, how we each affect the wholeness of the city affects each of us as citizens of the city.
Our cities are an expansive nestwork of feedback loops. (Unlike a complicated 2-dimentional network, I like to think of a complex three-dimensional image of the synapses of the brain, or outer space: a meshwork.) The healthier and stronger the connections are within the nestwork, the healthier our cities. To a great extent, the quality of our cities, and how well they serve us, is up to us because we make or disable the connections within the nestwork.
“The quality of our cities, and how well they serve us, is up to us because we make or disable the connections within the nestwork.”
Feedback loops enable our reciprocal relationship with the city; they help the city see itself, from the scale of citizen up to the species. Feedback gives us vital information about ourselves, with which we choose who we want to be, and who we want to become, as citizens.
As complex systems always in flux, cities are always demanding we tune in to the improvements that are needed, and make those improvements as we are called to do so. Feedback loops enable our exploration of reciprocity with each other and the city we make for ourselves.
The quality of information in the feedback loops of the city, and what we do with the feedback we receive, is up to us. For cities that serve us well, citizens are asked to:
Create, promote and share accurate information
Muster the emotional courage to receive feedback and feel the feelings in self and others
Foster the emotional courage to acknowledge the needs of self and others
Act responsibly in response to the feedback
These are citizenship responsibilities. They are survival skills for citizens and cities.
REFLECTION:
What feedback loops are present in your city?
What are those feedback loops telling you about your city?
How do you feel in response to the feedback?
What responsible action do you need to take?
Sources:
* Lent, Jeremy, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning Prometheus Books (New York: 2017), p. 24-25 / 705.
** Lent, Jeremy, The Patterning Instinct, p. 25 / 705.