Here’s something we could stand to make more clear: When we say we’d like our cities to be better, we are communicating a need to reorganize our efforts to change the outcomes of our action. But when we say we’d like something to be better, it is not necessarily true that we are ready for the changing needed within us to allow that improvement to come about. Our default is to insist that others need to reorganize their efforts, not “me.” And if we all behave this way, nothing will change, no matter how badly we want the change.

We each must be willing to include ourselves in the process of changing.

It starts with relationship muscles

Our relationships with our cities are much like our relationships with other people. If one party refuses to accommodate the needs of the other, the relationship is quickly unsatisfying. The ability of a relationship to serve the emotional, mental, physical and spiritual needs of the parties involved depends on the skills and capacities of the people involved. Our cities are no different; it’s just relationships scaled way up.

We make our cities and their ability to adapt to our needs over time depends on our ability to welcome and accommodate change. If we refuse to be people who change, so will our cities. If we allow changing, so will our cities.

“The ability of a relationship to serve the emotional, mental, physical and spiritual needs of the parties involved depends on the skills and capacities of the people involved. Our cities are no different; it’s just relationships scaled way up.”

The simplest way I think about being in relationship with our cities is through our work: the contributions we make to improve the world around us. Our work, paid or unpaid, is how we make and remake our cities. New work is how our cities regenerate themselves.

This means we can’t just think and talk about our cities. It’s not enough, either, to think and talk about how we are in relationship with them. We have to be in relationship with them, willing to hear what is working and not working. Willing to be changed by what we hear, willing to always be changing. These are muscles we need to practice using, or they don’t work as well as we would like.

The improvement inquiry

Here’s something else we could stand to make more clear: When we want to improve something, we are communicating our desire for our work to have a different impact than it currently does. It could be close in, how my family and I cook (and clean!) in the kitchen, or farther out, how to best move around the city.

To figure out what impact we want to have, we must first articulate a clear intention, the more explicit, the better. For example: “Let’s constantly clean the dirty dishes, so everyone has access to a kitchen that is ready to use,” or, “Let’s build more transportation options into our city so that everyone can move freely around the city.”

From this intention, we act, and our actions have an impact. And when we reflect on the impacts, wanted and unwanted, expected and unexpected, we have an opportunity to adjust our intentions and actions as necessary.

“Inquiry” holds the integrity of an intention-action-impact-reflection loop with four questions:

What do we wish to improve?
What action will get the results we want?
What are the results of our actions?
What do we know and understand differently?

And this is where our “relationship” with the city comes in: if we are unwilling to enter into this inquiry, we inhibit our cities’ ability to be who and what we need them to be. That limitation—how well our cities serve us—is not external to us because our cities are who and what we choose to make them.

Results are consequences of our action

The consequences of our action (which includes our inaction) can be categorized on two axes. On the vertical axis is the degree to which the results are expected or unexpected. On the horizontal axis is the degree to which the results are positive or negative. The vertical is about predictability, and the horizontal is about desirability.

A simple version of this graph has four boxes, four categories of impacts that result from our action:

Expected and positive (lower left)—the good results we wanted and planned for
Expected and negative (lower right)—the not so good results we knew would happen and have planned for
Unexpected and positive (upper left)—the good results we did not plan for and have surprised us
Unexpected and negative (upper right)—the bad results that took us by surprise

Each of these categories of impact requires our attention in different ways. The lower quadrants, whether positive or negative, are what we expected. We had a plan, organized ourselves a certain way, and chose the results we wanted. The expected negative impacts are either something we accept or something we actively seek to mitigate. Most often, these impacts are predictable because they are the easy-to-understand results in our linear thinking.

In contrast, the impacts in the upper quadrants are the result of non-linear events. It is more challenging for us to understand what happened to generate those results, whether we wanted them or not. For all four, it is necessary to reflect on our actions and impact. We are invited into a more expansive inquiry about what is happening, why, and our role for the unexpected results.

For the impacts we expect, a simple inquiry works well:

Are these impacts, wanted and unwanted, occurring for the reasons we expected?
Is there anything we can do to encourage more of the wanted impacts?
Are there any additional mitigation efforts needed to address the unwanted impacts?

For the impacts we do not expect, a more robust inquiry works:

Why are the unexpected positive results happening?
How can we generate more of the unexpected results that we like?
What actions will minimize the unexpected results we do not want?
What needs to be revisited?

When we are open to hearing the impacts of our actions, we are enabled to recalibrate both the steps we take and the motivations that may be driving our efforts, even moving us away from our intention.

Warning: inquiry may be high-risk emotional territory

Humans have a fraught relationship with feedback because we need it to fuel a narrative about our sense of self and make us feel comfortable, or it contradicts our narrative and makes us feel uncomfortable. We don’t like to feel uncomfortable, so we avoid information that makes us squirm for as long as possible. Inquiry asks us to examine both the feedback we receive and our ability to receive it.

The intention deflection

When we practice using our inquiry muscles, we can learn to handle the challenges to our sense of self and view them as opportunities for emotional growth and improved relationships, rather than emotional threats.

We often close down inquiry when we’ve heard we’ve caused harm to someone else, or there are unintended consequences of our action with a simple statement: “it was not my intention.” We use “intention” as a means to deflect the awareness that unwanted consequences are occurring. We do this to avoid being uncomfortable with knowing that something we don’t like is happening, let alone that our actions caused what was not wanted.

Here’s a personal example: I posted some photos on social media, and a friend called me to say that they felt I exposed their life and asked me to take them down. Here’s how I used the intention-action-impact-reflection loop above:

My intention: Come out of my shell and share something I was excited about.
My action: Post some photos on social media.
Impact on my friend: I put on public display a part of my friend’s life they did not want on display. They felt uncomfortable and had to step in and tell me of the impact and ask me to take the photos down.
Impact on me: Deep personal discomfort with how my friend was feeling due to my action, and I was worried about our friendship.
My reflection: I revisited my intention and found a new one—be the kind of friend that will hear another’s request and respond in a way where my frustration with myself doesn’t turn into anger toward them or anger and shame toward myself.
My action: #1) take down the photos, #2) monitor my reaction to having caused harm
The impact: Our friendship withstood the tension. My friend—and I— got clear about their needs.

I could easily have spun off into a swirl of shame that deflected the feedback onto my friend. I could have said, “It was not my intention to hurt you,” and left it at that. I could have said, “Come on, it’s not that big a deal, get over it.” A part of me wanted to say these things because it would allow me to put my hurt (for having hurt someone) back on them. Saying this would have dismissed both their experience and mine.

Saying “It was not my intention for ‘X’ to happen” rules out an acknowledgement of what has happened, let alone why what happened mattered and what caused it to happen. “It was not my intention” shuts down inquiry, and inquiry is the key ingredient to wise action.

We have to be brave enough to see the impacts of our actions AND brave enough to inquire about what matters.

Who we are, who we choose to be in every moment, matters.

Let’s exercise our inquiry muscles

If I get uncomfortable when a friend asks me to take down some photos on social media, it is easy for me to imagine how humans get uncomfortable with the idea that we are making our planet uninhabitable. Or how white people like me are uncomfortable hearing about the many unearned privileges we enjoy or how things we say and do are racist. Or how men are uncomfortable when challenged by women who are asking for equality and demanding the same opportunities without the risk of death, rape, assault or sexism. Or how people attached to money are uncomfortable when others suggest that economic opportunity, and collective wealth, be shared. And so on…

We humans have hard work to do.

When we say we want the world to be a better place, we have to recognize that the world is ours to make. Within ourselves, our homes, neighbourhoods, cities, nations, species and our planet. At whatever scale, these are the questions I ask:

What do I/we intend to accomplish?
What actions will get me/us that desired result?
What are the impacts of my/our actions, and how will I/we recognize those results? (What are the outcomes we are looking for, and what are the indicators that will tell us if we have achieved them?)
What do I/we know and understand differently about myself/ourselves, each other, and the system we are a part of (self, family, neighbourhood, city, nation, species, planet)?

“Our relationship with the city depends on our relationship with ourselves.”

Again, this is hard work. If we take the time to articulate the impact we dare to want, are we prepared to hear what actually happened as a result of our actions? Are we ready to acknowledge what worked well and what did not? Are we prepared to revisit our assumptions, intentions and actions? Are we receptive to the idea that we might have to reconsider everything?

Our relationship with the city depends on our relationship with ourselves. Very simply: Are we prepared to notice the mechanisms rooted deep within us to resist change until it is absolutely necessary? When we feel our livelihood is threatened, is it? When we feel the urge to fight, to protect ourselves, is there room to have my needs met and the other's needs? When we feel our identity, our sense of self, is being messed with, is it an opportunity for growth?

Improving our cities requires us to be in better relationship with ourselves: our intentions, actions, and the wanted and unwanted consequences of our actions. It’s time to improve our inquiry muscles to be in better relationship with self, others and place.

Reflection

What big intention drives the work you do, the contributions you make to your community?
What strategies do you use to avoid hearing feedback you don’t want to hear, whether positive or negative?
What support do you need, from yourself or others, to improve your capacity to be in inquiry?

Let’s Exercise Our Inquiry Muscles