Abstract

In 2010, the human race changed from being predominantly rural to predominantly urban. We can now legitimately claim to be an industrial, human-centric, urban species. This industrialisation shapes our economies, our societies and our cultures, and its lexicon of improvement and effectiveness determines how we collectively think and act. More than 3.3 billion people now live in urban environments; by 2030 this is estimated to increase to 5 billion of a global population predicted to peak at around 9 billion mid-century. The dominant narrative of the modern urban world, which forms many of the conditions in the cities we inhabit globally, has emerged from the industrial era, and this narrative is promoted and maintained through an overwhelmingly industrial model of schooling. However, its utilitarianism is showing signs of fatigue; simultaneously with the rise in population, we are witnessing an unprecedented collapse in our global ecosystem and increasing dysfunction in our systems of education, health, politics, finance and agriculture. The established linear capitalist model seems no longer sufficient to provide for a changing reality, which suggests that the way we relate to our world is outdated, destructive and unsustainable, and our solutions predictable, short-term and pathologically selfish