Abstract
In this chapter, Bowen and Gleeson use the general systems theory (GST) model as the intellectual context for shaping today’s debate about the future of our globalizing, industrialized civilization. Human settlements are the most complex creation of the human brain. Our uncertainties come from creating a global system of settlements that threaten to overwhelm our ability to collaboratively solve dire problems in our material systems, our living systems, and our social systems. Industrial culture has evolved the material components of each system faster than their non-material components, resulting in existential threats from material inequality and global climate change. Solutions will come from ensuring the broadest range of decentralized, evolutionary, problem-solving, enabled by cultural and institutional diversity that ensures the freedom of human agency.
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Bowen, W.M., Gleeson, R.E. (2019). Prospects for Human Settlements in the Anthropocene: Challenges to Equality, Sustainability, and Agency. In: The Evolution of Human Settlements. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95034-1_12
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