Off the beaten tracks: The neglected significance of interiority for sustainable urban development

Abstract

Interiority, the inner being, consciousness, is the core theme of this essay. My main concern is the application of rather marginal approaches to address future potentials for sustainable urban development variously referred to as holistic, integral, transdisciplinary or meta-theoretical. What characterizes them is an attempt to acknowledge many different types of knowledge, including what is typically called “Eastern” and “Western” approaches to science, culture, the arts and also perennial wisdom traditions. In spite of this apparent neglect, these approaches have been noticeably linked in the past to futures studies by several scholars. A key argument is that as much as we recognize the outer built environment of cities to address major challenges of our times like the ecological crisis, we also need to integrate the much more subtle interior dimensions of human existence to address them adequately. On the one hand, this research inquires about the potentials of social urban pioneers and change agents, intentional communities and such transnational initiatives like the transition town movement, which are discussed within the context of their global relevance in developed and developing countries illustrated by the case of India. While on the other hand, it is a quest to develop a conceptual-theoretical approach to what may be called integral transformative urban development planning.