Jayne Engle is a Mission co-holder at Dark Matter Labs and Co-Lead of 7GenCities – a new collaborative focused on transformative thinking and action for future cities, community building, and Earth stewardship.
With decades of experience working in civic systems around the world (from regional policy and economic transition to city planning, participatory research, and philanthropy), Jayne has dedicated her career to long-term urban transformation. This made her the perfect guest for the new episode of our podcast, Reimagining Government.
The episode focuses on long-term thinking and explores the different models that could help us plan for the future. During the conversation with Jayne, she discusses why transformative thinking is needed and how 7GenCities are structuring their plans for long-term thinking around three “bundles” – learning, social finance, and field building.
“The way we think about and build cities is really not fit for the future we need”
Jayne Engle
Mission Co-holder, Dark Matter Labs, Co-lead, 7GenCities
So, what is transformative thinking?
Transformative thinking can be applied to various contexts – including environmental sustainability, social justice, business innovation, and personal growth. It’s about envisioning and implementing significant changes that have a lasting impact on individuals, organisations, or society.
Three ways 7GenCities is fostering transformative thinking
Jayne spoke about the three structured ways they’re thinking for the future at 7GenCities.
- Learning community
7GenCities is committed to enhancing the common understanding of social infrastructure projects – whether in the planning stages or already in progress. Jayne said:
“We’re putting together cohorts of municipal representatives, Indigenous community members and leaders, and other civil society leaders who are all working on social infrastructures that embed Truth and Reconciliation. This provides the opportunity for them to learn from each other. We’ll also then be sharing what we learn from them, so we can help to build that field.”
- Field building
Field building at 7GenCities includes imagining, commoning, and demonstrating civic futures of regenerative possibility. Jayne said:
“This is about building, co-building, and bringing to light what we call “system demonstrations”, or “systemic manifestations” of what seven generation cities can be. So things like FreeLand. It’s about moving towards trees and urban forests – how can we see them as assets, rather than liabilities? It’s also about imagination spaces – expanding the notion of what’s possible. And finally, it’s about learning commons – helping people interested in this work contribute what they’re learning, connect with others, and so on.”
- Social finance
A key focus of 7GenCities is to challenge and reformulate how they understand value creation, flow, and investment in civic economies. Jayne said:
“We’re working on a systemic change and new financial instruments in order to live in these different futures. So things like facilities for outcome-based financing, as well as a next generation civic infrastructure fund. We’re also taking into account different value creation models that actually recognise not only common good outcomes, but also that public investment needs to have public outcomes as opposed to just privatised ones – which is often what happens now.”
The full conversation with Jayne is available now on all major podcast listening platforms. Listen below or click here.
Key resources
- 7gencities.org
- darkmatterlabs.org
- 7GenCities Learning Gathering Participant Pack
- 7GenCities #CiFi Report
- Sacred Civics: Building Seven Generation Cities open access book
The full conversation with Jayne is available now on all major podcast listening platforms.
