Page 79 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

56 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

Actor’s Extension of the Experiential Space
Through the interaction process and interpretation the actor’s experiential
space influences the organizing and the development capability. There is a
confrontation with other actors’ external to the firm, but the organizing and the
development of knowledge are to a less extent activated when the actors
experience the experiential space as stable. This experience means less pos-
sibility for changes in the actors’ organizing and development capability due to
intersubjectivity, and the interaction is satisfied. On the other hand, activation
of interaction is more probable when the experiential space is experienced as
uncertain or ambiguous. In other words, it is the experiences in the interaction
with other actors and the way in which the actors interpret and act accordingly
that is crucial to their development. The foundation for experiences and
interpretation of the experiential space, for knowledge development and for
changes of organizational activities, are the actors’ interaction and involve-
ment. In situations with changes, the central issue is the actors’ knowledge
and change of interpretations that can be related to and transformed into
actions.

SUMMARY

Volumes have been written about the future. Economics is frequently cited.
However, unlike in science, economists make predictions that conflict and
often fail. For the most part, economists take the present and past data to
reformulate them into predictions. Although the future must be rooted in the
past, it will need to be based upon thinking “outside the box,” as Toffler calls
it. Nonetheless, from his work on the future (Future Shock and The Third Wave
in particular), he admits and advocates that “the intellectual framework that
might unify management theory and economics is not yet in place. The task of
creating that framework still lies ahead” (in “Foreward” to Gibson, 1997,
p. X). In 2005, Jeremy Rifkin published a book, The European Dream (Rifkin,
2005) whose subtitle states “How Europe’s vision of the future is quietly
eclipsing the American Dream” by moving into a “Third Industrial Revolu-
tion” that is fossil fuel free, and has localized renewable energy for travel and
power through public and private partnerships. The key is in Rifkin’s definition
of the European dream since it

Emphasizes community relationships over individual autonomy, cultural
diversity over assimilation, quality of life over the accumulation of wealth,
sustainable development over unlimited material growth, deep play over unre-
lenting toil, universal human rights and the rights of nature over property rights,
and global cooperation over the unilateral exercise of power.
Rifkin (2005, p. 3).