Pretorius, D. (2020). A morphogenetic approch to societal development. Mistra Urban Futures Report 2020:1
This paper presents a morphogenetic approach to societal development. The motivation for proposing this approach is, firstly, that despite economic advances and fewer people living in poverty the problems of poverty, exclusion and systemic inequality remains a challenge for more than half of the world’s population who still struggle to meet their basic needs. Secondly, and implied in the first reason, there is a need for approaches to societal development that are more systemic in the sense of transforming the systems and institutions of society so that the impact of development could be more pervasive and sustainable. Thirdly, there is a need to approach social development in ways that rise above and go beyond the prevailing adversarial political and ideological discourse which merely serves to produce and reproduce conflicts and instead of enabling the necessary collaboration, co-operation and co-ordination required for sustainable societal development.
