State JIWASA Territorial planning as a living complex system
State JIWASA
Territorial planning as a living complex system
First-Person Consciousness — Brain Bee
I did not start as a citizen.
I started as an egg.
Before any map, border or ID number, I was just a microscopic body learning how to belong:
nutrients coming in, waste going out, everything being reused by my mother’s body.
Nothing “thrown away”. Nothing “leftover”.
A living complex system, self-regulating through millions of years of evolution.
Then I became a pre-linguistic baby.
I didn’t know what a “State” was, but I was already reading territory with my body:
the smell of a clean river or of sewage,
the sound of a safe street or of violence,
the presence of trees, shade, animals — or only concrete and engines.
My Damasian Mind was born there:
interoception + proprioception =
“how do I feel in this place?”.
I grew up.
Words arrived: neighborhood, city, State, country.
Screens arrived too: my “territory” became a glowing rectangle showing wars, disasters, memes, political fights.
Meanwhile, the ground under my feet stayed the same or got worse:
recurrent floods,
extreme heat,
neighborhoods with no sanitation,
deforestation around the city,
new subdivisions popping up with no trees, no decent transport, no school.
I realized my territorial brain had been captured:
I pay more attention to this week’s scandal than to my city’s master plan;
I know influencers’ names, but not who draws the zoning where I live;
I feel the heat and flooding in my body, but the decisions about my territory are taken in rooms I will never enter.
Out of this friction between body and territory, I arrive at a simple insight:
My body is a living complex system.
The territory I inhabit is too.
The problem is that the State still behaves as if it were a linear machine.
What I call State JIWASA is precisely the next step:
a State that recognizes itself as part of a living complex system,
where each citizen, neighborhood, municipality and biome works like a cell, tissue or organ —
and where territorial planning stops being “colored maps in a PDF” and becomes the metabolism of the future.
Territory as a living complex system
When I read the literature on complex systems and social-ecological systems,
I see, in academic language, what my body has always known:
Territories are not “empty spaces” waiting for projects; they are living networks of relations between people, nature, infrastructure, economy, culture and information.
Cities, regions and biomes behave like complex adaptive systems: they have multiple scales, multiple actors, non-linear feedbacks, tipping points and historical trajectories.
Small interventions in certain places (land use, transport, water, energy, policing, education) can completely change a territory’s development path.
When planning ignores this complexity and treats territory like a board game, the result is predictable:
peripheries expand without infrastructure,
inequalities crystallize into streets, hills, highways and walls,
regional climate becomes unstable,
social and economic costs explode in the form of disasters, violence and disease.
For me, territory is a living body.
Public policies are interventions in that body.
Territorial planning is neurosurgery on a living system, not an abstract mapping exercise.
What I call State JIWASA
The Aymara pronoun JIWASA is not just a random “we”; it is a “we” that includes the collective, the territory and something like a shared spirit.
I take that concept and say:
State JIWASA is the State that sees itself as the expression of territorial metabolism,
not as an external machine commanding territory from the outside.
When I write State JIWASA, I am saying that:
the citizen is the basic unit of the State,
not a client and not a “beneficiary”;territory is a living complex system,
not just an expansion area for projects and business;laws are fine-tuning of initial conditions in the system,
not magic commands that “solve” problems by decree.
In the language of complexity:
The linear State believes in direct cause and effect: I pass a law, I fix a problem.
State JIWASA works with emergence: I adjust parameters, design incentives, create spaces for participation and learning, watch living indicators, and accept that public policy is an iterative process.
In other words:
instead of “governing things”, I start cultivating processes.
Territorial planning as Future Memory
In the body, planning is always tied to anticipation:
the brain simulates the movement before executing it,
activates motor networks, recruits biological faith in the gesture, prepares the ground for action.
In my terminology, this is Yãy Hã Miy + Memória do Futuro (Future Memory):
imitating oneself, projecting oneself, rehearsing who I will become.
In territorial planning, I see something analogous:
Future scenarios are the city’s or region’s “mental rehearsal”.
Land-use, urban expansion, mobility and climate models are simulations of our collective gesture.
Master plans, zoning, watershed plans, climate strategies are temporary contracts with the future, which must be reviewed in light of real effects.
What I call JIWASA Future Memory is precisely this:
Recognizing that territory is a living complex system.
Using evidence-based science (data on climate, water, health, mobility, violence, economy, culture).
Translating scenarios into concrete rules and instruments:
where densification is allowed,
where deforestation must stop,
where ecological corridors are mandatory,
where public transport must become absolute priority.
Closing the loop with vital signs: indicators that show, in near real time, whether the territorial metabolism is improving or worsening.
When I propose DREX Cidadão, Zero Waste City, Citizen Carbon Credits and other metabolic tools, I see them as part of this vital-signs panel:
they are economic feedbacks showing whether the State is organizing the territory’s energy well or badly.
Why a responsible State (JIWASA) improves economic and social development
Part of my task is to show that this is not just political poetry.
Being State JIWASA is more economically efficient than being a linear, irresponsible State.
When I read studies on resilient cities, complex urban systems, circular economy and integrated planning, I keep finding the same pattern:
Territories that integrate resilience and complexity into planning suffer less from shocks (climatic, sanitary, economic) and spend less on “firefighting” emergency measures.
Governance arrangements that accept the complex nature of problems (inequality, violence, water crises, climate collapse) and operate at multiple scales can learn faster and correct errors before they become disasters.
Systems that treat water, energy, food, waste, land use and mobility as interlinked circuits generate combined gains: less waste, more local jobs, more health, more social cohesion.
In my vocabulary:
The irresponsible State sees territory as a stock to be exploited, pushes costs onto the future, produces quick profit for a few and sends the final bill to everyone.
State JIWASA sees territory as a living brain, designs policies as if caring for synapses, networks and flows, and reaps, in the medium term, more stability, more innovation and more widely shared well-being.
This is not about “big State” or “minimal State”;
it is about a conscious State.
Closing in first person
When I retrace my path — from egg to voter, from the baby smelling the street to the adult buried under notifications — I notice that:
my body has always known what a living complex system is;
it was culture, profit and fear that taught me to pretend territory is just scenery;
politics only makes sense again when I reconnect it with territorial metabolism.
That is why I choose to speak of State JIWASA.
Because I do not want a State that treats me as data, vote or campaign target.
I want a State that recognizes itself as part of the same living body I belong to.
A State that plans not to control the future,
but to create the conditions for living futures to emerge —
futures where territory can breathe, and where each citizen can say, in first person:
“I belong to this body.
And this body has finally learned how to take care of me.”
Post-2020 references (State, territory and living complex systems)
Marrero, V. (2024). Complexity of sustainable trajectories of a socioecological coastal system.
An, L. (2025). Complex adaptive systems science in the era of global environmental change.
Nagel, B. et al. (2022). A methodological guide for applying the social-ecological systems framework (SESF).
Darwish, S. (2023). New approaches in socio-ecological systems thinking for development practice.
Ezzine-de-Blas, D. et al. (2024). Trajectories of Social-Ecological Systems in the Global South.
Abujder Ochoa, W. A. (2024). The Theory of Complexity and Sustainable Urban Development.
Basu, S. (2023). A framework for exploring futures of complex urban energy systems.
Landman, K. (2021). Rapidly Changing Cities: Working with Socio-Ecological Systems for Resilience.
Zhou, G. (2025). Enhancing social and ecological system coordination through spatial optimization of ecological, agricultural and urban spaces.
Oliveira, N. G. D. (2024). Integrating socio-ecological resilience in urban green space planning in Brazil.
OECD (2024). Implementing a territorial approach to the SDGs in Paraná, Brazil.
Jalonen, H. (2025). Sustainability transformation calls for complexity-informed public administration.
