Humanity’s values and priorities are reflected in the spatial organization of the environments we create and occupy. Yet ecological instability and societal inequity, intrinsic to the growth-prioritized societal model, demand an urgent shift in socio-spatial organization. In understanding that actionable investment is contingent not only on scientific consensus and political will, but also on psychosocial culture, this research endeavors to communicate the importance of linguistic and visual framing as crucial tactics capable of influencing culture away from a growth-prioritized organization, and towards a model which comprehends needs as an ecosystem of interdependent variables; an understanding necessary to effectively construct a more resilient paradigm of living. In order to ensure this new paradigm will facilitate equity, resilience must be understood from the bottom-up and assessed as Personal Operating Power [POP].

Based on these three understandings, this research proposes the following multi-scalar linguistic framing as a means of reconceiving our socio-spatial environments in an ecosystemic manner:

‘Micro-Village’: denotes the ecosystem at the personal / domicile scale

‘Macro-Village’: denotes an ecosystem at the community / regional scale;

a network of Micro-Villages, typically with spatial continuity

‘Multi-Village’: denotes an ecosystem of networked Macro-Villages

In addition, visual, diagrammatic communication has been developed based on insights from those subjugated under the growth-prioritized model, in an effort to facilitate comprehension of how one’s socio-spatial context intersects with a healthy ecosystem of needs, and can be used to facilitate bottom-up resilience, understood as POP.

This research strives to bridge the comprehension gap between scientific academia, community organizers, and the general public, providing tools of communication to help facilitate new framing strategies necessary to shift humanity’s socio-spatial organization to a model which promotes both ecological stability and societal equity.