Mediolocality

A federation of Communities within one local territory. Roughly 100,000 sovereigns. The scale of the medium town, the small city, the district, the borough — about one hundred thousand Mediolocalities across the Earth at full population. The "Local Hub" of The LIØNSBERG Strategy and Plan.

A Mediolocality is the federation of roughly ten Communities (~10,000 each) within one shared local territory. About 100,000 sovereigns per Mediolocality. At full population, roughly 100,000 Mediolocalities across the Earth.

The Mediolocality is the scale at which specialized professional and civic infrastructure typically appears that a Community cannot fully support alone — the hospital, the secondary school, the public library, the cultural institution, the larger market, the local industries that serve several Communities at once. This is the Local Hub of The LIØNSBERG Strategy and Plan's articulation of the network of Instantiation Hubs.

Where Mediolocality Lives

Many of the world's most functional human settlements are at this scale:

  • Medium towns — populations of 50K to 200K
  • Small cities — county seats, regional centers
  • Districts and boroughs within larger urban areas — sub-municipal units large enough to require professional infrastructure
  • Cathedral-towns, university-towns, market-towns — places that bind a region around a particular institution or function
  • The natural unit of urban-rural integration — a Mediolocality often holds several Communities, some urban, some rural, working together

In LIØNSBERG's Scaling

Between Community (~10,000) and Macrolocality (~1,000,000):

Sovereign → Circle → Neighborhood → Village → Microlocality → Community (~10,000 with The 300) → Mediolocality (~100,000) → Macrolocality (~1,000,000) → Ecoregion → Bioregion → Georegional → Planet as Biome → ...

The Mediolocality is a domain (its local territory), a superorganism of Communities, and a subsystem of its Macrolocality (and ultimately of its Ecoregion, Bioregion, etc.). Per The LIØNSBERG Strategy and Plan: about 500 Teams per Mediolocality of 100,000 citizens at full empowerment.

What The Mediolocality Holds

The Strategy and Plan articulates the Local Hub as a Commons of services, tools, technologies, and capabilities that one Community cannot fully provide but ten Communities federated can:

  • Community / Social Space at scale (gathering halls, public squares)
  • Larger schools and learning institutions — secondary education, technical training, specialized arts
  • Specialized healthcare — hospital, clinic networks, specialty practitioners
  • Cultural and artistic institutions — theatre, museum, cultural archive
  • Manufacturing capacity beyond single-Community scale — additive manufacturing, fabrication shops, makerspaces
  • Larger markets and exchange networks — regional commerce, agricultural distribution
  • Civic infrastructure — courts of common pleas, public works, transportation hubs
  • Local Guild seats — the institutional homes of Healers, Builders, Teachers, etc. at the Mediolocality scale

The Mediolocality is also where federated decisions beyond any single Community happen — water-sharing across watersheds, road systems, regional energy grids, food distribution networks.

Distinguished From

  • Community (~10,000) — anchored by The 300; can self-sustain in many functions but needs the Mediolocality for specialized infrastructure
  • Macrolocality (~1,000,000) — the federation of Mediolocalities; the Major Population Center scale; the City
  • Old-World political units (cities, counties, districts) — these often track Mediolocality scale but are imposed from above; the Mediolocality in LIØNSBERG is a sovereign federation from below

See Also

Referenced by