The Scale Ladder

NewVistas is organized from the participant outward, rather than from the top down. Up to the level of the community, each group follows the layout of the buildings participants live in. Above the community, groups are counted in communities. This page describes each level, from one participant to a world of about twelve billion people, how large it is, and who serves it.

One principle runs through all of them: the community is the only level that governs itself. Everything above it exists to coordinate, to watch how the system is working, or to help new communities get started. None of it governs a community.

Within the community

Each participant has a single address, unique in the world. It is read from the pattern itself – suite, Unit, Branch, village and district, followed by the community name and its postal address. The address is used to locate a person and a place, and does not indicate any status.

• The Unit. The ten households that live on one residential floor. They are served by a floor captain, who lives on the same floor and serves part-time, without pay. The term Unit always refers to the people of a floor, rather than the floor itself.
• The Branch. The people of one apartment building. Each building has four residential floors, and therefore four Units. The building’s four floor captains form the Branch Presidency of four. Floor captains and Branch Presidencies serve the participants in their building, but do not govern them.
• The village. Ten Branches, numbered outward from the village hub. Governing begins at this level – each village has a council of twelve, made up of three presidencies of four, one for each of Bureaus 1, 2 and 3 (Inventory, Facilities and Equipment). Each serves its bureau in that village.
• The district. Four villages. Each district has a council of twelve, made up of three presidencies of four, one for each of Bureaus 4, 5 and 6 (Food and Health, Life Plan, and Leisure). They have their offices together on the first floor of the district building.
• The community. Twenty-four districts and ninety-six villages. The founding council of twelve that starts the community goes on to become its board. When the community is mature, 1,920 presidents serve in four courts, one for each Segment.

There are four Segments – partnered men, partnered women, single men, and single women. The same seat in all four courts makes one presidency of four, so every presidency has one president from each Segment. The 1,920 presidents therefore form 480 presidencies of four: the village and district presidencies; the Data and Origination presidencies of each district building; and the Trustee, Regulatory and Bureau presidencies, which serve the whole community. Twenty-four bureau councils, each made up of a Trustee, a Regulatory and a Bureau presidency, set the community’s standards. Each kind of presidency is described in The Presidencies of the Community.

The community owns its land and assets through its own Trust, and is responsible for its own credit. Therefore, no community depends on another, and a community never splits into two.

How the presidencies form

Every community starts with one person. A founder first qualifies through the NewVistas website, by showing a thorough understanding of the system, passing the qualification tests, and presenting a record of starting and running a successful business. The founder then takes the seat for their own Segment in the community’s first presidency of four, the Trustee presidency. Each of the other three seats is filled from a Segment not yet represented: four candidates are put forward, narrowed to two, and a witnessed random draw decides between them. The Trustee presidency then puts forward candidates for the eight seats of the Regulatory and Operating presidencies, which are filled in the same way.

These twelve form the founding council – three presidencies of four, and at the same time four Segment presidencies of three. Once all twelve are seated, the council carries out its founding acts in a fixed order. It sets up the community’s Trust, licenses the operating system, and secures the site. Only then does it apply for the Institute’s license for the first building, which is granted once the community is recognised as a nonprofit foundation, its council of twelve is seated, and its land is secured. Finally it recruits the first building’s residents and approaches the bank last, with the license and the signed leases in hand.

From that point, the founding council holds in trust the duties of every presidency not yet formed. As the community grows, it creates those presidencies – each new building’s Branch Presidency, the village councils at ten buildings, the district councils at forty, and the bureau presidencies at eight districts – each only with the approval of the full founding council. The one exception is its own first eight seats, which are filled before there is a full council to approve them. On the day each presidency is seated, the founding council hands it the duties it was holding, and takes no further part in governing it. After the closing at eight districts, the bureaus seat the remaining presidencies in the same way – Bureau 1 the Branch Presidencies, Bureau 2 the village presidencies, and Bureau 5 the district presidencies.

Authority is therefore handed over only once, when a presidency is first formed. From then on, every presidency renews itself, one seat a year, but none can create another, and nothing handed over is ever returned. The founding council itself continues for the life of the community as its nonprofit board of twelve, and alone carries the community’s dealings with the civil authorities.

How large a community is

A community is a pattern of buildings, rather than a fixed number of people. It is designed for 92,160 permanent residents, but how many people the same buildings house depends on who lives in them. Where many people live alone in later life, a community holds fewer people, closer to 80,000. Where families with children share rooms, it holds more, approaching 100,000 and in some cases more. For this reason, the levels above the community are counted in communities, rather than in people.

The Council of Fifty and its field

A field is the ground of one Council of Fifty: a compact stretch of land with room for fifty communities, usually about four to five million people. Fields are drawn on the map in advance, so that the communities of each Council of Fifty stand close together. This matters because the work of a Council of Fifty is largely physical – freeways, utility corridors, pipelines and the shared hinterland – and physical work needs neighbours, rather than communities scattered across a continent.

Once ten communities have been founded within one field, they form its Council of Fifty. The Council grows as more communities are founded in the field, and is full at fifty. Before a field has ten communities, their presidents meet in intercommunity conventions, and the field’s coordination is carried by the body that holds the area’s role at the time.

The Council of Fifty is a gathering of communities, rather than a government. Every quarter, each community sends the presidents of all twenty-four of its bureau councils – 192 people – to a conference hosted by one of the communities in rotation. A full Council of Fifty therefore brings together around 9,600 presidents, each of whom pays their own costs. At the conference, presidents compare results, harmonize standards, and plan shared transport and utility corridors. They also coordinate the field’s hinterland – the grain land, grazing, wells, and mines shared among communities using a published formula. The Council of Fifty does not own or operate anything, does not hold any funds, and does not appoint anyone.

Areas and world areas

An area is a group of about five neighbouring fields – around 250 communities, or roughly 22 to 25 million people. Area lines always run between fields, never through one. Most areas hold five fields; where islands stand apart, or a world area’s fields do not divide evenly by five, an area holds four or six. Each area is served by an area presidency of four. Its role is limited to certifying founders, keeping a record of the fields that make up the area, and teaching how communities are started. It does not govern any community.

The role of the area presidency exists from the very first community. Until the first community is completed, the originating presidency carries it; after that, the Institute council carries it in each area until that area’s presidency is seated. From the first community onward, therefore, the area role is always filled.

A world area is made up of around forty areas – about ten thousand communities and a billion people. World areas follow the boundaries of nations and natural regions, rather than exact counts. Each world area is watched by one member of the Institute council of twelve, who observes, trains, coordinates, and raises alerts, but does not govern alone or direct anyone. Four neighbouring world areas form a world third of about four billion people, the responsibility of one of the Institute’s three presidencies of four.

The world as a whole is made up of twelve world areas. At about twelve billion people, this translates to around 130,000 communities, in about 2,600 fields and 520 areas. The Institute council of twelve coordinates the system as a whole – the operating system, design specifications, vendor certification, and the setting in place of area presidencies. However, it stands beside the communities, rather than above them. In its dealings with a community, the council can only license, publish, train, and persuade.

The twelve world areas

The table below gives the twelve world areas as they are drawn in the NewVistas map study for 2100. The Constitution fixes only that there are twelve world areas of about a billion people each, in three thirds, and leaves the map itself to the Institute council of twelve.

The levels at a glance

A map drawn for 2100

The map study follows where people are expected to live around 2100, when the world’s population is expected to level off at ten to twelve billion. It is a starting point, rather than a fixed plan. The Americas, for instance, begin larger than a world area is meant to be. A world area rich in land is divided only once each part can grow to about a billion people, and two other world areas are then joined, so that there are always twelve. Every line above the community changes over time, as people move and communities grow, and the area presidencies keep the record of their own fields as they do.

These sizes are a guide, rather than a requirement. Culture, language, and climate will ultimately determine how densely people live in each region. Where a crowded region is able to support its people with far less harm than is happening today, there is no pressure for them to spread out.

One case is still to be settled: in broken land, such as mountain valleys, communities stand apart and may take a long time to reach ten in one field.