The First Fifty Years of Civic Design
Summary
Civic design is a young field with old roots – and we forget those roots at our own peril. This talk will be a narrative survey, starting with activists challenging the design of public spaces in the 60s, and will trace a fifty year arc from those roots to the language of accessibility we use today so often in the public sector. We'll cover organizations, private and public, that have shaped the field, and end suggesting what we owe ourselves for the next fifty years. A reference guide for early careers, and a deeper contextualization for someone later in their career.
Key Insights
-
•
Sid Harrell frames civic tech as a 50-year project, with the first 10 years laying groundwork for long-term institutional change.
-
•
Accessibility activism in the 1960s, led by Ed Roberts and the Rolling Quads at Berkeley, emphasized radical self-determination, not mere standardization.
-
•
Physical accessibility efforts like curb cuts in Berkeley were the result of direct community action, not government benevolence.
-
•
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 stemmed from these decades-long disability rights movements.
-
•
Digital accessibility requirements (like Section 508) emerged as extensions of earlier physical accessibility laws.
-
•
Sherry Arnstein’s 1969 Ladder of Citizen Participation highlights that participation without redistribution of power is ineffective.
-
•
William White's research on public parks introduced simple, direct observation to understand public space use and user agency.
-
•
Organizations like the Center for Urban Pedagogy use design to increase community understanding and empowerment at a legal and municipal level.
-
•
Government labs like Denmark’s Mind Lab and Finland’s Helsinki Design Lab pioneered collaborative, stakeholder-driven public service design.
-
•
Current civic design practitioners risk repeating past mistakes unless they trace and honor the field’s deep roots in activism, self-determination, and power dynamics.
Notable Quotes
"This project is actually 10 years in to a 50 year project."
"Independence did not just mean performing duties without assistance. It meant a radical self-determination."
"It was not some benevolent church group or a member of a Town Council that carved out these curb Cuts. They were due to deliberate actions and painstaking labor of members in the community."
"Participation without the redistribution of power is an empty and frustrating process for the powerless."
"People always move the chair slightly when they sit down for that small exercising of control or agency."
"We come to these spaces not to escape but to partake of them."
"Our users are all around us when we work in the civic and public sector."
"When we talk about accessibility, we’re talking about language that has roots in a fierce and radical self-determination."
"Participation or user research draws from ideas rooted in agency and control, not just optimizing our work product."
"We can damage relationships or apply tactics appropriate for protest environments when co-creation was necessary."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"I wish I knew it was okay to invest in relationships; that’s how incremental change happens."
Scott Jensen Sarah Delaney Carmen LiuShort Take #2: UX/Product Lessons from Your Industry Peers
December 6, 2022
"Amara Spence will close with a keynote about designing for liberation and the rehearsal of freedom."
Sarah BrooksTheme Three Intro
November 18, 2022
"Technology is reigning AI down on us across all industries, threatening our creativity and productivity."
Jon FukudaTheme One Intro
October 2, 2023
"Cohorts are a super duper fun way to engage with more of our community."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
March 29, 2023
"Sometimes, avoiding the conversation feels easier but can have bigger costs than facing it."
Joshua GravesWe Need To Talk: Navigating Conversations with Your Boss (Part 1 of 3)
April 14, 2025
"We had to allow people to grieve first before we could make a plan for healing."
Kyria Stephens Marlon KernerPower to Heal: Civic Design in the Aftermath of Tragedy
November 17, 2022
"Architecture is like the original UX because it’s all about user experience and how people move through a space, which relates to how we design products."
Caitlyn Hampton Monica Lee Jina YoonCompass 101: Growing Your Career In A Startup World
June 11, 2021
"A lot of DevOps is about empathy — doing our piece but thinking about the larger connection."
Louis RosenfeldDiscussion: What Operations can teach DesignOps
November 6, 2017
"I always said I'm not good with blank slates. I had to develop my own constraints after leaving structured work."
Rachel GarbExit Interview #7: Facing a blank slate in retirement when constraints are all you’ve ever known
August 5, 2026
