Summary
Civic design has achieved much success in recent decades by focusing on delivering better public services and designing interactions between government and residents. However, to meet the complex challenges humanity and earth face, civic design must evolve so its full potential as a practice and community can be harnessed to address today’s wicked problems, such as mental health, inequality, and climate change. Join us as we explore the paradigm shifts and practices we believe are urgently needed to maximize the impact and relevance of civic design: from human-centered to life-centered; from design thinking to complexity thinking; from ego-systems to eco-systems… and beyond.
Key Insights
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Civic design has evolved from business-centered to more human-centered and is now positioned to shift towards life-centered design that includes plants, animals, and ecosystems.
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Current design methods like design thinking often focus too narrowly on immediate and predictable futures, missing long-term systemic impacts.
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Expertise-led design can inadvertently replicate harmful power dynamics instead of empowering communities.
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Zane’s 22nd century Civic design team exemplifies a decentralized, community-led, interdisciplinary approach using complexity thinking and AI to manage ecosystems and address hyperlocal crises.
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Transitioning to a new design paradigm requires stabilizers to maintain current systems, housekeepers to manage endings, and trailblazers to create emergent new patterns.
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Radical participatory, regenerative, trauma-responsive, relational, emergent, pluralistic, and commons-focused designs are key patterns in evolving Civic design practice.
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Restoring human senses and reconnecting to nature is foundational to effective sense-making for addressing complex civic challenges.
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Visual tools like Wicked problem mapping and Giga Maps help communicate systemic relationships and incentivize holistic, long-term thinking across silos.
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Addressing intertwined crises like climate change, mental health, and inequality requires moving beyond symptom-focused solutions to systemic interventions.
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Designers hold a unique responsibility to shape culture and values that will determine the future of humanity and all life on Earth.
Notable Quotes
"Design creates culture, culture shapes values, and those values in turn determine the future."
"Is this enough? Can Civic design do more? There’s a crisis and pressing need for us to evolve our practice."
"The pale blue dot, that tiny speck in the vast universe, reminds us of our precious, unique responsibility to take care of this planet."
"Zane’s team works life-centered, collaborating with plants, animals, and ecosystems, expanding Civic design beyond human systems."
"Today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions."
"How might we empower communities to initiate, lead, and design solutions that impact them directly?"
"Regenerative design is about healing and nourishing instead of exploiting and destroying."
"Relational design privileges relationships and reciprocity not only between people but also with rivers, mountains, and animals."
"Emergence means that something new arises through simple interactions; we design interactions so systems find their own desirable solutions."
"What role do you want to play in helping save us and our beautiful planet from ourselves?"
Dig deeper—ask the Rosenbot:
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