The Next 100 Years of Civic Design: How Might We Better Rise to Meet the Challenges of Today and Tomorrow?
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
-
•
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.
-
•
Current design methods like design thinking often focus too narrowly on immediate and predictable futures, missing long-term systemic impacts.
-
•
Expertise-led design can inadvertently replicate harmful power dynamics instead of empowering communities.
-
•
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.
-
•
Transitioning to a new design paradigm requires stabilizers to maintain current systems, housekeepers to manage endings, and trailblazers to create emergent new patterns.
-
•
Radical participatory, regenerative, trauma-responsive, relational, emergent, pluralistic, and commons-focused designs are key patterns in evolving Civic design practice.
-
•
Restoring human senses and reconnecting to nature is foundational to effective sense-making for addressing complex civic challenges.
-
•
Visual tools like Wicked problem mapping and Giga Maps help communicate systemic relationships and incentivize holistic, long-term thinking across silos.
-
•
Addressing intertwined crises like climate change, mental health, and inequality requires moving beyond symptom-focused solutions to systemic interventions.
-
•
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?"
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Slides are hitting a brick wall; video clips make findings much more interactive and engaging for stakeholders."
Taylor Jennings Joe Nelson Alex KnollRepository Retrospective: Learnings from Introducing a Central Place for UX Research
March 9, 2022
"We have a role to play in democratizing the future and amplifying more visions of what that future can hold."
Nicole AleongFuture Orientations to Everyday Life: Futures Anthropology as a Methodology
March 26, 2024
"Nordstrom decided that innovation needed to be a corporate value, not a lab value."
Jeff GothelfInnovation Studios: the Engines of Enterprise Experimentation
May 14, 2015
"By designing products through the lens of edge cases like disabilities first, they often become better products for everyone."
Saara Kamppari-MillerDesignOps for Inclusive Design and Accessibility
May 26, 2022
"It’s the individuals who choose whether and how they take advantage of the opportunities you create."
Tess DixonC'mon Get Happy
September 29, 2021
"Building a great culture means caring for individuals and creating rituals like recognition and shared learning."
Liam ThurstonWhy Your Design Team Is Quitting, And How To Fix It
June 10, 2022
"People care about titles way too much. I had a guy whose business card said star-bellied sneak—love that."
Ian SwinsonDesigning and Driving UX Careers
June 8, 2016
"Ratios always start on the premise of spreading people too thin, which is not a great way to get success."
Leisa ReicheltOpening Keynote: Operating in Context
November 7, 2018
"Over-enforced design system adoption bred resentment and low morale, despite good adoption metrics."
Rachael Greene Alison DavisBuilding a Design Ops Practice that Really Works (Most of the Time)
October 2, 2025