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
"You have to go from being able to deliver a message in three bullets and then turn around in the next moment and deliver a massive service blueprint or customer journey."
John CutlerOxbows, Rivers, and Estuaries: How to navigate the currents of change (without burning out)
December 3, 2024
"Creating a roadmap built enough space to make meaningful design changes for developers to implement."
Darian DavisLessons from a Toxic Work Relationship
January 8, 2024
"Kristen wrote the book Design of Orgs for Design Orgs and her experience partly informed this canvas."
Dave GrayGroup Activity: Making Sense of DesignOps
November 7, 2017
"You wanna capture all the mess, but you cannot operate in the mess. Leave a path back to the mess so details and signals remain available."
John CutlerThe Alignment Trap
November 29, 2023
"Diagramming is kindness we give to ourselves and others to get our bearings on things we’re stuck on."
Abby CovertStuck? Diagrams Help
October 27, 2022
"Up to 90% of time in work streams is delay or waiting time, not active work."
Mark InterranteCollaboration Flows in Product Development
June 9, 2017
"Afrofuturism shows us the future must reckon with the past and center difference and diversity."
Devon PowersImagining Better Futures
March 9, 2022
"You should not be struggling with best practices, recruitment, or documentation when conducting your own research as a designer."
Prayag NarulaHow to Empower Your Designers to Do Good Research – And Why You Want To
June 10, 2022
"We need to dramatically change the hats, the walls, and the workflow of how we work together in design and development."
Peter Van DijckHands on AI #3: Claude Code for UX people
October 22, 2025
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What role does cultural storytelling play in improving research understanding and connection?
What are best practices for onboarding and operationalizing UX research tools post-procurement to ensure adoption?
How do you distinguish real regulatory constraints from organizational assumptions in healthcare UX?