Speculating the Future of Civic Design
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“Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future.”
When we consider civic design in the 21st century, we think human-centred. We think experimental reasoning and expertise based approaches. Solutions aren’t founded by linear problem solving and executed by those at the top as they once were. They are grounded in community, end-to-end experience and big picture thinking. Design has come a long way.
But has it come far enough?
During their session at Rosenfeld’s Civic Design Conference, Meghan Hellstern and Joanne Dong explore emerging patterns of practice, forecasting how the civic design paradigm may evolve over the next century to better the futures of all.
A hopeful future
Hellstern proffers a speculative and optimistic future of civic design. She projects that civic design will build on the current framework and propel change in four key areas:
- Values – interacting with a wide variety of people, plants and animals to ensure design solutions consider and value all forms of life, not just human.
- Scope – moving beyond systems to look at ecosystems so that designers can understand how their work impacts the world around them.
- Mindset – embracing complexity thinking through strategic foresight and addressing issues using a multidisciplinary approach.
- Community-led – empowering communities by positioning them at the forefront of decision making.
Patterns of emerging practice
Before a new paradigm can be established, the old paradigm is phased out and patterns of emerging practice begin to form. As explained by Dong, this period of transition relies on keeping the old systems running, while simultaneously exploring different ways of inquiry and design.
Dong explores seven current emerging patterns of practice that will impact the future of civic design, influencing the paradigm shift.
Community-led design
In the past, solutions were detached from community, directed by specialised individuals regardless of lived experience. “People who never farmed would be telling farmers how to farm. People who never tasted hunger would be leading efforts solving hunger problems,” says Dong.
The future of civic design places community at its forefront so that members may lead and design solutions that impact them directly. By empowering people in this way, design is able to address complex issues through targeted and informed collaboration, ultimately servicing the needs of all.
Regenerative design
Regeneration is a focal point of the civic design paradigm shift. “We inherited the systems and practices that are often degenerative and destructive by design. The trauma inflicted on us and on mother earth requires collective healing,” says Dong.
Practising restorative and revitalising civic design will alleviate potential future trauma. By working to solutions that heal and nurture, rather than exploit and harm, social, ecological and spiritual regeneration can occur.
Relational design
As Dong explains, “Relational design privileges relationships and reciprocity, not only between people, but also between people and all beings, such as rivers, plants, trees, animals and mountains.”
An ecocentric method of design, relational design views humans as connections and objects as living beings that should be nurtured. This interconnectivity stimulates holistic solutions with the power to service the greater good.
Emergent design
Derived from the emergence concept in complexity science, emergent design is a method by which something new emerges through interactions and systems.
“The complexity of all living systems is defined by simple interactions,” says Dong. “We cannot predict what is going to happen in complex living systems, so we don’t tell them what the solutions are. Instead, we design simple interactions in such a way that the systems will find desirable solutions themselves.”
Design for the pluriverse
Drawing from Indigenous dogma, Dong suggests that humans do not thrive in the monoverse or the universe, but in the pluriverse – a place in time and space where the human, natural and spiritual worlds interconnect. A holistic design theory, Dong suggests we might embrace Indigenous land based relational knowledge systems, acknowledging that “Indigenous people have learnt to live sustainably on this land for thousands of generations because of their diverse ways of knowing and understanding the natural world and humans’ place in it.”
Design for all life
As Albert Einstein said, “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” Shifting the focus away from human-centred design places responsibility on designers to consider the wellbeing of all living things when working toward future solutions.
Design for the commons
The final pattern of emerging practice involves designing for the core benefit. There is an endless stream of world crises to which design must turn its attention. As Dong observes, “Design issues are entangled, so we need to stop looking for pathologies in narrow domains and instead look at problems together.” Designing inclusively and holistically ensures that solutions are capable of remedying ancillary issues, as well as those in the foreground.
When we consider the pattern of emerging practice, Hellstern’s speculative future seems tangible. However, as Dong points out, “The paradigm shift required is a mindset shift, it is a civilisation shift to different ways of thinking, knowing, living and designing. Only then may we have the capacity to see the totality of the problems we have created and avoid the solutions that may become tomorrow’s crisis.”
