Civic Design Book

This book wants to show that there are new ways to understand and transform territories.

A compilation of projects, reflections, and research that has been carried out from the Civic Design Course since its first edition in 2015.

Design

Urban Design, Architecture, Industrial and Graphic Design, Social Design, Relational Design, Interaction Design

Collective Intelligence

Services, Spaces, Relationships, Systems, Tools, Devices, Methods, Processes, Strategies, Policies, Data Science

Territory

Placemaking, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, User Experience, Urban Economics, Urban Pedagogy, Geography and much more

new learning and design scenarios

We are in a moment of transformation of what academic means. Leaving behind its traditional perception as the context in which to elaborate, transfer and communicate knowledge, this book speaks of the evolution towards an appreciation of experiential, personal and collective learning located in the territory.

These learnings are under constant revision as a result of their resilience and permeability to the contexts in which they are generated.

Civic Design focuses on civic projects, like projects related to citizenship understood as a political collectivity; it is applied to achieve collective solutions designed for the good of a community.

Civic Design proposes to reach the expected solutions through processes or methods, enabling relationships and strategies based on the collaboration of many people located in their specific territories. So we are talking about an idea of Design with the ambition of generating Civic Innovation.

The results can be Services, Spaces, Relationships, Systems, Tools, Devices, Methods, Processes, Strategies, Policies, Audiovisual Content and Mobile Applications.

THE CIVIC DESIGN COURSE

The book is structured around the Civic Design Course, with theoretical content written by coordinators of the course, projects developed during the different editions of the course and, finally, a community chapter, where the human value of the generated network is reflected.

WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?

This publication is addressed to all those people that want their profession to go beyond its traditional limits and have a positive impact on the territory. Young professionals, practitioners, from public or private institutions, researchers, collectives, universities and all those people or groups interested in civic innovation will find in this book practical examples of how Civic Design is applied to different fields and territories.

LOOKING FOR NEW WAYS OF DOING AND MAKING

The idea of applying recipes and seeking participation is over. It’s time to go directly to generate a process/agent that lives and develops in a territory, dialoguing and involving the other agents and protagonists…

THE POWER OF COLLABORATION

This book is possible thanks to all the knowledge created by more than 500 people during three years and almost 30 countries. It is a book that reveals the power of collaboration, of the connections created and of the need to find spaces for horizontal exchange.

Discover and connect!

The book offers the possibility to meet and connect with new collectives and projects already active in different territories of Europe and America as many of the projects are still being developed after the course.

THE CIVIC INNOVATION SCHOOL

This book Civic is a publication of the Civic Innovation School, the learning platform developed from the CivicWise network, which aims to promote new reflections on Civic Design and the projects that use it to generate solutions connected with citizens and located in the territory.