Design for Networks and Network Solutions

Civic processes require personal relationships and investing in the power and ability of neighborhoods, people, and groups to seek out their interests. In designing a civic process from a network perspective, we are creating many points of entry, levels of involvement, and opportunities for the public to connect with each other.

At their core, civic engagements and processes are about people. These processes are about how everyday people and communities can be empowered people to face the challenges of democracy in their context together. In building these engagements, we as planners must understand that the core and strength of these processes and of democracy itself is people, with all their interests, relationships, and social networks.

Civic processes, then, are about more than creating community support for policies or about community buy-in. They’re about relationships between real people. Planners should think through how these processes and engagements can build relationships within communities and among community members, so that they can better share information, and make decisions and act together.

But this requires investing in the power and ability of neighborhoods, people, and groups to seek out their interests. It requires providing both the opportunities and the platform for people to come together, articulate, and act on what’s important to them.

Design for people-oriented, network solutions, then, is thinking about how to connect people to one another and providing the platform for those connections to be made. This includes thinking not only about how to foster connections but how to foster both weak and strong connections.

A civic process that is designed from a network perspective has many points of entry, levels of involvement, and opportunities to connect with others. It also creates linkages between different events, meetings, and opportunities, so residents and people have more opportunities to “re-link” and meet again. Even a minor connection and point of connection can be someone’s “in” to engaging in the public space.

To be sure, it is residents who will create the network of relationships that support this kind of thoughtful, industrious, collaborative space. They will shape the institutions, communities, and processes that they want. In valuing people first, these kinds of network processes should be adaptable to the needs and desires of residents. The processes should be responsive and allow people to decide what works for them and work on what people are motivated to do.

Only people who are motivated and working alongside others can sustain action for lasting change. But empowering people for meaningful change is the stuff civic engagement is made of.

Originally published at themove.mit.edu on July 11, 2018.