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We are an international community of communities bound by a common interest in persistent infrastructure. So far, we have welcomed agencies that manage communities spanning entertainment, standards, the built environment, natural history collections, scholarly communications, and research data.
From global trends to local realities: A multi-scale scenario-building methodology for community infrastructure planning
This paper details a multi-scale scenario-building methodology designed to explore transport infrastructure futures in rapidly changing Circumpolar North communities, bridging global trends and national contexts with local realities. Focusing on Churchill, Canada, and Kirkenes, Norway, we employed a hybrid approach that combined top-down adaptation of existing global and regional socioeconomic scenarios with bottom-up, participatory ethnographic research to ensure local relevance and incorporate stakeholder knowledge. We developed coherent scenarios across global, regional (national), and local scales, allowing higher-level archetypes to manifest differently depending on locally specific features identified through fieldwork. This consecutive, nested process utilized morphological analysis and the Factor-Actor-Sector framework to maintain consistency while accommodating local specificities. The methodology centered not just on scenario creation but also on the function of scenarios as a tool for community dialogue, utilizing artistic visualizations in workshops to engage diverse stakeholders. This approach demonstrates a way to navigate the tension between global and national drivers versus local community needs, yielding distinct yet comparable local futures grounded in broader development pathways. It offers practical insights for deliberations and planning in uncertain environments, both built and unbuilt.
Governance Archaeology: Research as Ancestry
Abstract. This essay presents the idea of governance archaeology, an approach to learning from the past to inform the politics of the future. By reporting on a prototype historical database, we outline a strategy for co-producing a global commons of collective governance practices that can inspire institutional learning and experimentation, particularly in the face of rapid technological change and vexing global crises. Embedded in our approach is an orientation of ancestry whereby practitioners cultivate relationships of accountability and responsibility to the legacies they learn from, recognizing the harm from past patterns of exploitation. By taking seriously a wide range of historical governance practices, particularly those outside the Western canon, governance archaeology seeks to expand the options available for the design of more moral political economies.
Making Community Governance Legible: A Semester with Bonfire
A collaboration with Princeton explores how Governance Cards can help communities explain how they organise, make decisions, and care for their shared spaces.
Living Museum of Food: Stories, Recipes, and Culinary Heritage from Traditional Communities
[PT-BR FOLLOWS] Introduction Back when city streets were paved with cobblestones, public telephones stood on street corners, and many neighborhoods were still unpaved, life followed a different rhy…
Culture & truth : the remaking of social analysis
xii, 253 pages ; 22 cm; Argues for a new approach to thinking and writing about culture. Exposing old conceptions, the book argues that new ethnographic writing must come to terms with the dynamic nature of social reality - with history, spontaneity, and human emotions; Originally published: Boston: Beacon, 1989; Includes index; Self-Renewing 2017; Includes index
Neighborhood Steward Fellowship | New_ Public
An eight-week program bringing together leaders of local-oriented online spaces to experiment with fun new practices and ideas
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ENRICHING COMMUNITIES THROUGH COLLECTIVE CREATIVE ACTION
Tiny Publics: Small Groups and Civil Society
It has been conventional to conceptualize civic life through one of two core images: the citizen as lone individualist or the citizen as joiner. Drawing on analyses of the historical development of the public sphere, we propose an alternative analytical framework for civic engagement based on small-group interaction. By embracing this micro-level approach, we contribute to the debate on civil society in three ways. By emphasizing local interaction contexts-the microfoundations of civil society-we treat small groups as a cause, context, and consequence of civic engagement. First, through framing and motivating, groups encourage individuals to participate in public discourse and civic projects. Second, they provide the place and support for that involvement. Third, civic engagement feeds back into the creation of additional groups. A small-groups perspective suggests how civil society can thrive even if formal and institutional associations decline. Instead of indicating a decline in civil society, a proliferation of small groups represents a healthy development in democratic societies, creating cross-cutting networks of affiliation.
DIY Infrastructure Building for Power – Esther Han Beol Jang
Narrative strands & memetic lineages in community social data using Community Archive - - ATmospher
PARA
Civic social infrastructure for communities, governance, and public participation.
Connecting Research with Community - Civic Innovation Lab
Welcome to Civic Innovation Lab, where we drive social impact through collaborative solutions and empower communities. Join us in fostering sustainable development, co-creating initiatives, and advancing inclusive governance for a better future.
We Are Civic Media
A discipline-crossing introduction to civic media via accounts from grassroots practitioners “Civic media” is the use of contemporary technologies to connect communities, inspire action, build civic capacity, and sustain social change efforts. Written by artists, creators, storytellers, organizers, and others working at the intersections of technology, social justice, and culture, this book summons civic media through the lived experiences of its contributors. Latoya Peterson delves into the therapeutic power of gaming; Akilah Hughes discusses identity and community through the lens of her campaign to change her high school's racist mascot; and Tyree Boyd-Pates emphasizes the potential power of museum curation to challenge power dynamics and bridge digital and physical realms. Through the experiences of these grassroots practitioners and many others, We Are Civic Media offers accessible insights for those interested in understanding, respecting, and practicing civic media.