What is Civic Biodesign?

Civic Biodesign is an approach to facilitate and translate the future while making sense of the current liminal space we find ourselves in. It is a whole systems approach. It assumes that things are wildly more complex than perceived. It is multidimensional. It is scale-linking. It is a set of cognitive tools to help everyone from the individual to the collective create conditions for wellness, healing, and growth. It shows deference to salutogenic (health emergence) vs pathogenic (disease emergence) discussions. It recognizes humans as nature, not separated. It holds space for discussion of better language and for debates about the Anthropocene. It deconstructs and dismantles power systems based on false narratives. It lives in a dialogical space between ideologies.

Today's and tomorrow's challenges require a different form of leadership. Leadership that uses frameworks and pathways to navigate the complex realities of the situations. The legacy systems are all failing. Civic Biodesigners are like the middleware between the legacy and the emergent. They are backward compatible yet flexible enough to understand and translate what is to come.

We are all living at the beginning of the Great Transformation. This process needs individuals who can boldly and humbly dive into the foray with an eye on collective wellness and facilitate key parts of this shift. We call these people Civic Biodesigners.

These people already exist. In fact, you might be one. Maybe you are a landscape architect who infuses health and equity genius into community discussions about a public plaza. Maybe you are a school teacher who helps students have an ecological view of power systems. Maybe you are a local food producer who is dismantling bureaucratic power preventing farmers from having pathways to land and markets. Maybe you run a hyper-local Facebook group that makes sure every person in your neighborhood is fed. Maybe you are a citizen volunteering their time on a city committee for housing and you facilitate discussions to understand how segregation shaped the current policies.

Maybe you are already one. Maybe you'd like to be one. Join us.

Let’s break down that first paragraph:

Civic Biodesign is an approach to facilitate and translate the future while making sense of the current liminal space we find ourselves in.

We are living in the time after realizing that our current human behavior is damaging the environment but before having globally deployed solutions. After realizing that system issues

It is a whole systems approach.

A whole system approach is ‘responding to complexity’ through a ‘dynamic way of working’, bringing stakeholders, including communities, together to develop ‘a shared understanding of the challenge’ and integrate action to bring about sustainable, long-term systems change.

It assumes that things are wildly more complex than perceived.

Our laundry list of cognitive biases often prevent us from being able “to see” the hidden complexity of systems and situations.

It is multidimensional.

There are many ways to view any given situation. Many different economies. Different timelines. Different scales.

It is scale-linking.

The small things related to the big things. The big things relate to the small things. Sometimes they are the same thing.

It is a set of cognitive tools to help everyone from the individual to the collective create conditions for wellness, healing, and growth.

We teach a wide variety a skillsets that help facilitate wellness, health, and growth of systems from the individual to the community scale. Some of these skills are just new ways of thinking.

It shows deference to salutogenic (health emergence) vs pathogenic (disease emergence) discussions.

There are conditions that create health, we call those salutogenic. There are tactics to prevent or fix problems, we call those pathogenic.

It recognizes humans as nature, not separated.

Currently most people talk about humans and nature as separate things. We know they are part of nature.

It holds space for discussion of better language and for debates about the Anthropocene.

We are currently in a geological age, the Anthropocene. We seek language that enables a better understanding of this time. We seek to keep the current in context.

It deconstructs and dismantles power systems based on false narratives.

So many of our current civic systems are based on false stories we keep telling ourselves. These narratives lead to things like extractionist capitalism and system racism.

It lives in a dialogical space between ideologies.

There are many worldviews. Many different economy and civic theories. We hold the space of conversation between them.