Dismantling traditional approaches: community-centered design in local government

Abstract Can community-centered design practice create a space to channel creativity into building community, dismantle power structures, and facilitate conversations to create equitable opportunities? This paper investigates how methodologies and tools like community-centered design, qualitative interrogations, and emotional intelligence can give practitioners the tools to reimagine constituents’ relationships with their municipalities. Using community-centered design practice and principles, the author imagines how practitioners can break down privileged perspectives and invite marginalized communities into policy-centered decision-making. While design practice can be an exclusive bubble, just like policy, the intersection of the two has led many cities worldwide to embrace human-centered design. And although Human-centered design can challenge sterile processes, it is often unable to tackle the complexities of power hoarding, marginalization, and other challenges faced by local governments. As a result, it limits design practitioners from approaching obstinate problems and centers power on practitioners’ positionality and decision-making, instead of the communities and individuals impacted by the systemic inadequacies. This paper questions the same by investigating the role of design practitioners in the public sector and community-centered design. Policymaking cannot be innovative or thoughtful without design. Design interrogation in government should embrace vulnerability, transparency, and intentionality. This paper highlights how community-centered designers have the ability and sensitivity to challenge complacent institutions and their lack of human-centered systems. Using case studies from three U.S. cities (Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore), this paper explores how design gives us mechanisms that can activate a government by the people, of the people, and for the people.