Building the civic city. Civic Design as enabler of resilient communities.

The world is changing, and it is changing fast within a liquid society. However, the benefits of this change have not equally spread throughout the world. To tackle these issues, in 2015 the United Nations (UN) outlined 17 Sustainable Development Goals to be reached by 2030. The 11th goal is focused on the sustainable development of cities. Contemporary cities are the main stages for social, cultural and technological changes. Within the discourse on contemporary cities, Landry identifies the Civic City as an entity which “tries to find a pathway through the major faultiness, dilemmas and potentials of our time” [4]. In this context, Civic Design attempts at answering its wicked problems, aiming at fostering community resilience through design-driven interventions. The article first explores the state of the art of the notion of Civic Design, then focuses on how Civic Design experiences enable resilient communities, by linking Civic Design capabilities to the notion of “evolutionary resilience” [11].