CivicGreen

CivicGreen is a collaborative project among scholars and practitioners to enrich our democratic imagination and to expand our policy options for sustainable, resilient, and just responses to climate crisis in the United States in the coming decades. Our perspective is to locate civic engagement at the heart of work that needs to occur in communities of all kinds, across cities and regions, and among professional and other institutional partners that are key to solving problems for the long run.

We explore how civic innovation can complement other forms of innovation — planning, market, regulatory, investment, insurance, ecosystem, technological, cultural, workplace — to get an optimal alignment of tools and to enhance democracy.

CivicGreen focuses primarily on positive innovations, while also remaining alert to difficult challenges and obstacles in political, economic, cultural and other systems. Many of these innovations depend on partnerships, funding, and administrative support from public agencies at all levels of the federal system.

The current assault by the Trump administration on federal administrators and funding streams for such partnerships presents a major challenge going forward. We will keep up with such developments in our News & Blog section and work with scholars, practitioners, and community groups to identify productive strategies to meet these challenges. Civic innovation for sustainable, just, and climate resilient communities has always been difficult, but nonetheless continues to be an essential part of how we resist assaults and move forward together.

To explore, click on our section icons below. For more on our approach, see About Us.