Civic Square

Civic Square is an initiative based in Ladywood, Birmingham, England, aiming to demonstrate how the ecological transition and the renovation of our homes, streets, and neighborhoods can be rethought but also designed, owned, and managed by the people who live there, in a systemic, concrete, and participatory way.

They work on three interconnected projects:

• Neighbourhood Public Square: Co-creating spaces and infrastructures to enable neighbourhoods to lead social and ecological transitions by reinventing land management, governance, building design, and more.

• Neighbourhood Donut: An approach to understanding the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century by democratizing data and collective research to promote social and ecological wellbeing.

• Neighbourhood Transitions: A practical demonstration of carbon, energy, and ecological transitions at the street scale, where infrastructures are designed, owned, and governed by residents, going beyond single-household renovation and using streets as a starting point for a living system.

Just as the Donut theory suggests, the project is ‘distributive’ and aims to discover and disseminate new forms of public infrastructure that can be inspiring at the national and international levels.