To apply for United States citizenship – as I am doing after 18 years of living, working, and learning here in the U.S. – a civics test comes as a final requirement. On the eve of taking that civics test, I felt it appropriate that this next piece in The Builder’s Daily’s Wellness & The Built Environment series should itself focus on civic well-being.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, civic wellness results from participation in a wide range of formal and informal activities. They include voting (which I hope to do in the next election with my newly minted U.S. citizenship), volunteering, and participating in group activities.

The spaces and places we create in the form of new home communities, smaller scale infill neighborhoods, or multi-family and mixed-use communities stand as blank canvases on and in which civic connections occur. And as creators and developers of these places, we can choose to embrace a blank canvas as an opportunity, or regard it as a nuisance.

We don’t live in isolation. Civic health is as important for human communities as physical health. UNC Chapel Hill’s Director of Carolina Public Humanities, Lloyd Kramer, puts it this way:

Civic health and physical health are often connected because a thriving public life helps individuals live better and safer lives. We often talk about the importance of taking care of our physical bodies, but the American public body also needs attention. Good civic health means a community in which people engage with each other, where they participate in the shared life of the community and where public institutions are responsive to the needs of the people in that community.”

Photo of The Wheeler District, courtesy of Chad Hodge

Civic Health: Places Engage And People Activate

The most important factor for civic well-being is for individuals to understand how their well-being connects with the well-being of others in the communities where they live, work, or participate in the economy. It may sound alarmist to say we have a crisis of civic well-being today. The truth is this. It is more common today to retreat to our echo-chambers and foster fear, and irrational responses — laying blame and lack of trust at the feet of public institutions – than to encourage healthy debate and civic engagement to overcome obstacles and find shared solutions.

Place – that unique space where the physical environment meets the social and emotional aspects that are unique to human life – is one of the most important drivers of equity and civic well-being in a community.

Simply defining and designing beautiful public space is not enough. Ritual and use have to be further instigated. Without the programming and activities – the rituals of daily life – that take place in public spaces, there can be no urban life.” – Mike Lydon & Anthony Garcia,

Advice for Making Civic Well-being a Community Priority

Oklahoma City Wheeler District’s Ashley Terry gets the last word, and a wise one at that, for any developer, planner, elected or city official stuck in the space between fear and hope for more civic engagement and well-being.

She leaves us with 3 pieces of advice:

(1) It can be painful and is not all roses when you open yourself up to interactions that can be difficult and time consuming. At the end of the day, your community is better for it. Tough conversations build trust and connection. If you are going to ask, you have to be ready to respond but you don’t always have to act on it. People want to know you truly listened and considered their input.”

Her team demonstrates this by crafting personalized responses to everything from HOA emails to Facebook posts.

(2)There needs to be an element of education into the complexities and intentionality behind decisions.

People love hearing the stories and the reasons why we did things, like why we put a bench here and not over there. They want to know there’s attention behind these decisions. If we keep those stories to ourselves, we don’t allow our residents to appreciate knowing the why.”

(3) “You have to be okay with making mistakes. Cancel culture and online chatter is real. Go into it doing your best and being honest about it. A lot is in how we say things. We start meetings saying we don’t think we are always right, and we will sometimes miss the mark, … thanks for being patient with us, and let’s work on this together.”

Studying for my civics test taught me many things. One important one, is that America’s founders imagined a civic culture, based in part on rational, respectful debate among well-informed participants in the public sphere who care about the possibilities and opportunities that come with crafting solutions to various social and economic challenges.

Now is the time for all of us involved in envisioning, crafting and designing public spaces to lean into civic engagement as an opportunity to hear other voices and create dialogue, rather than a nuisance or an obligation tied to an entitlement process.