Not what, but who? Reflecting on Tensions in Civic Innovation

Raissa Xie (she/her) is a 2020 Summer Fellow with the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics focusing on understanding the systems, barriers, and incentives around small landlords and property owners who own and operate 10 or less properties.

It feels strange to be writing this from my fifth week as a virtual fellow with the City of Boston from my apartment in New York, in the wake of the global pandemic, with injustices surfaced and fought against everywhere around me. Sometimes, I feel comforted: by the support I feel, and the city that has become home. Sometimes, I feel disconnected: from the other fellows and MONUM staff, and to Boston, a city I’ve visited only twice. Logging into my laptop daily, I find myself asking: if we want to create more equitable approaches and futures, how does civic innovation need to change? How does this moment in time shape the work we are doing, and the work we have yet to do?

What I’ve learned from my short time as a fellow is that, alongside the rest of the world that is rapidly changing, civic innovation is — or should be — no different. If anything, the responsibility feels greater, the needs more urgent.

We are living in a time when civic innovation means injustices surfaced must serve as calls to action to reframe our thinking. We know the risk of continued exclusion and harm if we don’t. So what might that mean? For MONUM, it means expanding our listening to be more informed by people experiencing inequities. It means questioning who currently holds power, and the roles of institutions such as government, academia, and corporations, and our relationships to them. It means listening to residents who have lived experiences and knowledges many of us can’t ever come close to understanding. It means opening up and sharing space with others.

It means reconsidering what civic innovation means: instead of creating “new” solutions and bringing in new technologies, how can we instead encompass the role of a facilitator: opening up space and sharing power with more diverse perspectives who have long been missing from (and are usually most impacted by) these conversations?

Most of us believe in, and desire, a more equitable future. This can only happen by centering the people who know have first-hand experience and expertise that doesn’t come just from anyone with a more formal degree. For MONUM, it means increasing collaboration, reflection, and questioning of ourselves and our role within civic innovation, thoughtfully iterating and seeking feedback as we constantly evolve.

For me, it means creating space for others, and learning to decenter myself.

The project I’m working on this summer looks at energy retrofitting and affordable housing. While a small part of me holds a temptation to present a “solution” to this problem, this current context begs us to shift our processes to be shaped by broader, more systemic pictures. This has shaped how I approach problems, asking myself:

• What is my role as a fellow within the City? What biases do I bring to this context?
• How does the broader context shape how I approach just one small project?
• Who else should be in the virtual “room” who isn’t? Do I belong here — not just because I’m not in a certain-level position — but should I belong here? Or is there someone else here that has more lived experience, more expertise in these fields than I do, who should be taking on this project?

This has also shaped how I view myself: as one human with a responsibility to share my power, acknowledging my own shortcomings and lack of lived experience with these topics.

More important than what I end up proposing in an eight-week fellowship is the fact that I’m asking whose voices can be included, and whose voices are missing. What does it look like to formalize processes in which we include more people who have lived experience into civic innovation processes, amongst competing government agendas?

Though I often feel I definitely shouldn’t be here, since I am, I ask of you: Where are you? Who else could or should be there, who isn’t?

At MONUM, we continue to explore these questions, and I’m excited to see where these conversations take us.

Raissa is is a designer and researcher currently pursuing an MFA in Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons School of Design in New York. She previously worked in digital product design and research for various technology companies, where she worked on open source blockchain technologies, customer experience tools, and corporate social responsibility efforts, before joining Parsons to explore how design can be used and adapted as a decision-making and advocacy tool to facilitate conversations at the intersection of policy, technology, and social sciences to create more equitable futures. She received her Bachelor of Design with majors in architecture and psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. In her free time, she can also be found leading research for Project Inkblot, a consultancy that partners with companies to build equitable products and services, and attempting new quarantine hobbies, such as rollerskating, calligraphy, and poetry.

About the Fellowship:
The New Urban Mechanics Summer Fellowship is designed for entrepreneurial students and professionals interested in working in public service. During this highly selective eight-week program, summer fellows work as a team and on their own projects, generating and implementing creative and thoughtful new prototypes to benefit the City of Boston.