The state of community design: An analysis of community design center services

Since its beginnings in the 1960s, community design has been seen as a practice rooted in participatory and emancipatory notions of planning and design, offering services to overcome social, environmental, and economic injustice regardless of the ability of clients to pay. Yet the complex challenges of maintaining a service-driven practice cause community designers to interpret this progressive agenda in a variety of ways. This project surveys 81 community design centers (CDCs) in the United States to assess the state of contemporary community design. Through a review of CDC webs ites, we identfied 14 types of services in four categories offered by such centers. This research suggests that today CDCs take an entrepreneurial approach by providing a broad range of services to a broad range of clients, no longer limited to low-income communities.