LETTER FROM the CEO mission

During the 2021-2022 fiscal year, the Civic Design Center celebrated our 20th Anniversary. Reflecting on our past and adapting for the future have been two important themes during this special year. Our team spent months researching our history, gathering stories, and interviewing our founders to put together a mini-documentary about our origin story. Through that retrospective, it became clear that the Civic Design Center’s role today is just as important as it was the day we were founded.

The last few years have presented great challenges for the Design Center and the greater Nashville community, however, the team’s commitment has remained unwavering. In conjunction with our Origin Story, we launched our new Guiding Principles for Civic Design during our Annual Luncheon in 2021. The Principles were adapted from the 10 Principles of The Plan of Nashville, but now

2 CIVIC DESIGN CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 2021-2022 include 2 additional principles reflecting newer issues of housing and sustainability. Our bedrock in grassroots organizing, community engagement, and visioning has guided us to evolve. Each Principle was updated to reflect socially-conscious design and have goals rooted in equity. These community-driven planning and design ideals set an example for community development in Tennessee and beyond.

Something special that comes from both our Origin Story as well as our newly adapted Guiding Principles are the incredible discussions and partnerships that took place. Having worked with the Civic Design Center for 20 years and spoken to numerous cities that have wanted to replicate the successes we have here in Nashville, it is clear that we have a truly special partnership with our city’s government, from the Mayor’s Office and Metro Council Members to departments like Planning, the new Department of Transportation, and so many others. I believe that is a critical element of our success.

I’d like to outline some examples of this from the past year. Alongside Council Member Nancy Van Reece, we collected ideas from community members to help shape the future park at Madison Station Blvd. Our Nashville Youth

Design Team helped convince the Tennessee Department of Transportation to install an experimental crosswalk intervention at 2021’s deadliest intersection in Nashville. We hosted the first public launch of the Metro Planning’s Imagine East Bank Draft Vision Plan and released our ideas for how this vision could take shape informing a switch to include bike lanes on the main envisioned thoroughfare.

These examples don’t even begin to cover the advocacy work we have done and the visions we have created alongside community partners this year. Nashville’s growth has momentum, which means we must continue to be rooted in our Guiding Principles in order to live out the mission created over 20 years ago: to improve quality of