Designing Dialogue: A Public Design Cooperative Extension Service

Design does more than produce buildings and plans - it can help communities understand complex issues, explore different perspectives, and shape their shared futures. Designing Dialogue expands the University of Michigan’s Public Design Corps (opens in a new tab) into a cooperative extension service that connects Michigan communities with students and faculty from Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

Through mapping, prototyping, role-playing, games, visualizations, workshops, and scenario-building, participants will turn abstract civic challenges into tangible questions they can examine together. Each engagement is designed to produce something communities can use after the conversation ends, such as an action plan, shared priorities, decision-making framework, design proposal, or new partnership.

Audience

Michigan community land trusts; communities across the Southeast Michigan urban–rural continuum; NGOs, foundations and corporations considering nature-based solutions; U-M faculty, staff, students

What it offers

The program combines community dialogue, participatory design, applied research, and collaborative problem-solving.

• Explore community-defined challenges through a listening-first process.
• Work with residents, advocates, public officials, researchers, and other partners with differing perspectives.
• Use maps, prototypes, simulations, games, and visualizations to make complex issues easier to discuss.
• Test possible solutions, examine trade-offs, and revise proposals collaboratively.
• Translate dialogue into shared priorities, recommendations, action plans, or design concepts.
• Participate in projects addressing housing, climate resilience, infrastructure, disability, aging, and public participation.
• Help create reusable tools and methods that can support future civic engagement across Michigan.

Program activities

Public Design Corps will conduct five to seven community dialogue engagements during the first year. Planned activities include:

In Place We Trust – A facilitated simulation through which community land trusts, residents, advocates, funders, and public officials negotiate decisions about affordable housing, land use, neighborhood development, and stewardship.

Nature-Based Solutions in Southeast Michigan – Workshops, educational sessions, fieldwork, and site visits exploring approaches to flooding, biodiversity loss, infrastructure, maintenance, and climate justice across the region’s urban–rural continuum.

Detroit Living Learning Lab – Cross-sector workshops connecting Detroit community organizations, public agencies, nonprofits, funders, and U-M researchers around housing pre-weatherization, energy access, climate resilience, and community-centered research.

Housing Needs of Individuals with Autism and I/DD Symposium – A public symposium bringing together self-advocates, family members, housing providers, researchers, policymakers, and disability organizations to interpret statewide findings and develop practical housing and planning recommendations.

d-mix Lab Community Co-Design Workshops – Participatory workshops using storytelling, systems mapping, design research, and rapid prototyping to address challenges affecting older adults, caregivers, nonprofits, municipalities, and community organizations.

Tracing Matters of Concern – A computationally assisted process for organizing and visualizing large amounts of community input while preserving minority and dissenting viewpoints. The resulting maps will support meeting preparation, structured deliberation, and program evaluation.

Impact on the public good

The program will create structured opportunities for Michigan communities to address difficult public questions through collaborative design rather than positional debate alone. Participants will be able to make competing perspectives visible, examine trade-offs, identify common ground, and build practical next steps.

Each engagement will leave behind a tangible result, potentially including:

• Shared priorities or guiding principles.
• Decision-making frameworks.
• Action plans and policy recommendations.
• Maps, prototypes, games, or simulations.
• Design proposals and implementation strategies.
• Facilitation guides and visualization templates.
• New partnerships or funding proposals.

The initiative will also establish shared staffing, evaluation, documentation, and governance infrastructure for Public Design Corps. This will connect previously independent faculty projects, support engagement beyond the academic calendar, expand student research opportunities, and make successful methods available for use in other communities.