Company Profile
Civic Design Center
Company Overview
The Civic Design Center is a 10-person non-profit organization based in Nashville, TN. Our mission is to advocate for civic design visions and actionable change in communities to improve quality of life for all. We lead local design visioning projects focused on engagement and education around topics like public space, transportation, and walkable streets. Our work is extremely interdisciplinary and tuned into current events all while being rooted in advocating for our Principles.
At the Civic Design Center, our staff are constantly saying that this is the workplace where they can truly live out their passion. As a non-profit, the community is our client, which makes us unique from a design firm answering RFPs. Our Design Studio takes the community’s ideas and turns them into visions that we can advocate for, especially ensuring that socially conscious design is at the forefront of our work. We never tell a community what is right for their neighborhood, but we will use our design expertise to help them form opinions that will shape their public spaces. Ultimately, our staff must be passionate about pulling seats up to the table, welcoming diverse ideas, and facilitating connections across industries. If your enthusiasm feeds off of people’s passions, this is where you belong.
Equal Employment Opportunity
At the Civic Design Center, Equal Employment Opportunity is a major policy commitment and an important company goal. The Design Center commits to attracting, retaining, developing, and promoting the most qualified employees without regard to their race, color, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, military status, or any other consideration made unlawful by federal, state, or local laws. All such discrimination is unlawful and prohibited by the Civic Design Center. The Design Center openly welcomes applicants from a diversity of backgrounds, identities, experiences, abilities, and ideas.
Company History
Reacting to poorly laid plans for the Franklin Street Corridor (now Korean Veterans Blvd), a group of New Urbanism enthusiasts came together to debate the future of Nashville’s built environment. Ultimately, they formalized into a nonprofit in 2001 that would advocate for better urban design born of the community’s visions. Our team continues to strive towards influencing a better built environment for all.
The organization's first major work culminated into The Plan of Nashville, a 50-year vision for the city published in 2004, that is still used as a guide today.
Benefits
Work in the design and planning field takes a lot of time and energy, so work-life balance is extremely important to us. All full-time staff work on a 32-hour work week with a flexible work-from-home schedule and generous PTO benefits.