Introducing: The Atlas of Civic Infrastructure

Can what we build, build better communities? Can it strengthen the bonds that bind us in our mutuality?

When we began MxM Landscape Architecture (MxMLA), our intuition told us that that question was, “yes.” We had seen places that destroyed communities, so surely the inverse was possible; we could build places that presented the opportunity to buttress and expand existing community bonds, reinforcing the best of what was already there while also inviting new interactions.

In this year-long initiative—Atlas of Civic Infrastructure—we intend to deepen our understanding of these dynamics. We hope to explore this line of inquiry to help our clients, our team, and the communities we work with understand the qualities of civic infrastructure, describe its physical parts (sidewalks, parks, etc), and explore inspirational precedents (like this flowing water feature leading to the central train station in Nimes, France) to learn how we, as designers, can build community bonds as we build exceptional places.

We hope that you will join us in this exploration.