Ceasar McDowell
Civic Designers LLC
Ceasar McDowell is Professor of the Practice of Civic Design at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. As founder of MIT’s Co-Lab (previously named Center for Reflective Community Practice), Ceasar works to develop the critical moments reflection method to help communities build knowledge from their practice or, as he likes to say, “to know what they know.” Through his work at the global civic engagement organization, Engage The Power, he developed The Question Campaign as a method for building democratic communities from the ground up.
At MIT, Ceasar teaches on civic and community engagement and the use of social media to enhance both. Ceasar brings his deep commitment to the work of building beloved, just and equitable communities that are able to – as his friend Carl Moore says – ”struggle with the traditions that bind them and the interests that separate them so they can build a future that is an improvement on the past.” He is currently working to develop “CivicDesigners”, a platform for developing a new infrastructure for democracy in the US.