We are excited to announce two hot-off-the-presses Civity research publications:
- A “Civity” Approach Helps Build the Civic Muscle that Underlies Healthy Communities, peer-reviewed Opinion Editorial in the April 2025 issue of the American Journal of Public Health
- Civity Stories: Going to the “Heart” of NIMBY Resistance to Affordable Housing, Civity’s report on more than a year of working on the critical issue of housing in California
Research tells a story.
Research-stories don’t begin with “Once upon a time,” and they tend not to wrap up with a sweeping “And they lived happily ever after.” To the contrary, they tend to be stiff in style and careful in conclusion.
They are, nevertheless, stories. They are stories of exploration about how the world works, and their descriptions offer understanding of how we might live in that world.
The idea of civity grew from research that confirmed and made sense of practical community experiences, and this research has informed Civity’s work from the beginning.
The core observation of this research is that communities thrive when people in different groups and sub-communities are connected in positive ways. Relational bridges make it possible for communities to pull together, to bounce back when bad things happen, and to take collective actions that make things better for everyone.
We co-founded Civity with the vision and mission of bringing this research to life:
- We know that relationships across difference make communities stronger.
- We know that it’s people who create relationships.
- And so … supporting people in communities to create relational bridges builds civic muscle so that communities can tackle the tough issues they face.
Doing this work has generated its own research. Several years ago, Civity’s participation in the Stanford-based Strengthening Democracy Challenge mega-study affirmed that small “wise interventions” do have the capacity to move people. Specifically, Civity Storytelling: Expanding the Pool of People Who Matter’s strategy of moving from head to heart by sharing personal stories across difference does build connection and expand the pool of people who matter.
Two brand-new research publications feature a civity approach and build on the results of the megastudy. The peer-reviewed American Journal of Public Health article highlights how civity relationships build the “belonging + civic muscle” core of the “vital conditions for health and well-being.” And the Civity Housing Report describes how sharing personal stories can provide a way into fractious community discussions about housing, illuminating (1) the value of a relational foundation to addressing tough issues and (2) the importance of “the conversation before the conversation.”
These recent contributions to the research-story affirm what we already know:
- Community members can take relationship-building actions – actions that are concrete, do-able, and scale-able – to help their communities become stronger, healthier, and more resilient.
- Story-sharing does make an essential contribution to communities’ capacity to grapple with critical yet fraught challenges.
Overall, individuals can take actions that make a positive difference in and for their communities.