Civic Care in Place: Subtle Technologies and Community Stewardship in a Marginalized Context

Paper Title

Civic Care in Place: Subtle Technologies and Community Stewardship in a Marginalized Context

Publication Info

• Topic area: Community-based environmental care and the role of digital technologies in supporting informal civic stewardship.
• Keywords: Civic care, environmental stewardship, informal networks, community resilience, Nature-based Solutions (NbS), Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS), participatory design, digital civics, marginalized communities, urban resilience.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Marginalized communities often bear the burden of maintaining public spaces due to institutional neglect. Informal, everyday acts of care are critical but remain invisible to formal metrics, risking under-recognition and erosion.
• Significance: Understanding and supporting these acts is vital for sustaining environmental and social wellbeing, particularly in contexts of infrastructural neglect and climate-related risks.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research highlights the importance of participatory and community-led approaches in environmental stewardship but often overlooks low-effort, informal contributions. This paper addresses this gap by focusing on subtle, relational acts of care and their potential amplification through digital technologies.

Solution

• Proposed approach: The study introduces the concept of implicit civic care and proposes a framework of six design dimensions to guide the development of technologies that support informal, community-led care practices.
• Novelty:
  1. Conceptualization of implicit civic care as subtle, relational, and embedded in daily life.
  2. Empirical insights into how residents navigate environmental care amidst institutional neglect and socio-economic pressures.
  3. A framework of six design dimensions: embeddedness, visibility, reciprocity, autonomy with support, coordination without formalization, and frustration as data.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  1. Conducted a year-long, multi-phase study in Stanley, UK, including a survey (N=140), interviews (N=5), and a diary study (N=10).
  2. Analyzed data using reflexive thematic analysis to identify themes of care practices, emotional engagement, and community-institutional dynamics.
  3. Synthesized findings into actionable design principles for HCI/CSCW systems.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Everyday acts of care, such as litter picking and tending plants, are embedded in routines and motivated by pride, frustration, and local attachment.
  • Participants preferred small-scale, natural interventions (e.g., planting trees) over heavy infrastructure (e.g., cement).
  • Emotional states like pride and frustration serve as motivators and diagnostics of governance failures.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • The study highlights the importance of informal, relational care practices that are often overlooked in formal civic engagement metrics.
  • Offers a nuanced framework for designing technologies that amplify existing community capacities without formalizing or instrumentalizing participation.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Survey: Captured residents' perceptions of flooding, responsibility, and engagement.
  • Interviews: Explored motivations and barriers to volunteering.
  • Diary study: Documented everyday acts of care and emotional connections to space.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Small sample sizes in interviews and diary studies limit generalizability.
  • Future work could explore longitudinal adoption of proposed technologies, cross-cultural contexts, and integration with physical urban infrastructures.

Summary

This paper investigates how marginalized communities sustain public spaces through informal, everyday acts of care and explores the role of digital technologies in supporting these practices. Through a year-long study in Stanley, UK, it introduces the concept of implicit civic care and proposes a framework of six design dimensions to guide the development of respectful, lightweight, and situated civic technologies. The findings emphasize the importance of embedding technologies into existing community rhythms, making care visible without formalizing it, and using frustration as diagnostic data to address governance failures. This work offers actionable insights for designing technologies that amplify community resilience and environmental stewardship.