Designing for what’s next: how public services can shape futures we want to live in
When I was younger, when I went on holiday to my French grandparents, I used to walk down to the market with my “meme”. She’d chat to the shopkeeper for what felt like hours while I tasted the cheeses. It was more than a transaction — it was connection, ritual, rhythm. You felt like you belonged somewhere, even if you didn’t know everyone’s name.
That shop’s now a phone repair place. The cafés are chains. The rhythms have changed.
But what hasn’t changed is this: people still want to feel rooted, supported, and seen.
So how can we design public services to not just respond to change, but shape it — in ways that build belonging, solidarity and shared futures?
🌍 1. From scenario to signal: design for what’s emerging, not just what’s urgent
Too often, we wait until trends become crises. But there’s a growing movement to use scenarios and speculative design to anticipate change — and adapt early.
📍 The Policy Lab’s Futures Toolkit helps public bodies explore long-term scenarios and design responses collaboratively.
📍 Participatory Futures projects involve citizens in imagining and influencing their own futures — not just reacting to policy change.
💡 Try this: Host a “future snapshots” session with staff or residents — what does 2035 look like in their lives? What do they want to protect, what are they worried about?
🤝 2. Design for connection across difference
In a world where social networks — both online and off — increasingly mirror our own class, culture or postcode, we need to build bridging infrastructure into everyday services.
📍 The Social Infrastructure Index from Bennett’s Associates and Commonplace helps councils map which public spaces bring people together.
📍 In Seoul’s Sharing City initiative, the city’s government repurposes underused public spaces for shared use across communities.
💡 Try this: Include “shared use” and “cross-cultural connection” as design principles in service or space redesigns — from leisure centres to planning consultations.
👥 3. Create design conditions for new collective goods
We’re seeing more people pooling their resources — to co-own housing, set up mutual aid, or run local energy schemes. What if councils made this easier, and fairer?
📍 Everyone Every Day in Barking & Dagenham shows what’s possible when you create open spaces and low-barrier platforms for local people to start collective projects.
📍 Ghent’s Public-Commons Partnerships embed the commons into the city’s procurement and governance processes — enabling citizens and institutions to steward resources together.
💡 Try this: Adapt your commissioning toolkit to support community-initiated infrastructure — and prioritise platforms that enable replication, not just scale.
🧵 4. Make personalisation equitable — and collective
As paid services become ever more tailored (concierge health, personal shopping), what happens when only those who can afford it get choices?
📍 Fair by Design campaigns to design out the poverty premium — from digital access to energy.
📍 In Camden’s adult social care reforms, pooled personal budgets have enabled greater autonomy and community connection — not one at the expense of the other.
💡 Try this: Use co-design methods to develop shared personalisation — e.g. a group of users pooling support around common needs like transport, meals or social support.
💻 5. Reimagine the digital platforms shaping our lives
Platforms shape our habits — how we meet, move, and make money. But what if we made those platforms fairer, more local, and designed for solidarity?
📍 Fairbnb reinvests part of booking fees into local social projects, directly addressing gentrification pressures of short-term lets.
📍 Platform Co-ops are co-owned digital tools where workers, users or residents share the value created.
📍 Casserole Club lets people cook an extra portion for an isolated neighbour — low-tech but deeply connective.
💡 Try this: Audit your service partnerships — are you defaulting to extractive digital platforms? Could you pilot a cooperative or local-first alternative?
🏘️ 6. Make the high street a civic playground, not just a shopfront
As we shift more of our consumption online, public spaces risk becoming hollow — places to market to us, not connect with us.
📍 Meanwhile Space reactivates vacant high street properties as civic, cultural or social enterprise spaces.
📍 Make Shift Foundation supports local makers and residents to shape how public markets evolve.
💡 Try this: Create a “Civic Pop-Up” licence in your local area — making it easier for communities to use empty units for culture, health, or play.
🌱 Final thoughts: stewarding shared futures, together
In a world changing faster than most of us can catch up with, our role in public service is more than delivery. It’s stewardship.
That means:
- spotting early signals, not just waiting for headlines
- designing for connection, not just consumption
- investing in the invisible infrastructure of trust, not just concrete
We can’t predict the future. But we can co-create the conditions for futures people actually want to live in.
And maybe — just maybe — that means a future where going to your local café, walking your neighbourhood, or taking part in a shared budget process feels as familiar and grounding as my grandad’s weekly chat at the corner shop.
💬 What signals are you seeing in your service or community? How might we design in solidarity and shared power before it’s too late?
I’d love to hear what futures you’re starting to build.
