WHY TULSA?
Civic Space Collab: Building a Future Together in Tulsa
At Civic Space Collab, we believe every community deserves places where voices are heard, ideas are nurtured, and solutions are built together. We are reimagining what civic space can mean. We are moving beyond walls and meeting rooms to create living, breathing hubs where neighbors, leaders, and changemakers collaborate to shape the future of their city.
Our work is grounded in one simple truth: lasting change is born when communities design it for themselves.
Why Civic Space Matters
Too often, community solutions are designed far away from the very people they’re meant to serve. Civic Space Collab flips that script. We create spaces—both physical and digital—where residents can gather, share lived experience, access data, and co-design systems that work for everyone. Whether the focus is housing, transportation, food access, education, or health, Civic Space Collab is about putting the power of design and decision-making back into the community’s hands.
It’s not just a meeting space. It’s a movement space. It’s where partnerships are born, where equity becomes infrastructure, and where every person feels their voice contributes to something larger.
Why Tulsa?
After exploring cities across the nation, we chose Tulsa as our pilot city for many reasons. Tulsa carries a history that is both painful and powerful, marked by deep resilience, cultural vibrancy, and the spirit of innovation. It is a city that knows the weight of inequity and the strength of collective progress. From Greenwood’s enduring legacy of Black Wall Street to its recognition today as a nationally designated Tech Hub, Tulsa has become a place where entrepreneurs, grassroots organizers, and forward-thinking foundations are building a new ecosystem of possibility.
Tulsa has shown the world what happens when voices are silenced—and what transformation can take root when those voices rise again. That’s why Civic Space Collab begins here. Not to erase or restart, but to honor Tulsa’s history, uplift its present, and co-create a future that reflects the brilliance and determination of its people—together.
Our Vision for Tulsa
In Tulsa, Civic Space Collab will serve as a home for:
Community-Led Design Labs where residents turn challenges into blueprints for change.
Equity Grids that connect families with tangible resources in housing, food, health, mobility, and education.
Youth and Family Engagement programs that empower the next generation to be builders, advocates, and innovators.
Shared Infrastructure for nonprofits and grassroots groups to scale their impact without shouldering the cost alone.
Together, these elements form a foundation for something bigger than any one program or organization: a civic ecosystem that is designed by and for the people of Tulsa.
More Than a Pilot - A Promise
Our choice of Tulsa isn’t just strategic—it’s a promise. A promise to listen first. A promise to build with, not for. A promise to use every lesson here to shape models that can ripple across the nation, while always honoring Tulsa as the city where it began.
Civic Space Collab is more than an initiative—it’s an invitation. An invitation to neighbors, nonprofits, funders, educators, artists, and families to co-author a new chapter of what equity, innovation, and belonging look like.
Because when we design together, we thrive together. And it all starts here, in Tulsa.
