Opinion: Civic design — how redesigning cities can improve political discourse

As an architecture professor at UVU, I witnessed how a recent campus shooting created waves of distress in our community. A couple of weeks later, another attack in a Michigan church affected me even more personally as I pictured my own family in those pews.

These events are symptoms of a broader sickness as political discourse collapses into hostility. Extremist rhetoric fills our public square, and hate groups are increasingly comfortable expressing their views. Increasingly polarized elected officials deepen divisions by deflecting blame instead of reflecting on their own words and policies.

Commentators often cite gun control and social media as causes of our fractured civic life. These are critical issues that deserve careful deliberation, but there is a deeper structural