About ICS
About the Institute for Civic Service
Plan for Planning is an initiative of the Institute for Civic Service (ICS). This book lives here; the work lives at the Institute.
The Institute
The Institute for Civic Service (ICS) was founded on a conviction as old as the Republic itself: that public service is not mere bureaucratic maintenance, but a demanding, creative craft. The crises fracturing our shared civic life (the working families displaced by speculative housing, the transit riders stranded in daily exhaustion, the loneliness that shadows our public parks) are not tame mechanical puzzles waiting for another regulatory checklist. They are wicked systems, where an isolated decision in one department ripples through the lives and dignity of entire neighborhoods.
The Institute’s motto is the promise it works under: Together, We Serve.
The book
The Lost Art of the Plan: A Guide to Seeing the City Whole is an ICS publication. Edition line, as printed: Second Edition: 2026 (First Edition: August 2025), published by the Institute for Civic Service. ICS publishes the book so the argument and the method can be read, taught and cited freely: the Preface, Introduction and Chapter 6 are online in full, and the complete book is a free PDF download.
Find the Institute
incivicservice.org
The Institute’s home: its mission, its people and its programs, including FRAME for Mobility.
FRAME for Mobility
The Institute’s mobility program: a framework for streets that serve everyone who uses them.
The ICS newsletter
The Institute’s Substack: essays and notes on civic service as craft.
Contact and standing
Write to the Institute at [email protected].
Institute for Civic Service is fiscally sponsored by The Hack Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Our EIN is 81-2908499.