CivicWise was born in London, in 2015, where Domenico Di Siena") together with other colleagues gave life to this international network as a community aimed at promoting collective intelligence projects applied to territory and urban planning based on citizen empowerment and collaborative participation.[2]​.

This international network is structured around local groups organized autonomously and independently. From these groups, people with the desire to improve their cities can exchange experiences and knowledge, carrying out citizen actions, collaborating with public or private institutions. This community has groups formed in countries such as the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Brazil, Greece and Argentina.[5]​.

One of its first objectives was to create an archive of projects, actions, spaces and research that could be considered as a reference for the capacity of citizens to carry out actions at the level of collaborative urbanism and civic innovation. Within this project, the edition of the book Civic Practices was contemplated, which collects more than 50 examples of experiences of many people around the world and is classified into three themes: physical spaces, projects around the world to promote these practices, and research on the topic.[5]​[6]​ The financing of the book was carried out through a crowdfunding campaign on the Goteo platform in 2016.[7]​[8]​.

In that same year, CivicWise participated in the "Urban Platforms auto neighborhoods" conference held in Madrid and organized by the Basurama collective, which addressed the creation of a common framework to debate definitions, evaluations and frameworks of participatory and empowerment processes, with the aim of identifying what are the differentiating factors of this type of projects.[9]​[10]​.

Since its origins, the association developed a Civic Design course, the first edition of which was the work of Domenico Di Siena in 2015, which was then integrated into the CivicWise network and was the basis for the constitution of the Civic Innovation School. Until January 2021, it has had four editions in Spanish, three in French and two in Italian.[11]​.

During 2017, the coordinating team of Grau Jonathan Reyes (Valencia), Domenico Di Siena (Italy) and María Tomé (Tenerife), contributed the network experience obtained from international projects it has carried out and highlighting the importance of adapting to local contexts, protecting its identity, while sharing local knowledge internationally and vice versa.[1]​.

In 2019, in Fuerteventura, Bentejui Hernández Acosta, member of CivicWise, collaborated in the "I Civic Innovation Festival", a space to exchange experiences and build networks between people and initiatives, constituting a collective learning forum to improve social awareness.[13]​.

Another of CivicWise's projects came to light in 2020, the year in which Civómetro was launched, a guide for the evaluation of citizen laboratories. This guide, whose authors are Nora González Dwyer, Pascual Pérez, Martina Pestarino and Maje Reig Alberola, members of the network, tries to enable the necessary evaluations for certain sectors when public policy processes focused on the opening of institutions to citizens are carried out. Accountability is mandatory in Public Administration initiatives, and this guide provides guidance on what to measure and what to leave out of the evaluation or how to publish the results.[14]​.

The members of this network contribute their ideas in innovative and collaborative experiences, such as María Tomé, architect of the Civic Innovation Office and part of the international network Civicwise, which defends, for this aging society, the cohousing model, groups that buy land or a building to live in community in their old age, an alternative on the rise with successful experiences such as La Borda, in Catalonia.[15]​.