Making Continuity Visible: Network Analysis and Practitioner Stewardship in Latin American Public Design

This paper presents the first regional-scale network analysis of public design practice in Latin America, drawing on 84 academic and grey literature sources to map 865 nodes and 1,265 edges across nine countries, 174 innovation units, 573 projects, and 109 individuals. Three interlocking findings emerge: geographic fragmentation shaped by uneven documentation infrastructure; selective visibility that records institutional presence while omitting methods and temporal trajectories; and the structural invisibility of practitioners despite their central role in carrying knowledge across administrative cycles. Drawing on Transition Design, we argue that documentation is not a byproduct of institutional activity but a design intervention in its own right: one that shapes the conditions for cumulative learning and open institutional continuity. We propose practitioner stewardship as a professional posture and introduce an independent repository as the practical infrastructure through which that stewardship can be enacted across Latin America.