In 1967 a symposium was organised in Adelaide to address the poor quality of urban development that had become prevalent in Australia in the 1960s. Writings of Robin Boyd had summarised some of the issues and the South Australian community decided to take action to determine how to improve our urban environment. Don Gazzard, author of Outrage, gave the keynote address and since then Ren DeGaris, Don Dunstan, Hugh Stretton, Dame Roma Mitchell and many others have played a part.

The outcome was the establishment in 1969 of the Civic Trust of South Australia Inc. Jack H McConnell was the inaugural President and Jim W Warburton the Vice Chairman. A report was published by David Jones, Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture in the University of Adelaide in Australian Planner Vol 33 No 3 1996.

The Trust, now named the Australian Civic Trust due to its wider environmental scope, is a proudly independent and voluntary association seeking community views on civic issues and coordinating responses by community representatives, leaders and experts to encourage higher civic standards for the community's benefit. Awards are given annually to good developments and brickbats to poor ones.

The primary focus has always been social and environmental issues in urban design and in 2004 this was formally recognised by the introduction of purely social and ecological categories in addition to those for the built environment. Thus the awards and brickbats program is now specifically designed to cover the general civic spectrum and the scope has recently been extended to identifying the civic values and aspirations of the community.