Developing a community vision using affordable and available tools and materials.

Box City is a tribute to low-tech visualization techniques that don't depend upon fancy computer programs or expensive consultant fees. In some settings and for some community members, sophisticated technologies can be alienating. Box City provides a low-tech introduction to neighborhood planning that instantly involves people of all ages.

Box City, offered by the Center for Understanding the Built Environment (CUBE) in Kansas, is a visioning and learning exercise for communities wanting to build consensus around planning and development efforts and envision new possibilities for their community. Using cardboard boxes, construction paper, scissors and glue, participants construct 3-dimensional models of selected sections of their neighborhoods and, with help from CUBE facilitators, go through a visioning process on potential neighborhood improvements. Because Box City uses universally familiar kindergarten-type art supplies in the visioning process, people, young and old, feel more comfortable expressing themselves, identifying what they would like to keep and what they would like to change in their community. The process gets people talking to each other, empowering participants to get involved in implementing their newly created community vision.

Here, roughly 100 Washington Wheatley residents in Kansas City used discarded cardboard and paper to construct tiny buildings, buses, and streetlights. They built a miniature model of a new Prospect Avenue -- their dreams glued into cardboard. The Box City was photographed and documented and translated into a plan for the city to implement.

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