“One of the most important and neglected subjects of real education is that of children regarding the city environment in which they find themselves living. Can they as children have any effect on the evolution of the massive physical items surrounding them? Yes they can...Classes are enormously stimulated by the actual designing, fabricating, and operating various building structures and, above all, building classroom size model of the cities the students plan. I recommend that City Building Education be included in all elementary and high school curricula.”
- Buckminster Fuller, May 8, 1983

“The school must represent life.”
- John Dewey, 1897


Everything is designed by others. We have given away the power to shape the fabric that gives quality to life. We believe that to be a designer requires complex technical skills. Yet, designs that create our environment are often an everyday occurrence which come about out of need.

Non-architects have succeeded in resolving problems for entire cultures. Original thinking satisfies everyday dilemmas on an individual level.

The process by which original designs are achieved is an unrecognized, powerful resource which can be identified and learned. The cultivation of our God given capacities for imaginative, inventive, and projective visualization is a more strategic agenda for general education than teaching students how to memorize and learn from hindsight.

Thinking three-dimensionally allows subjects to be analyzed in context and the relationship is emphasized one thing to another. The classroom city is used as an analogue becoming a microcosm of civilization. The scale model community can be urban, suburban, or rural. A city is any group of people organized to live together, using outside goods and services.

Building a miniaturized city gives the students power over the usually unseen whole, providing context within which countless topics of learning can be studied.

The model city stands as a tangible and constant reminder of the vital bond between classroom life and community life. This familiar territory offers security that allows students to make adventurous projections into the future. The interdependent functioning of daily life has a scale too big to understand or to manage. By this method of learning the living environment is reduced to the context of the model landsite.

The City Building classroom creates the opportunity for students to design the governing body of the classroom and the miniaturized city. The president of the classroom becomes the mayor of the city, designing the responsibilites for both jobs. As president, the student calls the class to order and takes the attendance, and as mayor, presides over the city council. All the students contribute to the design of the city and of the classroom, serving on committees to carry out their plans. In combination with basic subjects and critical thinking skills, these learning techniques provide the means for giving shape to the future in the present.

Students today fill much of their after-school time with TV, movies, video games, and other two-dimensional activities. The results is a flattening out of knowledge. Life is not experienced directly, it is seen in representation. The material world must be reinstated through teaching methods which more substantially shape their jobs and their lives.

The benefits of three-dimensional learning are vast. I have found students more adaptive when transforamtiona and change is required and they ultimately become more productive and more courageous in their tastes--thus better and more discerning consumers. When the process of making such transformation is practiced it has led to the development of initiative...and self-esteem.

The structure of the living environment embodies a continuous process of shift and change. Transforming the ordinary function of an object or an idea in order to resolve a problem is a key element in developing the ability for creative thinking. Tranformation thinking enables students to test their knowledge to produce new and practical applications of information. Making transformations is a key element in creativity.

Making transformations as part of the standard learning process leads to outstanding leaps of insight. Objects, organization and ideas are systematically transformed and then tested in the realistic context of the classroom city.

Consciously using tranformations leads students to question how they can creatively apply previous knowledge to new situations. It engages them in an active process of resolving problems, a crucial element in learning. It gives them tools for coping with the living environment.

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Excerpted with permission. Doreen Nelson is a professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona in the College of Environmental Design. She is the originator and designer of City Building Education, a method for fostering creative abilities through creating cities in the classroom.