Community PlanIt

Your Community. Your Future. Your Move.

Community PlanIt is a game that transforms community planning into a fun and meaningful activity for all citizens.

All within a series of time-sensitive missions, players compete with each other to contribute to their community. At the same time, they learn about local issues, connect with each other, and suggest solutions to problems. Players earn coins by responding to the challenges that comprise each mission. When they complete a mission, they can then pledge their coins to local community causes. At the end of the game, the three causes with the highest amount of coins will receive a monetary donation. Each game ends in a face-to-face Game Finale, where players meet with each other and discuss the results of the game with planners and decision makers. Have a say. Support a cause. Play the game. Plan the future.

For Players:

Showing up to a town hall meeting on a Tuesday at 6PM is, let’s face it, tough enough to discourage most people from ever trying. And for those who do make it—how many times have you found yourselves drowned out in the noise? How often have you been unable to articulate in front of the large crowd how you really feel? And does it seem as if, more often than not, your comment gets lost in the wind?

Community PlanIt frees citizens from the pitfalls of the traditional planning meeting and allows players of all backgrounds to participate in the planning process. We believe citizens should be able to participate when they have the time and on their own terms. There should be easy and accessible tools that allow citizens to learn more about the planning affecting them. There should be a public record of everything they have said. And, dare we say it, the process should be FUN.

For Planners and Decision Makers:

Community PlanIt aims to augment existing offline engagement efforts by stepping up where face-to-face meetings often fall flat. All too often planning meetings are beset by a lack of diversity, learning, and trust and a surplus of one-issue activists, incivility, and misunderstandings. Community PlanIt provides a framing that allows planners to guide citizens through the narrative of the planning process, creating opportunities along the way for learning, civil conversation, and meaningful input.

Community PlanIt not only builds trust between citizens and planners, but is itself a powerful data collection tool that allows you to meaningfully analyze citizen input and truly incorporate it into the planning.

In each implementation, Community PlanIt will:

Teach players about important planning issues facing their community
Allow players to problem-solve and dialogue with other residents to find solutions
Enable players to send feedback and local knowledge directly to decision-makers
Strengthen community bonds and build capacity
Push players to challenge others to complete community-improving tasks
Increase the perception of agency and social capital among a diverse range of community stakeholders

Community PlanIt’s curation system allows each community to design a custom game tailored to its own planning issues. Decision-makers can also upload and display important documents on the system, allowing Community PlanIt to serve as a hub for information sharing, as well as a record of community preferences and feedback.

Community PlanIt

Go to project website

Read the Boston Public Schools Implementation Evaluation

Read about the May 2012 implementation in the City of Detroit