Giving Compass' Take:

• Mona Ahmed and Julie Scheidegger explain how Kansas City community members came together to design an inclusive future for the city. 

• How can this process be spread? What are the next steps after the design phase? 

• Find out how CoUrbanize is making it easier for community members to get involved in urban planning. 

At the corner of Linwood Boulevard and Troost Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri, there is an empty lot. A mural painted in black and white. A Family Dollar store. There is a boarded-up building with a bus stop out front and a discount restaurant equipment warehouse that used to be a showcase Firestone Building in the 1930’s.

There is east of Troost and west of Troost – and there isn’t a city in America that segregation didn’t scar in that same way.

But what if a truly diverse cross-section of people, with a wide range of perspectives, discovered a common set of ideas? If taken together, they could form the basis of a future for all of us – for an inclusive community. What would this intersection, this city, look like in 20 years?

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation organized a two-day workshop focused on capturing local residents’ response to that question. Facilitated by Pigeon Hole Productions, 15 Kansas Citians were asked to shake off perceived limitations, and work with their fellow citizens to "World Build."

This Kansas City pilot was a two-day test case where facilitators used guided conversation, gamified interactions, and collaboration exercises, that allowed the group of artists, entrepreneurs, citizens, and stakeholders to develop a snapshot of Kansas City’s future through real-time generation of a set of systems and assets.

Participants combed through census, mapping and historical data, and discussed Kansas City’s strengths and challenges, in order to imagine a new future, the community, collectively, could work toward. From there, the group took a rapid prototyping approach to ideas that were put on display two weeks later at an exhibit held at El Torreon, near the intersection of Linwood Boulevard and Troost Avenue.

Read the full article about designing inclusive communities by Mona Ahmed and Julie Scheidegger at Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.