Public discussion and learning

A council, a region or a classroom has several ideas on the table and wants to see what they add up to, and to let people argue over the result with the same picture in front of them.

What you are really asking

• Do the proposals add, cancel or compete? Two good ideas can share a site or a budget.
• What does each person in the room care about, and can they see their concern in the result?
• Can people learn the shape of the system by playing with it, rather than being told?

What kind of model answers it

These are models built for a room rather than a desk. Some are simulators of a whole system, simple enough to run in a browser and change in real time, so that a group can try a combination and watch the result move. Some are negotiation tools that hold alternative spatial plans side by side so that people can mark what they support and see where they agree.

On this site, En-ROADS is Climate Interactive's climate simulator, moved by sliders in a browser, built for workshops, and Geodesignhub organises spatial proposals and the negotiation among the people proposing them. Bay Layers is a browser scene that shows how a place is built from shared layers, which is the first thing a group needs to agree on.

What you need

• The proposals, each described the same way.
• A model simple enough to run in the meeting. A model that takes an hour per run is not a tool for a room.
• A facilitator, and a way to record what people chose.

Without a model

A large map, tracing paper, and an afternoon. Then write down what people disagreed about; that is the list of what the model has to show.

Next

Talk to the people affected and Put it in front of its users.