But the city is never finished and can easily be extended into a rich year-long multidisciplinary curriculum.

"The time is 100 years or so in the future, when technology has developed new ways to provide for human needs. Sprawling metropolises are gobbling up the landscape. An old prospector fleeing the discontents of modern urban life comes to a tranquil oasis of natural beauty in the wilderness (represented by the classroom landsite model.) He discovers a new mineral called purium which makes all wastes biodegradable. This discovery has such far-reaching implications that the federal government steps in to get mining operations underway. The students, as agents of the government, are assigned to plan, organize, and build a community to serve the population who mine, process, and ship the purium."

Organizing the new community to accomplish this task requires several steps: 1. The landscape is divided into a grid of districts with each student group responsible for one district. 2. Each group elects officials to coordinate their work and a representative to a city council. 3. The class elects a mayor. 4. The class designates city commissioners for such aspects as housing, education, parks, utlities, etc., as suggested by the needs criteria. 5. Each participant wears a citizen badge indicating district and role.

As students plan their city, conflicts of interest arise that require compromise and sometimes passage of laws. The teacher plays the role of federal government representative, writing memos to the mayor and giving helpful advice wherever needed.

• A city is a complex and diverse entity.
• Basic needs--food, water, shelter, transportation and other vital services--are provided by the city
• The city is a system: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
• Building a city requires planning and cooperation.
• The pressure of need produces change, whether planned for or not.
• People invent the city, and they can adapt and transform it.
• A charted plan is based on knowing specifically what is needed and how to get it.
• Goals are achieved by following a plan of action.

• The project culminates with the arrival of an outside audience--the "national president," parents, other visitors. Students conduct a tour of their city, explaining their work.
• Students compare their results with their need/don’t need criteria. The class votes on how well each criterion was fulfilled.
• Students critique their own work, evaluating the trade-offs they made and listing ways to improve their city.
• Students discuss and plan how they will clean up and dispose of their city, recycling as much as possible and continuing in their city-building roles. They evaluate how well they did the clean-up.

Styrofoam sheets to serve as the base of the city, a variety of building materials, such as cardboard, egg and milk cartons, chicken wire, straight wire, yarn, string, masking tape, drawing paper, bytcher paper, chart paper, plastic pipe, glue, felt-tip markers, paint, scissors, wire cutters, saws, etc.

The project website includes a slide show of examples of cities built by students at various grade levels and a synopsis of Doreen Nelson’s detailed printed teacher’s guidebook to city-building curriculum, Transformations: Process and Theory,--which includes materials for much more elaborate projects as well as Purium. The paperback book is available for $17.95 from The Center for City Building Education (order information is available on the website).