Civic Design & Making
Cardboard City
A hands-on after-school program for youth ages 7–14 in the Hudson Valley.
A hands-on after-school program for youth ages 7–14 in the Hudson Valley.
What would you build if you could design a whole city? In Cardboard City, students take on the role of real urban planners — designing their city, then cutting and constructing it out of cardboard and recycled materials, one building at a time. Houses, shops, parks, bridges, whatever the city needs. Then on Friday nights, they get to rebuild their city all over again in Minecraft — with pizza and friends. Each six-week session ends with a complete city built entirely by the students.
Along the way, kids learn real design skills: sketching ideas before building them, working at scale, solving structural problems, and making decisions as a group about what their city should be. It's part art studio, part workshop, part city hall — and it draws on the same civic-design thinking behind our CITYLab summer camp.
Curriculum guides, session plans, and program materials for Cardboard City instructors and partner educators are available in the teacher portal.
Access Teacher Portal →Open to youth ages 7–14 in the Hudson Valley. Scholarships available.