# How would you design your dream city? | James Rojas - Show: TED Talks Daily - Published: 2026-10-22 - Canonical: https://podc.club/en/episode/160904630_8ac1aea004db.html - Audio: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/67587e77c705e441797aff96/e/6ad8c44bc3737ccbbdc0fece/media.mp3 - Source: Edited from a machine transcript of the first 30 minutes of the episode. Not an official summary. Los Angeles urban planner James Rojas grew frustrated with community meetings that drew either empty rooms or shouting matches, so he developed "Place It" — a hands-on workshop method using bottle caps, ice-pop sticks, and hair rollers to let people build their dream neighborhoods instead of talking about them. Across hundreds of sessions spanning age, language, and cultural differences, he found that people consistently converge on the same vision of an ideal city. Real projects in Tijuana, Mexico, and Phoenix, Arizona have since turned those workshop ideas into built reality. ## What this episode answers ### What structural problems plague conventional community input meetings? Meetings produce either empty rooms or a battlefield where a vocal minority dominates while everyone else stays silent; unreadable maps, impenetrable jargon, and unanswered surveys push residents away, and planners can design land use but cannot capture the sensory quality of a place. ### What is "Place It" and how does a workshop session unfold? Thousands of found objects are spread across a table and participants are first asked to build a favorite childhood memory in five minutes without using words; after sharing those creations as a group, teams spend ten minutes co-building an ideal community, shifting from analytical thinking into a creative flow state through the act of making. ### What shared vision of an ideal city do participants build through play? Rather than skyscrapers, participants fill their communities with plazas, public transit, and gardens at the center; walkable neighborhoods with abundant nature, parks, waterways, and spaces for varied physical activity are universal, freeways turn into gardens, and no one builds a sprawling suburban house or a walled gated community — because, as Rojas says, "we're planning from joy." ### What concrete outcomes came out of the Phoenix disability workshop? Participants used their workshop-designed "ideal light-rail station" concepts as the basis for years of phone calls, letters, and emails to the mayor and city council members, and in 2019 a new station opened that incorporated workshop ideas including shaded walkways, low-grade ramps, art, and planted street buffers. ### Why do people of different ages, races, and incomes ultimately arrive at the same conclusions? Childhood memories that people cherish consistently center on multisensory social experiences in nature with family and friends regardless of age, income, race, or hometown — not one participant recreated showing off possessions or arriving at school on time — and establishing that shared foundation first means planning starts from common values rather than competing individual opinions. ## Article ## Community Meetings as "Empty Room or Battlefield" — The Limits of Traditional Participation James Rojas, an urban planner based in Los Angeles, spent years watching community meetings fail in the same two ways. Either the room sat nearly empty, or a loud minority monopolized the conversation while everyone else fell silent. Professional maps were unreadable, surveys went unfilled, and presentations packed with data and measurements never reached people on a human level. Planners, Rojas argues, can design land use correctly and still miss the sensory, felt quality of a place — the very thing residents care about most. ## From Childhood Play to Urban Planning — The Birth of "Place It" The seed of a solution came from Rojas's own childhood. Unable to afford store-bought toys, he received cardboard boxes from his grandmother and spent his time collecting small plastic scraps and ice-pop sticks to build miniature houses, streets, and entire cities. That memory became the foundation of his method: "Place It." In a Place It workshop, thousands of found objects — bottle caps, ice-pop sticks, hair rollers — are spread across a table. The opening prompt is simple: build your favorite childhood memory in five minutes, without words. Participants are told to move their hands and let the objects do the talking. Colors and shapes do the work of triggering recollection. An African American woman picks up a hair roller and is transported back to afternoons at her grandmother's salon. An orange maple leaf sends someone from New England straight into autumn. Once everyone has finished building, the group shares. Summer camps, make-believe games, time with friends, learning to ride a bike — the full range of human memory fills the room. ## "Everyone Wants the Same City" — Play Surfaces a Common Vision After the sharing round, participants notice something: despite differences in age, income, race, and hometown, the cherished childhood memories all cluster around the same thing — multisensory social experiences spent in nature with family and friends. Not one person recreated watching television, showing off possessions, or arriving at school on time. With that common ground established, teams spend ten minutes co-building an "ideal community." The finding has held across hundreds of workshops. People do not build skyscrapers. They build communities where plazas, public transit, and gardens occupy the center. They build walkable neighborhoods rich with parks, waterways, and spaces for varied physical activity. Freeways become gardens. No one constructs a sprawling suburban mansion or a walled gated community. "We're planning from joy," Rojas says, "and that makes all the difference." ## Tijuana and Phoenix — Results in Real Projects Camino Verde, an informal settlement in Tijuana, Mexico, lacked basic infrastructure and public space. Rojas led grassroots community meetings there and submitted a ten-page package of ideas to the city. The result was a multipurpose public facility that combined a community center with a library and gathering space. The Phoenix project stands out as perhaps the most striking example. The Ability360 Center, a facility for people with disabilities that opened in 2008, sits roughly 1.6 kilometers from the nearest light-rail station. In the desert heat of Phoenix, that distance can be life-threatening for people with disabilities. Rojas ran workshops in which each participant designed their own ideal station tailored to their specific disability, then teams merged their proposals into a unified vision. Participants went on to spend years calling, writing letters, and emailing the mayor and city council members. In 2019, a new station finally opened — featuring shaded walkways, low-grade ramps, public art, and planted street buffers that traced directly back to ideas generated in the workshops. ## From Passive Attendees to Community Visionaries "When you go through play," Rojas says, "urban planning becomes human again. People don't just describe — they show, feel, and own. Something shifts. They move from passive participants to visionaries for their own communities." By demonstrating that the simplest act of playing with discarded materials can be a powerful tool for imagining something better — rather than simply reproducing what already exists — Rojas has opened a new way for cities to listen. ## Takeaways - The "Place It" workshop method — building with found objects like bottle caps and hair rollers — replaces dysfunctional community meetings with an experience where people who were previously silent design their own neighborhoods. - Across hundreds of workshops, participants of every age, race, and language consistently arrive at the same ideal: a walkable, nature-rich community centered on plazas and public transit, not highways or gated subdivisions. - In Phoenix, a light-rail station whose design reflects ideas generated by disability workshop participants opened in 2019, proving that play-based planning can translate directly into built public infrastructure.