Why Augmented Reality: Transforming Community Engagement Through Immersive Technology

WHY AUGMENTED REALITY

We chose to integrate Augmented Reality not just as a flashy tech tool, but as a meaningful way to bridge imagination and understanding. While traditional planning materials, maps, renderings, text, can sometimes feel abstract or inaccessible, AR helps translate those ideas into lived experience. By visualizing models within the scale and context of the lots, participants could more easily grasp scale, purpose, and human interaction in a way that static visuals often fail to deliver.

Moreover, AR encourages exploration. Instead of passively viewing ideas, community members became active participants, walking around the models, viewing from different angles, and imagining how these spaces would function in their day-to-day lives. This level of engagement and embodiment creates stronger emotional connections to planning decisions and fosters a deeper sense of agency and excitement.

Ultimately, AR allowed us to co-design with the community in a more dynamic, visual, and inclusive way.

CONTRIBUTION TO THE FIELD OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT – A Tested Method with Repeatability –

This two-part engagement process not only guided the development of the Equity Alliance of Michigan Neighborhood Resiliency Plan but also offered important takeaways for the broader field of community engagement. By combining familiar participatory tools, like mapping and sticky notes, with immersive technologies like AR, we showed how traditional and innovative methods can work together to amplify community voice.

The shift from abstract ideas to tangible 3D visualizations helped residents engage more deeply and sparked richer conversations around design, scale, and use. Importantly, the AR workflow we developed is intentionally lightweight and replicable, it relies on accessible technology (mobile devices, image markers, and downloadable apps), making it adaptable for other neighborhoods and planning contexts.

This approach reinforces the value of iterative engagement, builds trust through visual transparency, and provides a model for planners and community organizations looking to co-create more inclusive, visual, and actionable planning outcomes.

AUGMENTED REALITY: A BRIDGE FROM IDEAS TO VISION

On March 23rd, we took things a step further—literally adding a new dimension. In our second engagement session, we developed and introduced an Augmented Reality (AR)-aided activity to bring the community's earlier feedback to life.

AR is a digital technology that overlays 3D visual content onto the real world through phones, tablet screens, or headsets. In our case, we created low-poly 3D models based on the ideas gathered from the first event. These models were then paired with printed images the same size as sites identified on the map, effectively transforming the flat map into an interactive experience.

When viewed through a tablet, community members could see animations of people interacting with spaces—walking, planting, shopping—offering a tangible representation of what their neighborhood could feel like if their ideas became reality. This method allowed participants to see their ideas take shape, encouraging more nuanced and exciting conversations around land use, density, and design.

Many community members noted how the AR experience helped them better understand scale and placement, and sparked further suggestions and revisions to the original ideas.