If you think a room full of adults playing with Legos is absurd, think again.

As Maryland, the fifth-most densely populated state in the nation, plans to take in more than 1.5 million new people over the next 25 years, public officials, business people and environmentalists are using nontraditional methods to discuss the future growth of developments. As more people move into the state, measures will have to be taken to reallocate the growth to more sparsely populated areas, a task the campus-headquartered National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education and other groups are taking head-on.

“It’s time for Maryland to step back and say, ‘How are we going to accommodate all these new people?'” said Christopher Kurz, one of the statewide committee chairs for the exercise and president of Linden Associates Inc. “What can we do today to plan for that growth in the future?”

The exercise is conducted by Reality Check Plus, a local chapter of a national committee promoting smart growth. The activity involves 10 members of the community sitting around tables with large maps. Using Legos, with each piece representing a number of people and jobs, players must decide collectively where the Legos will go.

“The purpose of the event is to take discussion of transportation and land use and put it into a regional context,” said Peter Shapiro, senior fellow of the Burns Academy of Leadership.

“We used Legos because in the past, we used chips or a computer program, which were not good representations of models,” said Gerrit Knaap, executive director of the National Center for Smart Growth. “The advantage of Legos is that they are 3-D, so you’re able to stack them on top of each other.”

Shapiro, who is part of Reality Check Plus’ Central Maryland Leadership Committee, said the exercises will benefit College Park by allowing people to have a chance to allocate more resources to the city.

“There is less emphasis on developing older neighborhoods,” said Shapiro, who believed older cities such as College Park were receiving less funding than newer ones. “With the exercise, people will see the value of investing in older neighborhoods such as College Park.”

The Reality Check project started in Los Angeles before expanding to Washington, Dallas and eventually to cities in Maryland, according to the Reality Check Plus website.

With more cities experiencing urban sprawl, the exercises give community members a chance to envision the future growth and distribute it properly.

The Reality Check Plus exercise is run independently from the government, which gives the community a chance to voice their opinions of future growth. The events are funded by the various organizations and institutions that helped to create them.

“One of the main things emphasized about the exercise is the fact that it’s independently led,” said Knaap. “But we make sure policy officials participate.”

Reality Check Plus will have four events in Maryland, each representing a different region of the state. The events are scheduled to be held May 25 through June 15, with the Central Maryland program starting June 9.

Contact reporter Jeremy Tam at newsdesk@dbk.umd.edu.