Paper City: An Urban Story

As part of its Urban October celebrations, UN-Habitat has launched “Paper City”, a stop-motion video animation portraying today’s urban challenges using a paper and cardboard mock city.

Aimed at an audience not yet familiar with urbanization processes, the video intends to draw attention on current issues caused by rapid and uncontrolled city growth. It points out possible urban solutions in a visual and attention-captivating way that is fun and easy to understand.

The video was done using a stop-motion technique. Over 1500 photo stills where taken of a 4 sqm mock city including buildings, streets, trees, cars and people made out of paper, cardboard and polystyrene. The frames were then added together to create motion.