All Work and No Play? Facilitating Serious Games and Gamified Applications in Participatory Urban Planning and Governance

As games and gamified applications gain prominence in the academic debate on participatory practices, it is worth examining whether the application of such tools in the daily planning practice could be beneficial. This study identifies a research–practice gap in the current state of participatory urban planning practices in three European cities. Planners and policymakers acknowledge the benefits of employing such tools to illustrate complex urban issues, evoke social learning, and make participation more accessible. However, a series of impediments relating to planners’ inexperience with participatory methods, resource constraints, and sceptical adult audiences, limits the broader application of games and gamified applications within participatory urban planning practices. Games and gamified applications could become more widely employed within participatory planning processes when process facilitators become better educated and better able to judge the situations in which such tools could be implemented as part of the planning process, and if such applications are simple and useful, and if their development process is based on co-creation with the participating publics

Stadt spielerisch verstehen und mitgestalten:Wie das Serious Game 'Mobility Safari' nachhaltige urbane Mobilitätslösungen fördert

Das Thema der Partizipation in der Stadtentwicklung und -planung hat in den letzten Jahren einen deutlichen Bedeutungszuwachs erfahren. Traditionelle Planungs-, Steuerungs- und Kommunikationsansätze stoßen in einer immer vielschichtiger werdenden Akteurslandschaft und dem zunehmenden Bedürfnis der Bürgerinnen und Bürger nach Mitbestimmung an ihre Grenzen. Um diese Barrieren zu überwinden, wird in jüngerer Zeit zunehmend mit spielerischen Ansätzen in Form von Serious Games experimentiert. Durch Serious Games sollen auf unterhaltsame Weise Information, Wissen, Handlungsmaßnahmen und Initiativen vorgestellt werden. Ebenso werden stadträumliche und planerische Fragen diskutiert, Lösungen erarbeitet oder generelle Partizipationsmöglichkeiten aufgezeigt, um Akteure zur Beteiligung zu stimulieren und gegenseitig voneinander zu lernen. Dieser Artikel thematisiert, wieweit das Spiel „Mobility Safari“ Spieler und Spielerinnen spezifisches Mobilitätswissen vermittelt, wodurch das soziale Lernen forciert und Möglichkeiten zur Beteiligung aufgezeigt werden können

Radical care: embracing feminist finance

Amateur Cities and the Institute of Network Cultures are proud to present a feminist finance zine titled ‘Radical Care: Embracing Feminist Finance’. It is a cooperative future-thinking effort from the MoneyLab network, a collective of artists, designers, researchers, geeks and activists dedicated to the task of experimenting with more equitable, diverse, and sustainable futures for finance and economy. The zine is a diverse collection of voices organized in three types of contributions: quickfire interviews (short reactions to big questions), double interviews (conversational long reads), and artworks (projects addressing discussed subjects visually). Today we live in a world that is dominated by an economic system that is global, competitive, and centred around a rational and egoistic vision of the human (homo economicus). In this publication we asked ourselves and over twenty contributors how we can embrace different values focusing on locality, cooperation, and caring. Can an affective and compassionate vision of the human get us closer to homo reciprocans or cooperans? How can we break out of the crisis of imagination, and as Lana Swartz and Martin Zeilinger propose, move towards the crisis of implementation? How we can navigate the relations of exchange and trust between humans and machines, but also, our relationship with the environment. Can we finally not only recognize the climate catastrophe, but also find ways to act against it, through an economic lens, mindful of not reproducing patriarchal and colonial histories? As Denise Thwaites notes, this work starts with careful and respectful listening to voices that have long been silenced. In the words of Ruth Catlow and Reijer Hendrikse: history is not over, we are just beginning! We hope this zine will inspire you and those around you to think about alternative ways in which we could organize our economies. We highly encourage you to share it and let it reach new places. For that reason we attached a travel record card as a cover. Please keep it in motion and get in touch

Energy Safari: Prototype Serious Game

Prototype Serious Game JPI Urban Europe, Playing with Urban Complexit

Learning from Game Design:Understanding Participatory processes through Game Mechanics

With the increasing interest of local governments in civic participation, it becomes important to explore the available methods for orchestrating participatory processes and evaluate how different tools address some of the common issues associated with participatory processes. Game design is an expanding field where systems thinking is put to practice by combining simple mechanics into full game experiences. This paper argues that urban planners will be able to improve the coherence and overall experience of participatory processes by thinking of participatory tools in terms of separate game mechanics, which when used in balance, create a compelling player/participant experience. In doing so, some of the challenges faced by existing participatory frameworks can be addressed. The potentials and challenges of approaching the design of participatory processes as a game design process are discussed in the framework of three case studies in the Netherlands, Austria and Belgium