Stedelijke innovatie – de volgende stap

This session was organised by the consortium of PlayUC (Playing with Urban Complexity).
Speakers were Katharina Gugerell (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) and Koen Esselink (Urban Gro Lab).

Games are powerful tools to engage people in different kinds of processes. Games are artificial systems in which the players integrate ‘real-world’ components, such as values, likes and dislikes, knowledge and skills. Games are also learning environments. Playing itself is a cultural, social and experiental activity that triggers learning. Think about it: people are playing games over and over again. They are failing at a level, but they are trying it again, until they master the level. As ‘serious’ learning technologies games are expected to increase the literacy on certain topics, raise awareness, educate target audiences on specific skills, knowledge or policy, build up administrative and institutional capacity, create strategies and try what would happen, if we would act differently than we are ‘normally’ doing it. Thus, games are interesting means for experimenting, creating coalitions with citizens and tools for participatory approaches and civic city making. Games and digital tools will likely not solve urban or democracy issues; but what we can learn from games is how we can make civic activities for engagement more fun, joyful and engaging.

In this workshop the team has briefly introduced the JPI Urban Europe project ‘Playing with Urban Complexity – Using co-located serious games to reduce the urban carbon footprint’ (PlayUC) and what games are and why the team believes games and game based approaches are valuable. In the second part the participants have play-tested some of the game prototypes that the team has developed so far: City Maker, Energy Safari and Floating City.