Games and Serious Games in Urban

Planning: Study Cases

Alenka PoplinHafenCity University, Hamburg

Germany, Europe

Motivation

Our work on the concept of a playful public participation (PPP): public participation which central part is play.

Hypothesis: Implementation and further develpment of the PPP concept will lead to overcoming the isses of rational ignorance and attract more citizens in participatory activities.

Rational ignorance in urban planning: The citizens decide to ignore the possibility of involvement and participation | they are rationally ignorant.

public choice theory (Buchanan and Gordon, 1962)

Alenka Poplin

Playful Public Participation

Elements of a playful public participation:• Play and game• Storytelling: sophisticated multimedia storytelling

including 3D visualisations, voice, music and virtual reality

• Walking and moving: movable planning (Rottenbacher 2004)

• Drawing and sketching:argue maps (Rinner 2001),georeferenced drawings

© Rottenbacher 2004

Many Definitions of „Game“

David Parlett (1961) makes a distinction between the formal and informal game.

An informal game is undirected play.

A formal game has a two-fold structure based on ends and means:

• Ends: a context to achieve an objective (to win). Only one of the players can achieve it.

• Means: an agreed set of equipment and of procedural „rules“ by which the equipment is manipulated to produce a winning situation.

See some more in: Salen K. and E. Zimmerman, Rules of Play (2004)

Alenka Poplin

Many Definitions of „Game“

C. Abt (1970)

“Reduced to its formal essence, a game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context. A more conventional definition would say that a game is a context with rules among adversaries trying to win objectives”.

Abt, C., Serious Games, New York, The Viking Press, 1970

Alenka Poplin

Serious Games

Applying games and simulations technology to non-entertainment domains results in serious games.

The main idea of serious games is to get players to learn something, and, if possible, have fun doing it.

Applications range from education, health, public policy, strategic communication, cultural heritage, etc.

Enormous potential potential of serious games for urban planning; it is novel and still in the initial phase.

Alenka Poplin

Online Urban Planning Games

Entertainment games using urban planning as the main topic.

SimCity• Perhaps one of the most famous urban planning games.• A simulation game with the main objective: to build and

maintain the city and make the citizens happy by creating an optimal environment.

• Includes disasters such as floods, fires, earthquakes, tornados, volcanoes, etc.

• First released in 1989, a commercialsuccess, in 2008 the source code was released as a free software with thetitle Micropolis.

The original cover from 1989

Online Urban Planning Games cont.

PlastiCity• A computer game based on the architectonic visions and

controversial suggestions of British architect Will Alsop. • It is focused on the Bradford city centre.• The players can build, demolish, repaint, rescale and

rotate buildings in the city centre.

• The representation is done in a 3D environment and supports complex interactionsof the player and the game environment.

© PlastyCity

Online Urban Planning Games cont.

Urban Plans• An urban planning, non-competitive, simulation game. • The main objective is to reach the highest possible

population in the city. • The basic city structure includes streets, green areas

representing lots, blue areas representing water, in a simple layout predefined by the game.

• The player can insert buildings and trees with a simple drag and drop functionality.

• Created in Adobe Flash environment.

Online Urban Planning Games cont.

City Creator• Similar to Urban Plans | represents a non-competitive

kind of a game.• The game starts with instructions on how to play the

game and a decision for one of the four possibilities displayed in the right field of the game.

• The player can drag and drop the elements of the city in the environment of the game.

• The icons show different kinds of buildings;they are colourful and represented in 3D.

Online Urban Planning Games cont.

Super City• Created in Adobe Flash | available online for free.• The player can build homes and shops and gain money and

population. • The economy is involved as well. • In some versions of the game, the player has to pay a bill of

$ 800 every five days. • The enemies sometimes

attack the city and the player has to fight the enemies.

• Every fight costs $ 500. • Facebook version of the

game is available.

Research Goal

Our main research goal was to concentrate on the design of a serious game which could possibly support the concept of a playful public participation and to implement the game in the form that can later be tested with the help of potential users.

The game was developed in 2009 at the HafenCity University in a student research project which lasted one year. It included an exchange with Florida Atlantic University, which helped to improve the concept of the game.

Alenka Poplin

Urban Planning Situation: BillstedtBillstedt is a culturally mixed section of Hamburg with about

70.000 inhabitants.

It has a rather bad reputation, a high crime rate, unbalanced social structure, and high unemployment rates.

23% of the inhabitants are foreigners, and there is an extraordinary high number of children.

Billstedt Marketplace

The marketplace in Billstedt is surrounded by a shopping centre on the north-west side and some shops and coffee houses on the east side.

The inhabitants of the city entering the Billstedt shopping centre pass by some old benches and some neglected trees.

The marketplace could

potentially be used for pleasant

activities such as enjoying a

coffee, playing with children,

reading, etc.

B3 Game

B Bürger | Citizens

B Beteiligung | Participation

B Billstedt | Billstedt

The B3 Game aims at enabling the citizens of Billstedt to concentrate on the marketplace, which is the subject of public discussions.

Goal: Design your marketplace! | Gestalten Sie Ihren Marktplatz!

The user interface of the game: Adobe Flash.

Alenka Poplin

B3 User Interface

B3 Game Options

B3 Game: Design your Marketplace

Comparable Recent Developments

• Participatory Chinatown (2009/10) used in a public participatory process. The results were considered in the 2010 Chinatown master plan.

• IBM game CityOne first introduced at the IMPACT 2010 conference in Las Vegas, labelled as a “serious game”. Users: urban planners, students, academics.

Conclusions

Designing the B3 Game openned the whole range of questions: „how serious can a serious game in urban planning be?“

• Environment: How close to reality should the environment be presented in the game?

• Urban planning topics: Shall they be taken directly from the current discussions about the changes in the city, or can this bring additional misunderstandings between the urban planners and citizens?

• Results of the participatory process: What should happen with the results?

Integrating play and games in public participation is a promising research field. There is some more interesting work to be done

Alenka Poplin

"Good - Let's say we agree."

(Cartoon by Pierre Kroll)

Thank you!alenka.poplin@hcu-hamburg.de

Contact

Alenka Poplin | Prof. Dr., MBA

HafenCity University Hamburg | www.hcu-hamburg.de

Computer-based Methods in Urban- and Regional Planninghttp://www.hcu-hamburg.de/professorinnen/alenka-krek-poplin/

Digital City Research Groupwww.digitalcity.hcu-hamburg.de

Winterhuder Weg 29 | Room 214 22085 Hamburg | Germany