Simulating the City: An experimental approach to the use of games in urban design and planning

The growing use of games and gaming-based activities in urban design and planning has been typically aimed at community engagement activities rather than a basis for pedagogical actions, community learning and widening the understanding of complex urban systems. This paper provides a multi-level theoretical grounding for the use of games theory and explores its relationship with urban planning and design. Geogames can reveal the complex and systemic properties of urban planning, through a mix of accessible, simplified and playful characteristics. This paper describes an experimental approach to the use of urban games in a series of citizen science workshops undertaken as part of a national UK festival of social science. We describe the research setting, games selection process and playing of both analogue and digital urban planning games, supported by a semi-structured evaluation of public understanding and awareness of the underlying structures and rules of complex urban systems. We then explore ways in which non-expert participants respond to their newly acquired heuristic knowledge of planning issues.