Game Mechanics as Thinking Mechanisms for Urban Development

We witness a growing interest from urban designers in technology to understand cities as complex systems. However, more than often, the use of such technologies is a one-way knowledge generation, meaning that the urban designer is the one benefiting the most. Serious games have the ability to create concepts that lead to a better understanding of the issues that arise in urban development, improving society's implication in the process. This chapter addresses the potential of serious game mechanics to produce mutual transfer of knowledge and solutions able to enhance urban development strategies. Serious games can be one possible answer to motivate citizens and create social awareness and appropriation. Discussing the City Makers game prototype, authors underline the advantages of game mechanics as thinking mechanisms in improving urban development dynamics.

Urban Information Systems and Digital Channels to Enhance Transparency and Participation in Urban Planning

Through the use of information and communication technologies, Public Administrations make its relevant information related to issues of public interest available for citizens. In the specific field of urban planning, Spanish administrations are making a huge effort to improve the urban information and make it available online for citizens developing Urban Information Systems, tools based on Geographic Information Systems which offer visualization and interaction options and increase transparency. More recently, digital channels have started to be used to enhance participation and promote democratic processes at regional, municipal, and local level. The chapter analyses different digital tools and services implemented to improve transparency in urban planning and web-based participation processes developed in Spain to check the result of these developments concluding that there is still a long considerable way to go since information and communications technologies offers a lot of options and tools to improve these processes, particularly through the application of PPGIS.

Introduction

The chapter discusses the background and topic of the book and offers a broad perspective of trends, opportunities, and challenges associated with the widespread use of new smart digital technologies to enhance and sustain citizen e-participation in the different phases of the urban e-planning process. The chapter identifies and discusses factors responsible for the changes in the role assigned to citizens in spatial planning processes, and explores new trends and opportunities for the development of a more citizen-responsive urban e-planning as a result of the use of these smart digital tools.

Gathering Global Intelligence for Assessing Performance of Smart, Sustainable, Resilient, and Inclusive Cities (S2RIC)

This chapter sets up a comprehensive, multidimensional indicator framework for assessing performance of Smart, Sustainable, Resilient, and Inclusive Cities (S2RIC). A thorough review of contemporary, globally-initiated, indicator frameworks that address cities' smartness, sustainability, resilience, and inclusiveness is conducted – top-down approach; coupled with an attempt to integrate the different perspectives explored into a more enriched and coherent indicator framework. This aims at providing assistance to urban planners and policy makers in assessing, monitoring, managing cities, and making more informed sustainability decisions; while keeping in track with new concerns in the urban planning realm (e.g. resilience, disaster reduction) and recently endorsed global sustainability goals and frameworks. An indicators' selection process is also illustrated – bottom-up approach – for navigating in the proposed framework and identifying appropriate city- and citizen-specific indicators for carrying out relevant assessments and guiding sound policies.

Durable Civic Technology

Minecraft is a video game that allows players to interact with a 3D environment. Launched in 2009, Minecraft has surprisingly durable popularity. Users report that Minecraft is easy to learn and understand, engaging and immersive, and adaptable. Outside North America it has been piloted for urban planning public consultation processes. Five years ago, authors conducted research using key informant interviews. This study asked practicing urban planners in Canada to assess Minecraft's potential. Key findings address Minecraft's usefulness as a visualization tool, its role in building public trust in local planning processes, the place of play in planning, and the challenges associated with its use in public consultation. This chapter explores Minecraft's ongoing use, offers reflections as to how this game could effectively be used for public consultation, and concludes with key lessons for urban planners whose practice intersects with our digitally-enabled world, with a particular focus on new application possibilities in smart city planning projects.

Smart Technologies, E-Participation, and the ‘Right to the Territory'

The chapter is finalized to scrutinize the capacity of netizens' e-participation and/or online activism to effectively influence territorial governance, by analyzing the role and the relevance of the Web in shaping new and variegated forms of “social movements” both in urban and in rural/marginal contexts trough a comparative analysis of four case studies in Italy. The main aim is to critically rethink - conceptually and politically - the intersection among sustainability, smart technologies, local communities, and the “right to the territory”, to provide new theoretical insights about bottom-up and “participative” concepts of smartness.

Emotional Mapping in Local Neighbourhood Planning

Urban planning and decision-making can often be elitist and non-participatory processes. Citizens are frequently a neglected part of these activities and are usually only involved in and considered before elections, or are informed about the planned changes at the very last stage, often beyond the possibility to change anything. Nevertheless, citizens have a relevant role in the processes of town planning and administration; and this chapter describes the implementation of a web-based crowdsourcing tool for the collection and visualisation of emotion-based and subjective information on maps used in the neighbourhood planning and revitalisation. The tool was used in four case studies of neighbourhood development consultations in various locations in the Czech Republic in 2015-2018. The results presented in this chapter allow for the replication of the research methodology in other areas, both location-wise as well as topic-wise.

GIS and E-Governance for Urban Local Bodies in India

Critical GIS recognizes that GIS technology is socially constructed and emphasizes the key role of socio-political and institutional contexts in shaping GIS use. This chapter focuses on the use of GIS for e-governance by urban local bodies (ULB) in the southern state of India and reflects on the status of the project. In recent years the massive proliferation of ICTs in India has led to a transformation from traditional governance to e – governance. Several planning projects have been launched under the rubric of e-governance. The theoretical framework used in this study draws from the Critical GIS body of literature that calls for taking a holistic approach to GIS examination by coupling the internal contexts with the external contextual environment shaping GIS use. To achieve this goal qualitative methods of inquiry are adopted to investigate a GIS based municipal e-governance project initiated by the Government of Karnataka to address issues of urban development.

The Uncertain Participatory Geoweb

Communities in the Okanagan Valley, Canada are increasingly under threat from forest fires due to climate change and expanding urban development into fire interface zones. The effects of forest fires are not always quantifiable ‘hard' impacts. The fluid and chaotic ‘soft' impacts can have a profound effect on the collective consciousness of the people living close to those fires. To make sense of these impacts and understand where and when these forest fires have taken place, authors developed and implemented a participatory geoweb tool to support citizen-to-citizen dialogue and tell the stories of these impacts. The tool was launched in 2014. This chapter explores the interlinked ‘chaos' that exists between forest fires, volunteered geographic information, and the participatory geoweb. It further examines how academics and practitioners understand the post-project and longer-term impact of participatory geoweb projects and reflects on how the contemporary state of its practice contributes to transformative social change.

Redefining Community Engagement in Smart Cities

Community engagement has been widely discussed in both academic and practitioner literature, in particular around the types of tools, techniques, and methods used to undertake engagement. The practice of community engagement is at risk of becoming fragmented if there is a disconnection between the engagement objectives, the mechanisms used for people to interact, and the outcomes that ultimately contribute towards decision-making. Building on their previous work, including an established set of dynamic design patterns for situated, digitally augmented community engagement, authors propose a smart engagement ecosystem as a conceptual model that has the ability to connect people through physical, digital, online, and hybrid engagement approaches. The model postulates that participation between these various approaches are non-linear and reactive; where each approach can be used individually or collectively within the ecosystem. The chapter discusses how this capability can be leveraged within our smart engagement ecosystem model to connect, engage, and interact with local communities.