Abstract
Amidst a global health and climate crisis, practitioners, decision-makers, researchers, and community members within the urban planning field are urged to rethink urban development across the globe. Experience suggests that decision-making processes need to be both inclusive and timely in order to respond to current challenges, in particular the management of planet resources and growing social-spatial inequalities. This is due to the fact that a more inclusive approach for urban decision-making enables a more productive dialogue across public, private, and civil society stakeholders, and allows for co-creation rather than exclusion. Gamification and storytelling play a fundamental role in facilitating human communication, meaning, and the contextualization of ideas or emotions by using concrete scenarios and examples. Consequently, gamification and storytelling have been used for urban decision-making in the past to make the process more inclusive and foster participation (Play the City, 2018). However, a lack of training opportunities and resources, as well as bias have challenged the use of such methods (Ampatzidou et al., 2018). This session proposal is linked to the Planning Education Forum: “Bridging Theory and Practice” and proposes a highly interactive workshop, which includes short urban serious games. The session will introduce game-thinking and storytelling as participatory tools for improving inclusivity in the urban decision-making process. Participants will not only learn about the benefits of game-thinking and storytelling in this context, but they will also experience them by taking part in serious games. The games will be based on a specific case study. This Congress workshop will enable participants to i) understand key principles of game-thinking and storytelling, ii) reflect on potential applications for local decision-making and urban planning, iii) introduce gaming and storytelling elements in their professional environment, iv) and help promote user-oriented urbanism and bottom-up approaches in cities. This will be achieved by combining theory and practice in an interactive environment. Tools and tips for replication will be provided. This session is based on work carried out by the ISOCARP Institute for the EU +CityxChange (CxC) project (+CityxChange, 2021). As part of the CxC project, the Institute is developing an innovative approach allowing its workshop participants to take a more active role in storytelling by using gaming elements. The focus of the upcoming CxC storytelling workshop is “Empathy for Sustainable Development”. The session will follow a “knowledge to practice approach”: following a presentation of game-thinking and of the case study, the workshop will become highly interactive and collaborative with the serious games. The last phase of the session will consist of a reflection and discussion time. After the session, workshop participants (and possibly other congress participants) will receive a digital “starters-kit” for setting up and facilitating an urban serious game or storytelling in their own institution. The workshop will be designed for in-person Congress participants but a hybrid or online format is also possible. The workshop will be open to professionals from all sectors of activity (private, public, NGOs…). Minimum capacity for this workshop will be about 14 participants, and maximum capacity will be about 20 participants. Three staff members will coordinate and facilitate the session. References: Ampatzidou, C., et al, 2018. All Work and No Play? Facilitating Serious Games and Gamified Applications in Participatory Urban Planning and Governance. Urban Planning, 3(1), pp.34-46. +CityxChange (b). 2021. Knowledge Base: D9.11: Storytelling workshops, inviting other LHCs and FCs 2. [ONLINE] Available at: https://cityxchange.eu/knowledge-base/d9-11-storytelling-workshops-inviting-other-lhcs-and-fcs-2/. Play the City, 2018. Area development game Arenapoort. Play the City. Available at: https://www.playthecity.eu/playprojects/Area-Development-Game-ArenAPoort
