Learning how to make trade-offs in pursuit of sustainable urban development : building a serious game

Abstract

Sustainable urban development is not a goal in itself; it is about maintaining and enhancing the quality of life within a city, without jeopardizing the natural and man-made systems that bring about this quality. Urban quality is known to be a multidimensional concept, which makes it difficult to manage. Furthermore, the indicators that are used to steer and monitor urban quality include objective as well as subjective variables; therefore, urban quality means different things to different actors. Local governments, urban planners and their advisors, in their pursuit of sustainable urban development, are facing serious dilemma's that arise from this illusive character of what we call 'urban quality'. They strive for high densities – which allows for a high level of amenities and public transport and minimizes conversion of green and open space into urban areas – but in the meantime have to minimize nuisance, pollution and risk. They make trade-offs between space for residential buildings and parks, or between the advantages of living close to the station and the downside of it, being bothered by railway noise. They have a tight budget, but also want to prepare for the effects of climate change. In short: they must balance a lot of different interests advocated by almost as many stakeholders. Apart from the technical aspects of urban quality, engineers who are concerned with designing and building the city must know how to deal with the 'soft' side of it: how can diverging interests be brought together or, if this is not possible, how can optimal trade-offs be made? Following a 'learning-by-doing' approach, we wanted to develop a serious game that would confront players with diverging interests in a particularly difficult case, namely the redevelopment of an inner-city area close to a railway station. We had a team of five students (from our geo-informatics, urban planning and real estate management programs) analyse the most important stakeholders and their interests and build a serious game, based on an existing game engine. We adopted a two-pronged strategy: 1: analyse existing urban projects of this type, combined with basic training of the game's concept and engine; 2: convert the analysis into a storyboard of stakeholders, actions, indicators and interrelationships. Apart from a first working prototype of the game, the learning effect of this pilot project was that students became aware of the importance of communicating and negotiating between stakeholders. ; Non UBC ; Unreviewed ; Faculty ; Other