Minecraft and Playful Public Participation in Urban Design

James Delaney
Additional contact information
James Delaney: The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London, UK

Urban Planning, 2022, vol. 7, issue 2, 330-342

Abstract: Digital networks are transforming the way in which our built environment is planned, designed, and developed. Whilst many have heralded this technology as a solution to the problems of citizen engagement and participation in planning and design processes, the state of public participation in this field still arguably leaves much to be desired. In the last decade, academics and practitioners have explored the possibilities of 3D, multi-user, digital environments in planning and urban design contexts. These “inhabited virtual spaces,” where stakeholders are represented through digital avatars, hold the possibility of engaging a much wider audience in participatory processes, creating a more democratic and bottom-up process, and improving the outcome of community consultations. These multi-user environments can take many forms—and among the most promising are game environments. The benefits of using play and games in creative tasks and decision-making have been widely recorded, leading to the developing field of “serious games,” games which have been designed to accomplish a serious task. Despite this, there has been a reluctance to entertain the idea of appropriating more commercial and widely played games for serious tasks, rather than designing ones from scratch. One game in particular, Minecraft, has shown promising results as part of a participatory design methodology pioneered by UN-Habitat and the Block by Block Foundation. Through an analysis of this program, I will explore how the videogame Minecraft might be used as an innovative tool to improve public participation in urban design, whilst offering a virtual alternative to traditional models of consultation.

Keywords: city-making; co-design; games; geogames; participatory approaches; playful city; public participation; urban planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/5229 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:urbpla:v7:y:2022:i:2:p:330-342

DOI: 10.17645/up.v7i2.5229

Access Statistics for this article

Urban Planning is currently edited by Tiago Cardoso

More articles in Urban Planning from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().