The challenges of 21st century city-making require innovative methods that incorporate the complexity of today’s rapidly urbanizing world. Traditional ways of urban planning and design — top-down and singlehanded — are already making way for a practice of city-making deeply rooted in the collective experience, creativity, and intelligence of growing and increasingly diverse groups of people. This will be crucial in building sustainable urban futures.

Gaming carries unexplored potentials for city-making. When inserted carefully into urban processes, games significantly improve the practice of conventional urban design by, for example, supporting collaborative decision-making and design, extracting and visualizing comprehensible meaning from big data, and contributing to conflict resolution. However, the field of City-Gaming is relatively new and there is an urgent need for building an integrated community, developing a common language, and supporting newcomers. These are the driving motivations behind the launch of Games for Cities: an ongoing public research- and event-program that explores the role of gaming for complex urban issues.

Games for Cities program has delivered three concrete outcomes:

1. A guidebook for policy makers and regulators to employ city gaming in their daily work.

2. Activation and growth of the City Gaming community through public events and an online network.

3. A comprehensive City Gaming database on the Games for Cities website.

For more information visit our platform website: http://gamesforcities.com/