I chatted today with my PlaceMatters colleague and officemate Jason Lally, who just returned from the GeoDesign Summit and who’s pretty jazzed about where geodesign is headed and the opportunities it presents for community planning and civic participation. He’s particularly excited about place-based or reality-based gaming, which has mostly been the “purview of nerds and geeks” until now but which lends itself to planning.
One example is geocaching, which conventionally involves using a map and compass to find objects hidden out in the woods. In this context, which Jason points will be called something different but is essentially the same thing, participants can be tasked with finding specific locations in their community or other sorts of scavenger hunt-type challenges which are oriented around community awareness and relationship-building. In fact, Jason flags an outfit called SCVNGR which is already doing just this sort of gaming commercially. Because mobile platforms are becoming increasingly accessible, and geolocation tools are increasingly pervasive and robust, it will be easier and easier to adapt these tools to community engagement purposes. There isn’t much yet around planning, he says, but it’s coming.
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[...] Planning Council (MAPC) then describes the use of gaming platforms in planning, which is something we’ve been discussing here at PlaceMatters as well. Holly is excited about combining gaming and social media around particular places to [...]
[...] Jacob interviewed me earlier in the year about what I’m excited about this year and my basic answer centered around Place-Based Games. The emergence of social media mashed up with location aware smart phones is enabling new ways to engage citizens in planning and decision making. Clive Thompson writes in March’s issue of Wired about Better Living Through Games. In it he mentions the Guardian’s web app that enabled visitors to the site to look through thousands of receipts submitted by Parliament for inconsistencies: In less than four days, some 20,000 players analyzed a stunning 170,000 pages—and the Guardian published some of the most egregious discoveries, such as an MP who charged £225 ($441) for a sterling silver pen. It turns out that the mechanics of videogames can transform the world—making even the most arduous tasks pleasant and rewarding. [...]
[...] the past year, we were really excited (here & here) about the prospect of gamification in planning. Dr. Eric Gordon, professor at Emerson College and [...]