Tech-based gamification strategies for Public Space regeneration

Public spaces play a pivotal role in urban regeneration strategies, representing the main field of action to strengthen social interaction and build the sense of community, the physical framework for services and strategies that support citizens’ needs, and the structural nodes of urban systems that move towards resiliency and sustainability models. The engagement of citizens in co-design and co-creation strategies is renowned as crucial to address their needs and desires, as well as to enable the implementation of regeneration projects, activating the citizen agency. However, it suffers limitations posed by difficulty to engage a large and representative sector of society, and by complexity and multidisciplinarity of the design process. This study aims to assess the potential of serious game approaches and gamification strategies, empowered by digital technologies, to engage citizens in co-design and co-creation of sustainable and livable public spaces. Presenting three case studies developed at IAAC-Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and implemented in Barcelona and Nantes, this research compares different methodologies and gamification tools for co-design: a video game, a physical game board, and a gamified interactive sensor/actuator installation. They are evaluated based on their capacity to engage individuals, stimulate interaction between citizens, generate valid design solutions for livable and healthier environments, and support co-creation and real implementation of solutions. The first case study is the mobile-basedSuperbarrio video game platform. It empowers citizens to visualise and design the public space in 3D, receiving a score calculated on the impact of the design proposal on parameters of wellbeing, health, mobility, nature, participation, and economy. The second case study is the PPS Urban Game Board, a digitally fabricated game embedded with digital sensing devices, supporting the co-design process through game tokens that belongs to categories of health and safety, resilience, energy and carbon neutrality, food, circular economy, mobility. The third case study is Lumina Foresta installation, which citizens in a 360° interactive gamified environment with sensors and actuators. Connecting awareness-raising and activism, it focuses on sustainability and renaturalisation of the urbanenvironment. The assessment and comparison display the correlation between different game tools and mechanics and different levels of impact with regards to engagement, community building and implementation capacity. It includes: the potential of videogames to engage a larger audience, as the game can be accessed in different locations including the public space or the users’ private houses; the high capacity of physical games to create interaction, interaction, community building and problem solving; the potential of interactive installations as communication tools to captivate citizens interest and foster awareness-raising, despite limited impact of the co-design outcome and process. The study demonstrates the potential of digital-based serious games and gamification strategies to engage citizens in co-design and co-creation of livable public spaces and offers a critical evaluation of different tools to enable researchers and practitioners for future studies, developments and applications according to local contextual criteria and objectives.