Funding for 'Playing with Urban Complexity'

The project Playing with Urban Complexity (Play!UC) of the Department of Planning & Environment received funding from JPI Urban Europe. We congratulate Katharina Gugerell als program lead and the rest of the team with this great news, because it is quite a competitive program. Only 10 out of 150 got funded.

About the project
Play!UC aims to foster the understanding of complex urban problems by combining participatory processes with serious games in a co-located setting. In particular, the project seeks to explore how game mechanics can be used to engage the actor group of young adults to make informed decisions that have an impact on their respective urban carbon footprints. Investigating both existing games and novel game-based approaches, the project partners endeavour to create a tested game mechanics toolbox that can serve as a resource for participatory, game-based urban development scenarios.

Researchers
The core team includes young researchers from Austria (Grenn City Lab Vienna, and University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria), Belgium (Hasselt University) and the Netherlands - including architects, planners (mobility, landscape planning), behavioral scientists and game designers/developers. Next to the core team, they have a wide range of transdisciplinary partners from different domains:

1. Public administration - City of Vienna / Environmental Department, City of Groningen / Planning Department, Rijkswaterstaat, City of Genk
2. Civil Society - Bottom up initiatives - Labs - Open Lab Vienna, Agenda 21 Office Vienna, Open Lab Ebbinge, Urban gro Lab, Kenniscentrum Vlaamse Steden, DUDO Limburg
3. Research & Art - WAAG Society, game incubator Genk, Ars Electronica Center (requested)
4. Businesses - Grendel games (requested) and Carbon Footprint Platform Austria

Additional information
Full name of the project:
Playing with Urban Complexity: Using co-located serious games to reduce the carbon footprint among young adults
Duration:
3 years, starting this autumn
Labs:
3 Living Labs, 3 PhD researchers - all 3 PhDs will carry out research at the 3 partner labs