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Serious gaming to stimulate participatory urban tourism planning

This paper examines how a serious game approach could support a participatory planning process by bringing stakeholders together to discuss interventions that assist the development of sustainable urban tourism. A serious policy game was designed and played in six European cities by a total of 73 participants, reflecting a diverse array of tourism stakeholders. By observing in-game experiences, a pre- and post -game survey and short interviews six months after playing the game, the process and impact of the game was investigated. While it proved difficult to evaluate the value of a serious game approach, results demonstrate that enacting real-life policymaking in a serious game setting can enable stakeholders to come together, and become more aware of the issues and complexities involved with urban tourism planning. This suggests a serious game can be used to stimulate the uptake of academic insights in a playful manner. However, it should be remembered that a game is a tool and does not, in itself, lead to inclusive participatory policymaking and more sustainable urban tourism planning. Consequently, care needs to be taken to ensure inclusiveness and prevent marginalization or disempowerment both within game-design and the political formation of a wider participatory planning approach.

Bidding for Success? Impacts of the European Capital of Culture Bid

The increasingly multifaceted nature of event impacts makes them even more attractive as a potential solution to a range of urban and regional problems. As a result, competition to stage major cultural and sporting events is intensifying, and the cost of bidding is also rising. Given that such bidding processes only produce one winner, this means that a growing number of disappointed cities have to justify the costs of bidding for major events. In this context, we analyse the bidding process for the European Capital of Culture in the Netherlands (2018) and its impacts on local social structures. In particular the article focuses on the less tangible, non-economic effects of bidding for events, establishing a framework based on network formation, public support for the bidding process and social cohesion. The conclusions point to the key role of sociality and networking for events, which should therefore be developed throughout the bidding process for successful impacts, whether the event is won or not.

Eventful cities : cultural management and urban revitalization

Urban Ageing

The crossroads of living in cities on the one hand and ageing of the population on the other is studied in an interdisciplinary field of research called urban ageing (van Hoof and Kazak 2018, van Hoof et al. 2018). People live longer and in better health than ever before in Europe. Despite all the positive aspects of population ageing, it poses many challenges. The interaction of population ageing and urbanisation raises issues in various domains of urban living (Phillipson and Buffel 2016). According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD 2015), the population share of those of 65 years old is expected to climb to 25.1% in 2050 in its member states. Cities in particular have large numbers of older inhabitants and are home to 43.2% of this older population. The need to develop supportive urban communities are major issues for public policy to understand the relationship between population ageing and urban change (Buffel and Phillipson 2016). Plouffe and Kalache (2010) see older citizens as a precious resource, but in order to tap the full potential these people represent for continued human development (Zaidi et al. 2013), the world’s cities must ensure their inclusion and full access to urban spaces, structures, and services. Therefore, cities are called upon to complement the efforts of national governments to address the consequences of the unprecedented demographic shift (OECD 2015). Additionally, at the city level there is a belief to understand the requirements and preferences of local communities (OECD 2015). An important question in relation to urban ageing is what exactly makes a city age-friendly (Alley et al. 2007, Lui et al. 2009, Plouffe and Kalache 2010, Steels 2015, Moulaert and Garon 2016, Age Platform Europe 2018)? Another relevant question is which factors allow some older people in cities to thrive, while others find it hard to cope with the struggles of daily life? This chapter explores and describes which elements and factors make cities age-friendly, for instance, on the neighbourhood level and in relation to technology for older people.

Dismantling urban history

Information and communications technologies (ICT) can be very important to provide access to urban cultural heritage collections. Urban archives contain a lot of (historical) information about people, places, events, objects, trade and artefacts. Its worthwhile to make this information accessible for a bigger public. The core challenge nowadays is to explore the role and meaning of ICT in disseminating this historical knowledge in public spaces. In this paper, we will research the theoretical background of the information value chain in archival science and of the use and context of new media technologies in public spaces. Our research method was a combination of desk research and a case study, in which new interactive media technologies were used to reconstruct historical images of Amsterdam in public spaces. The case study blended digital historical content with physical interactions to provide a user experience of urban history by using innovative storytelling techniques. The resulting prototype made it possible to disseminate historical information from Amsterdam urban archives.

The new frontiers for CCT: Considering consumer-producer interaction in consumer culture

Previous investigations of consumer subcultures in the CCT tradition focused primarily on consumer behaviours, feelings, experiences and meanings of consumption. This paper advocates that in order to deeply understand and interpret a particular subculture, researchers in consumer culture should consider more thoroughly the interaction between consumers and producers in consumption markets. This argument is illustrated with a research project on lifestyle sports. From the results of this study it appears that producers play a vital and interdependent role in meaning and interpretation processes. It is argued that processes in which consumers give meaning to activities can not be isolated from the processes in which producers ascribe meanings to activities, settings and markets. In this 'circuit of culture', production and consumption are not completely separate spheres of existence but rather are mutually constitutive of one another (Du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay, & Negus, 1997).