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.
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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.
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In urban planning, 3D modeling and virtual reality (VR) provide new means for involving citizens in the planning process. For municipal government, it is essential to know how effective these means are, to justify investments. In this study, we present a case of using VR in a municipal process of civic participation concerning the redesign of a public park. The process included codesign activities and involved citizens in decision-making through a ballot, using 3D-rendered versions of competing designs. In codesign, 3D-modeling tools were instrumental in empowering citizens to negotiate design decisions, to discuss the quality of designs with experts, and to collectively take decisions. This paper demonstrates that, in a ballot on competing designs with 1302 citizens, VR headsets proved to be equally effective compared to other display technologies in informing citizens during decision making. The results of an additional, controlled experiment indicate that VR headsets provide higher engagement and more vivid memories than viewing the designs on non-immersive displays. By integrating research into a municipal process, we contribute evidence of cognitive and engagement effects of using 3D modeling and immersive VR technologies to empower citizens in participatory urban planning. The case described in the paper concerns a public park; a similar approach could be applied to the design of public installations including media architecture.
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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.
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Participatory energy planning at the local level engages citizens, builds legitimacy and trust, and increases successful implementation of renewable energies. In the context of heat planning, technology choices highly vary depending on the local context and social conditions and including social input therefore benefits the planning process. This research adds to the current literature, which lacks concrete examples and verified approaches that clarify what the guiding principles of participatory energy planning are and how the opportunities and challenges can be dealt with. This paper elaborates on these opportunities and challenges and proposes a process design, using multiple tools (a survey, an Information-choice Questionnaire, and workshops) to collect the social input that is necessary to make technology choices in a participatory manner. The process design is applied and tested in a case study of a Dutch neighbourhood and lessons learned are drafted as a basis for further research.
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Significant factors in the success or failure of energy transition arise from the spatial potential of places and their communities. Scenario planning appears to be an appropriate design instrument to enable architects to unveil, conceptualise, imagine, test and communicate this potential to stakeholders. This paper critically refelcts on the scenario as an architectural design instrument. Inscribed with political intentions, scenario planning may be a far from neutral design instrument. Instead of triggering communities to explore local energy potential, a scenario may have a normative effect on a community's imagination. The paper aims to define guidelines for the deployment of scenarios in an open, participatory planning process. To mediate in a local participatory planning process, we argue, scenarios should be situational, dynamic and open-ended, allowing or even triggering communities to (re)define the issues relevant to a place during the ongoing process of energy-transition. How, when and where should scenarios be deployed in order to enable communities to understand and develop their local energy potential?
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Urban renewal and urban area development projects are by nature highly complex processes involving a multiplicity of professionals, stakeholders, and conflicting interests. Adding to this complexity are the formulated ambitions and societal challenges projects have to answer to. One of these ambitions emphasizes a more inclusive planning process, involving the inhabitants in all stages of the planning process. In terms of design, another challenge is to create environments on a human scale while building in high density such as with tall residential buildings. The metropolitan area of Amsterdam intends to have 100,000 new dwellings by 2025. Most of these dwellings have to be added within the existing urban fabric, planned on obsolete inner-city brownfield locations, at the waterfront, nearby highways whereas others are going to be built in deprived neighborhoods. The deprived neighborhoods are mainly located in the postwar areas of Amsterdam, on its northern, western, and south-eastern sides. The deprived neighborhood called the Bijlmermeer located on the south-eastern side of the city, for instance was the first high-rise development project in the Netherlands. It was designed as a single project with identical high-rise buildings in a hexagonal grid surrounded with large green spaces.These deprived, modernistic neighborhoods lack the classic housing block structures with a clear articulation of buildings and street spaces. They appear to be responsible for an ‘inhuman’ scale and demonstrate the lasting impact critical design flaws can have on the daily lives of inhabitants. Hence, the question is how to develop liveable environments where people feel fully supported by building architecture and streetscape configuration. To prevent new urban area developments that will again fail to incorporate human scale, scientific methods and user input are needed to inform the practice of planning and design, and their applied design solutions. Building on two research projects (one on participatory planning and the other on neuroarchitecture research), we explore how the newly emerging field of neuroarchitecture - and the eye-tracker in particular, might enhance urban area developments on a human scale.
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From the article : "In this paper the implications of different research approaches and methods are illustrated by using two projects of the authors. Both projects take place in the same context: exploring participatory innovation within Small-to-Medium sized Enterprizes (SMEs). The main aspects coming forward when comparing the research characteristics of both projects are the importance of time and momentum, the structural set up of the project, people or participants and the abilities of the people involved. The research goal and the background of the researcher are main determinants for the chosen research methods. We hope with this paper to make researchers aware of the implications of the research methods and approach on the results of the project."
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Studies on city‐building games as educational tools show positive results in addressing different learning objectives, but also identify a missing link to reality, as they are mostly computer‐based. Given the differences between existing games and their capabilities, the exact function of these games in an urban planning curriculum is unclear. The city‐building game Cities: Skylines currently has three different versions (Digital, Tabletop, VR). Through an affordance analysis of the game’s three versions, this study analyses how the versions afford four primary knowledge dimensions, and in doing so identifies different educational applications for each version of Cities: Skylines in different planning disciplines. The results show that: (a) the board game is strong in fostering player participation and critical thinking more suited for the social and health studies, public policy, and citizen participation domains of urban planning; (b) the digital version functions as moddable simulator, ensuring familiarity with existing systems and monitoring their effects, useful in logistics and transportation planning; (c) the VR form viscerally involves players in the simulated processes, applicable in design‐focused segments of urban planning, such as sustainable design theory, housing, and land‐use management. The results of this study can help urban planning educators identify possible uses for different versions of Cities: Skylines.
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Aims and objectives: To describe the process of implementing evidence-based practice (EBP) in a clinical nursing setting. Background: EBP has become a major issue in nursing, it is insufficiently integrated in daily practice and its implementation is complex. Design: Participatory action research. Method: The main participants were nurses working in a lung unit of a rural hospital. A multi-method process of data collection was used during the observing, reflecting, planning and acting phases. Data were continuously gathered during a 24-month period from 2010 to 2012, and analysed using an interpretive constant comparative approach. Patients were consulted to incorporate their perspective. Results: A best-practice mode of working was prevalent on the ward. The main barriers to the implementation of EBP were that nurses had little knowledge of EBP and a rather negative attitude towards it, and that their English reading proficiency was poor. The main facilitators were that nurses wanted to deliver high-quality care and were enthusiastic and open to innovation. Implementation strategies included a tailored interactive outreach training and the development and implementation of an evidence-based discharge protocol. The academic model of EBP was adapted. Nurses worked according to the EBP discharge protocol but barely recorded their activities. Nurses favourably evaluated the participatory action research process. Conclusions: Action research provides an opportunity to empower nurses and to tailor EBP to the practice context. Applying and implementing EBP is difficult for front-line nurses with limited EBP competencies. Relevance to clinical practice: Adaptation of the academic model of EBP to a more pragmatic approach seems necessary to introduce EBP into clinical practice. The use of scientific evidence can be facilitated by using pre-appraised evidence. For clinical practice, it seems relevant to integrate scientific evidence with clinical expertise and patient values in nurses’ clinical decision making at the individual patient level.
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