The Neighbourhood Game From Behavioural Economics to Urban Planning

The rapid advances of information and communication technologies (or ICTs) and the mass online participation have increased the expectations for the long awaited visions of e-participation and e-democracy. However, there are still many challenges that need to be addressed related to privacy, data ownership and control, and various types of digital divides. Perhaps the most fundamental requirement is the need for information exchange between parties that do not necessarily share common interests, education, and cultural backgrounds. To achieve this, ICT could significantly help if designers understand in depth the way technology affects behaviour in the evolving hybrid (virtual and physical) space of modern cities, and communities are empowered to choose the tools that are most suitable for their environment and configure them according to their own values and objectives. In this paper we introduce a research framework connecting two relatively remote until today disciplines, namely behavioural economics and urban planning, through the mediation of computer science. More specifically, we describe a long-term social learning process evolved around a configurable ICT framework, the NetHood Toolkit, which will support a wide variety of hybrid interactions between people in physical proximity. The definition of a specific set of information sharing games with various configuration options can then form the basis for a real life experimentation process with potential benefits both for understanding human behaviour and for reaching important social objectives. Keywords—Interdisciplinary research; hybrid realm; social software; information sharing; behavioural economics; urban planning; civic engagement.