Games and Serious Games in Urban Planning: Study Cases

In this article we focus on online games and serious games in urban planning. At the beginning we provide some definitions of games and serious games and discuss the potential of serious games. We overview the urban planning games available online and give some examples of the game stories and concepts. The main goal of the article is to explore the potential of serious games in public participatory planning. To this end, a group of students at HafenCity University Hamburg designed and implemented a serious game. The game was entitled B3 Game and applied on the case of a market place in Billstedt, one of the city districts in Hamburg. The game enables the players to design their marketplace and discuss their suggestions with other citizens and urban planners. It aims at supporting playful public participation in urban planning. We conclude the paper with a discussion and further research directions.