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Action! On the Real City – Urban Simulation Game

Transferable competencies Project-based education Extended reality
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During HS 2014, our Chair developed a pilot version of an urban simulation game “Action on the Real City” with D-ARCH, D-USYS and D-BAUG students. We seek support from Innovedum to build on this game’s pedagogical promise and increase the intellectual and contextual complexity of its challenge. We will further develop the game within the context of an ISTP M.Sc. course and beyond.

Abstract

 
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Action! On the real City - Prototype Gameplay player.vimeo.com

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This teaching tool’s development is embedded within the four-year pilot phase of the ETH’s new Institute for Science Technology and Policy (ISTP), which involves D-ARCH, D-BAUG, D-GESS, D-INFK, D-USYS, and D-MAVT. The project aims to “gamify” urban design education, providing M.Sc. students with a deeper understanding of urbanization processes and justification of their own urban interventions, fostering teaching cooperation across disciplines. Within this context we aim to further develop a teaching tool that incorporates interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary methodologies by encouraging students› to take on stakeholder roles in different sectors. This urban simulation game enables Master students from the ISTP program and beyond to work together in teams, each playing the role of actors involved in urban development.

Further development of the game for use as a teaching tool in our spring semester course in 2016, 2017, and 2018 will stimulate students› systematic and creative approaches to the study and practice of urbanization. The project will inform future strategies for trans-departmental teaching within the ISTP and beyond. Close fit with the ETH’s current «critical thinking» initiative forms an integral and essential part of the project, and even closer fit with the Innovedum Grant’s articulated goal of supporting Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teaching projects” ensures that the project can contribute to teaching improvement within the ETH more broadly.

Success factors

This project will refresh teaching through gamifying, the teaching of urban design.
The project also addresses Innovedums focal point theme of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teaching projects and will provide a concrete territory for interdisciplinary interaction, both within the ISTP program and the ETH more broadly.
The final factor ensuring success is that the project links teaching to complex case study scenarios involving both industry and policy, connecting students theoretical knowledge to real world challenges.

Innovative elements

Simply put, the innovative elements of this project are the gamification of urbanization education and the innovative interdisciplinary approach to addressing to complex real-world case studies. This project builds upon pre-existing teaching expertise within the ETH and the ISTP program and combines tried and tested methodologies with innovative tools in order to take them to the next level and improve current teaching practices within the ETH. It provides a novel combination of interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary teaching practices in a practical context.

Room for improvement

Since the game is using abstract cubes with various programs and locations sitting within an abstract context in both the physical and digital game version, it would be now necessary to understand the next detailing phase of such urban games.

Opinion of students

• Very simple way to understand complex urban tasks by using analogue and virtual simulation methods
• Since its open access, using as a actual tool for the designing phase in the architectural studios
• Implementation of Spider-graph as Evaluation method is very effective in decision making process and fluent gameplay.

Tips for lecturers

• In any urban gaming scenarios physical or digital record the gaming sessions to understand the students behavior and decision making
• Any type of urban game needs a physical and a digital version. Physical is much more interactive and engaging whereas the digital version is much more accessible and individually consulted for design tasks
• Assign roles, resources, challenges, conditions and tasks; provide meaningful data and evaluation matrices to target towards a potential goal/vision/outcome

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