Project Title: CityPlayer – A serious gaming tool designed to fully engage citizens in sustainable neighbourhoods and urban mobility.

Researchers: Prof. Silvano de la Llata (Principal Investigator) , Co-PI: Prof. Rilla Khaled, Co-PI: Prof Ursula Eicker, Co-PI: Prof Chun Wang.
Project Manager: Chris Gibbs (Videogame designer)
Key partners: Autorité Régionale de Transport Métropolitain (ARTM ) and Office de Consultation Publique de Montreal (OCPM)
Funded by Volt-Age

Description:
This project addresses the need to decarbonize transportation in communities. All strategies that try to do this have a critical dependency on citizens themselves. The daily travel-related choices of every citizen directly dictate the success (or otherwise!) of the best-laid transportation plans. Put simply, sustainable transportation will only work with citizen support. This is where several major gaps exist. Firstly, public transit organizations in Montreal currently rely on telephone and online surveys to understand the needs / preferences of their communities. These methods have a low response rate, occur infrequently, and yield sparse data. The result is a large knowledge gap in understanding citizens expectations of transportation, which leads to the risk of building unsustainable transport solutions. Secondly, many citizens have a limited understanding of sustainable transportation, why it is important, how they can help and how they might be hindering it. This is another significant knowledge gap which stands in the way of achieving sustainable transportation at community scale. Our solution to plug these gaps is the deployment of a highly novel software tool, ‘City Player’, a gamified survey which will let citizens experience transport-related what-if scenarios and give their feedback on them.

Keywords:
gamification – collaborative planning – digital urbanisms – urban platforms – open planning process.