Playing games to transform the urban
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Date
2022-08-03Type
- Master Thesis
ETH Bibliography
yes
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Abstract
Societal change is imminent and fueled by wicked problems including climate change, biodiversity loss, poverty, pollution, extraction of mineral resources, and decreasing water availability. Where each in its own right poses severe challenges to a sustained and balanced life on earth, they seem to amplify each other in urban landscapes, putting these landscapes under immense pressure. However, this also signals the potential for transformative change within urban landscapes as focal point of these multi-faceted problems. This potential requires appropriate interventions to address these problems whilst accommodating for increasing population growth.
This research aims at the development of a participatory tool that assists intentional transformations of urban landscapes by investigating enabling and hindering factors, i.e. the ‘what’ of the transformation, at the neighbourhood level. It helps identify important themes and factors for the transformation of neighbourhoods in both Hochdorf and Helsinki through a serious game (participatory place-making game) involving relevant urban stakeholders, the ’participants’. Through a number of coding cycles, participant statements – resulting from the in-plenum semi-structured interviews after the game session – are coded by a qualitative analysis employing a structural coding method and thematic analysis. The emerging themes and corresponding factors are planning consisting of the enabling factors ‘early participation and cooperation’, ‘adaptation and agility’, and ‘bridging visions’; the hindering factors ‘resources and competing interests’ and ‘changing needs’. Within mobility both enabling and hindering factors are ‘aboveground parking’ and ‘alternative infrastructure’. For spatial, both enabling and hindering factors are ‘meeting places’ and ‘open structures’. For the theme liveliness the factor ‘trilogy of services’ can both hinder and enable the neighbourhood transformation. Within policy, enabling and hindering is ‘resources’. In identity the enabling factors ‘place-attachment’ and ‘characteristics’ arise. Lastly, for people the simultaneous enabling and hindering factor is ‘inclusion’.
While the serious-gaming method is not a strictly controlled experimental environment and the qualitative data analysis is a highly interpretative act, the factors arising from this endeavor, with the exception of the theme mobility, are well reflected in the urban transformation literature. Future research could therefore focus on the role of mobility as enabling or hindering factor and address the effectiveness of factors by linking them with transformation- and policy frameworks. This would allow to start pave the way for addressing the ‘how’ of urban transformation. Show more
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https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000665350Publication status
publishedPublisher
ETH ZurichSubject
Urban planningOrganisational unit
03823 - Grêt-Regamey, Adrienne / Grêt-Regamey, Adrienne
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ETH Bibliography
yes
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