This article concentrates on ways in which novel playful technologies can engage youth in co-creation of living environments. The presented study focuses on five selected prototypes of serious digital geogames and gamified storytelling that were developed specifically for younger generations of users. The analysis concentrates on reviewing their goals, game story, outcomes, and the results of testing serious digital geogames prototypes with youth. It leads to a set of identified urban planning engagement forms that can be well supported with the help of serious digital geogames. They include exploring landscapes, learning about places, learning about specific topics, reconstructing the past, envisioning the future, connecting with action projects, and communicating. The article concludes with the discussion of the main findings and perspectives for further research.

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This paper explores tangible and intangible characteristics of places. It concentrates on gathering characteristics, emotions, memories and stories related to self-selected evocative places in a city. Evocative places are defined as places that evoke images, memories or emotions. There are two goals identified for this article. The first goal is to study which words citizens use to describe the main characteristics of their self-selected evocative places. The second goal is to map emotions associated with the self-selected evocative places. The case study selected in this research is the city of Vitória in Brazil. We collected 192 evocative places and their characteristics with the help of an online mapping platform that links an online questionnaire with an interactive map. This paper summarizes the main results gathered empirically about evocative places in Vitória, their characteristics and the emotions felt at these places. These places are then mapped in a geographic information system (GIS) in order to understand their locations and concentrations. On the basis of this empirical work in Vitória , and the work accomplished in the cities of Hamburg (Germany), Vienna (Austria), Ames and Grinnell (both Iowa, USA), we also designed and expanded the conceptual model of evocative places presented in this paper for the first time. The conceptual model includes four main categories with which an evocative place can be described including its physical characteristics, experiences, senses and values. We conclude the article with a discussion and further research directions.@en

This chapter concentrates on the implementation of the geogame GeoMinasCraft and its use for geographical virtual explorations. The game was implemented to study the use of geospatial data for the visualizations of landscapes in a serious game. The users/players can take on an adventure, explore the landscapes, learn about geodiversity, and face different challenges. The game takes us to the City of Ouro Preto in Minas Gerais in Brazil. The city was selected due to its historical significance and socio-cultural values. We used satellite images and transformed them into blocks imitating these real-world landscapes and cities in Minecraft. We tested the game prototype with nine students which gave us the needed feedback for the improvements of the first prototype. This chapter summarizes the game concept, its implementation, and the testing results. We conclude the chapter with a discussion and further research directions.

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In this chapter, we concentrate on geogames for change that enable the cocreation of cities. We introduce theoretical foundations of serious geogames for urban planning and the concepts of playfulness in civic engagement. Two case studies include the serious geogames Geodesign Card Game and GeoMinasCraft. They represent examples of how games can be implemented in a sustainable and participatory urban planning process engaging that engages children and youth. We demonstrate their main functionalities that can be used in urban planning processes, including virtual interaction, experimenting, exploring, designing, learning, communicating, negotiating and consensus building. We present the gameplay of these two selected geogames for change as implemented for the first round of tests with children and youth. We then summarise the main functions of these games and associate them with the phases of sustainable urban planning processes. The planning process was proposed by UN-HABITAT in order to stimulate sustainable planning practices in municipalities. We summarise the main findings and conclude the article with observations related to the game design and implementation of geogames for change in urban planning processes.@en