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Public Play Space

How can you, as a municipality, get residents to participate in planning? How do you map out all those different interests and how can you make good use of the existing ‘capital’ in the area? The Public Play Space project helps to answer these questions.

‘A game brings people together, participants go through the same process and a constructive dialogue emerges from the shared experience.’ Nick van Apeldoorn, researcher and urban sociologist talks about the Public Play Space project in which he, on behalf of Built Environment, has worked together with other knowledge domains of Breda University of Applied Sciences. 

How can you, as a municipality, get residents to participate in planning? How do you map out all those different interests? And how can you make good use of the existing ‘capital’ in the area you want to develop (further)? The Public Play Space project helps to answer these questions. In this project, Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas) works together with the Institute for Advanced Architecture in Barcelona and urban innovator CLAC in Palermo. 

‘Placemaking always has a link to a story, it is about getting the story, the deeper layer, to the surface'

Nick van Apeldoorn, researcher and urban sociologist

‘Placemaking always has a link to a story’, says Nick, ‘it is about getting the story, the deeper layer, to the surface. At a public consultation evening, everyone speaks from their own emotion, which is logical. If that emotion is anger, then it becomes a tricky story; the chance that a PowerPoint about your plan resonates with the audience is fairly small.’

Everyone can participate 

‘And you just can’t please everyone. You always have to deal with two things, space and budget. And more often than not, both of these come in limited quantities, so you will have to make choices. In this respect, insight helps and a game can give this insight. The beauty of a game is that it appeals to a wider group of people and not just the eloquent people, who – with all due respect – are typically older white males. A game is accessible so everyone can participate. That inclusiveness is what I find most important, and of course it also produces very diverse points of view.’

Visualise

And how does it work with such a game? ‘In the game, each group sets to work on laying out the space,’ Nick explains. ‘ They do so by placing certain functions on a game board, just think of functions such as living, working, playing, relaxing. Each group has a facilitator who visualises the group’s actions by means of a dashboard. In this way, the participants can see very quickly: if we do this, then that happens and that’s just not possible.’    

Open Game Event

‘During the Open Game Event, which also took place in Barcelona and Palermo, we played a game here on our campus with policymakers from the municipality and students in the roles of residents and visitors of the city. The goal was to start a dialogue on how we can keep Breda liveable. After such a game, things are easier, because everyone has the same experience, everyone has gone through the same process in the game, and everyone has experienced the same emotions. This makes the discussion a lot more constructive. The game connects and that’s precisely what placemaking is about!’

BUas in the lead

In the project, Nick works together with, among others, Igor Mayer of the Academy for Games & Media and Jessika Weber Sabil, game developer with a background in Tourism. ‘Igor has very strong conceptual skills, Nick continues, ‘and Jessika has developed a game called Scithos which we are currently working with. It is quite a sophisticated game that has really put us in the lead in the world of Placemaking. For municipalities, but definitely also in other contexts, it is a tool that helps to intensify and widen participation by looking for the deeper motivations.’ 

Public Play Space Symposium

Scithos is one of the games that can be found in a catalogue bringing together some 50 initiatives in the area of Public Play Space. It involves games from different developers and it also contains the games that BUas develops and facilitates in this field. Moreover, Creative and Capacity Building workshops were organised within the framework of the project, in which students had two days to come up with and develop a concept for a game. The Public Play Space project will be concluded on 14 and 15 July 2021 with an international seminar, where Jessika Weber will be one of the speakers. 

Want to attend this symposium online? Please register in advance via this link.