Anagenesis: a framework for gameful, playful and democratic future smart cities

Abstract

This chapter aims to go beyond extant gameful and playful approaches of urban management and governance by identifying the benefits and detriments in current approaches as well as elevating those benefits into a combined juxtaposed future vision of a playfully co-created city, Anagenesis. We ground our framework in the foundation laid out by three separate gameful phenomena: gamified e-participation, urban play initiatives (such as parkour or DIY urbanism) and games based on augmented cities technologies. We argue that while these separate phenomena all have their benefits and detriments, in democratic, playful and technologically enhanced activities organization, in meaningful combination, they provide an efficient and ethical way of engaging citizens in decisions regarding city-making and urban design.