Games are everywhere.
Sports.
Gameshows.
Card games.
Mind games.
The Game Sauce blog is dedicated to exploring games and society. In particular, as an environmental and urban planner, I am interested in the ways that games can be used to inform community and urban development, assist our communities to achieve their sustainability goals, encourage residents to engage in planning processes, enhance environmental education, and drive innovation.
In this picture, Middlebury School of the Environment students are deciphering a puzzle that is embedded in the John Steinbeck Memorial Fountain behind them. Steinbeck's novels are about people, family and community. As students decipher the puzzle they learn about place, history, and the social lives of mid-Century residents of Monterey. While they work they develop collaborative problem solving skills, take part in deep observation, employ analytical techniques, and grow their understanding of the social-ecological landscape around them.
Some of the topics I plan to research in the coming weeks are:
- Games as strategies for engaging community members in planning processes;
- The role of games in development of environmental policy;
- Game design as pedagogy;
- Building community through gaming;
- Gamification in pursuit of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Stay tuned for more blog posts, photos, game reviews, planning critiques, research notes and more.
I'll do this work from Stockholm Sweden, where I am on a one-year research sabbatical from my full-time position as a professor in the Center for Earth and Environmental Science at SUNY Plattsburgh.
Sweden and the remaining Nordic countries of Finland, Denmark and Norway have long gaming traditions and are leaders in urban planning and environmental sustainability. Stockholm is the ideal place to embark on this journey.
I will conduct this work in collaboration with scholars at the University of Uppsala's Games and Society Lab and the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University.