Dear Colleagues,

We would like to bring your attention to the following Special Session which we are organizing on: ”Serious Games and Urban Studies”, on behalf  of the 59th congress of the European Regional Science Association (27 - 30 August 2019, Lyon, France).

Convenor(s): Arnaud Banos (Géographie-cités), Jean Debrie (Géographie-cités), Mathieu Gardrat (LAET), Olivier Klein (LAET), Nathalie Molines (AVENUES-GSU)

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Important dates: Deadline for submission of abstracts (and) papers : Extended deadline to March 15th, 23.59, GMT+1

Serious  games  have  been  used  for  many  years  in  education  and  training,  and now have an increasing  role  in  our  society.  The  vast  potentials  of  this  medium  are  now  taking  shape for various audiences, situations and subjects: healthcare, environment, communication, politics, corporate,  defense,  etc. Cities also  appear  to  be  an  ideal  playground  for  serious  games. Gamification  allows  rendering  the  complexity  of  the urban  system  into understandable  and playable  processes  for  a  wide public.  This  gamification  however  raises  many  questions concerning  its  role  for  research and  the  knowledge  of  the  urban  system, as  well  as  for practitioners, such as:

• Data collection and analysis : methods to improve knowledge with games (behaviours, interactions)
• Prospective and scenario calibration: how actual urban stakeholders can help defining scenarios through games?
• Simulation: how  games  allow  modelling(stakeholders’ interactions, land use and transport interactions...)and produce exploitable results?
• Education, training and awareness: helping outreach and dissemination of researches
• Consultation and mediation on specific subjects.

Other uses  might  of  course  be  of  use to  researchers.  The process  of  gamification  itself  also questions the adaptation of theories into practices and their validity. The goal of this session is therefore to discuss the experiences, uses and potentials of city-themed serious games in the field of academic research.

For additional information please contact:; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Best regards,

Arnaud, Jean, Mathieu, Nathalie and Olivier