The notion of the game and the playful urban spaces function as a shield against fear and disbelief, as security, accessibility and the absence of any kind of exclusion are necessary prerequisites for a space to become part of the game.
Carolina Vasilikou
Cities can change through urban games
Text: Dimitra Kehagia
Carolina Vasilikou, Senior Lecturer at the Manchester School of Architecture, is the designer of urban games that could render our cities more viable and beautiful, as long as they are combined with the desires of the cities’ residents themselves. She has been living in England for 13 years now, but she can easily call herself a citizen of the world, as she speaks Greek, English, French, Italian, German and Spanish. She grew up in Athens and still safekeeps her borrowing card from the Eugenides Foundation Library, a safe space of her childhood years.
While a school student she dreamt of becoming a writer as she was interested in telling stories. However, the free camping summers she spent with her family – “we used to make seats out of wood washed ashore and wind protectors out of reeds” as she recalls – led her to architecture. She still treasures the awe she felt when stepping over the doorstep of the Architecture School of the National (Metsovian) Technical University of Athens: “I found
myself amidst a patio packed with students and teachers who tested the endurance of experimental constructions made of wood, rafters, sheet metals and any other material one could think of (it was a class delivered by Professor Dimitris Biris, as I found out later on). At that moment I felt I had found a place I belonged to, another way to tell stories.” Years later, while teaching at Reading University, she put forth and organized a tech course focused on 1:1 constructions, in collaboration with the local communities.”
An Erasmus scholarship – while still a university student – got her to Paris, at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles, where she started working as a trainee architect. “It was a hell of an experience and I unreservedly recommend it to all young people that might consider it.” She first caught the environmental planning bug while attending the Building and Bioclimate Planning courses at the Polytechnic School. After obtaining her bachelor’s degree, she was intrigued by the bonds between engineering and architecture, she got accepted in a specialized master’s programme at Bath University and moved to England.
She then tried to find her way back to Greece, but unfortunately professional prospects were dim. Therefore, she decided to stay in England as a PhD candidate at Kent University. That’s when she was asked to teach environmental planning and collective housing. Her post-graduate studies and her PhD enriched her expertise paving the way for a teaching position in the fields of adaptive reuse and participatory planning at the Manchester School of Architecture.
As part of an attempt to tackle the repercussions of the climate crisis she teamed up with colleagues Yiorgos Papamanousakis and Felipe Lanuza in a research planning project. In 2022, after having received funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and in collaboration with London’s Design Museum, they created ZeroCity+, an urban game that enables both the public dialogue on climate crisis and the communication between citizens and institutional bodies: an urban game that places the talk on climate change at a relatable neighborhood level. “We could resort to gamification and the culture of games so as to trigger positive behavioral changes. Urban games are constantly gaining ground in the institutional framework of major cities, with Oslo leading the way. If carefully planned, they could serve as an information feedback system channeled from the citizens towards the local governments,” she explains.
The power of the game method is traced in the quality and the clarity of communication and the transformation of the players’ behavior, as it gradually shifts from personal interest to the common good.
“We could be taught a lot by the methodology of games. Our work was based on research that bears proof of the fact that games and communication technologies bring forth new hybrid social spaces, demonstrating that games establish emotional attachments within the public space, thanks to which the public and the private element manage to coexist harmoniously. The notion of the game and the playful urban spaces function as a shield against fear and disbelief, as security, accessibility and the absence of any kind of exclusion are necessary prerequisites for a space to become part of the game,” she adds.
While working on ZeroCity+ they joined forces with different groups of citizens, from many age spans. “We experienced first hand their transformation during the game, shifting from disbelief to a sense of belonging and bonding with their neighborhood, the hope of
solidarity within a community, the alertness for the environment and biodiversity.” For the purposes of the ZeroCity+ planning they initially drew inspiration from the work of Maryland Lizzie Magie, a feminist and activist game designer, most famous for “The Landlord’s Game” (1904), dedicated to turning the spotlight on the injustices related to land-owning and the social benefits of a targeted land management aimed at the deterring of illicit profiteering. Moving on deeper into the planning process, they based their work on Urban Transcripts Journal and the experimental game Remix(c)ity, in collaboration with Konzulat Studios.
Laying down the rules of the urban game, Carolina stresses out the community’s pivotal role when it comes to planning. “In ZeroCity+ city residents engage in a dialogue with academics, climate change specialists and institutional bodies representatives, sharing their experiential knowledge (offering a bottom-up look on things), actively adding their voice in a fully-rounded system of adaptation to a constantly changing climate. The power of the game method is traced in the quality and the clarity of communication and the transformation of the players’ behavior, as it gradually shifts from personal interest to the common good.”
Nevertheless, the way of the dialogue between the policymakers and the citizens is not always paved with roses. “It’s no easy task, as the public mechanism has shattered the citizens’ faith that those in charge can actually bring upon social change. We live in a time of disdain for public affairs, where the notion of cooperation is often treated with irony. However, that’s exactly what we need: an approach that embraces and empowers community and collaboration rather than competition. That’s what we try to accomplish through the urban game we designed: individuals, specialists, groups and institutional bodies united around a common cause, winning and losing all together.”
One of the trickiest challenges according to Carolina Vasilikou is to tear down the “individual responsibility” argument with regard to the tackling of the climate crisis. “On a personal level we can certainly do our best, but we lack the power to produce change on a worldwide scale. It takes a collective effort that will directly and productively intertwine scientific expertise and the experiential knowledge of the citizens with the state-driven taking of action and policy drawing.” In architecture Carolina Vasilikou found a form of art and practice that expresses her, which she made a part of her everyday life as a modus vivendi. “Whenever the world gets unbearable by the burden of the things we have no control over, art can become life-saving,” she concludes.
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