THE CITY – A CLASSROOM GAME FOR URBAN STUDIES

Facing the processes of population ageing, depopulation of cities and uncontrolled spread of building development it is necessary to change the way of perception of the urban structure. The need for sustainable development of cities seems to be one of the main planning challenges. In this context, it is necessary to search for a new learning tools for a more holistic education of future urban planners.

In particular, the paper presents experiences with the game developed by the author for teaching purposes, the methodology of teaching urban courses and comments of the research results. The methodology used in a paper involves a kind of simulation, consisting of: designing the game, applying it in the classroom with students, analyzing the results, drawing conclusions and improving the game provided that it has proved useful.

A prototype of the game was a popular worldwide social game called "Mafia", but the role and rules of the game have been changed and designed to achieve teaching objectives. The main ideas of the game are: specific roles allocation to each of the students, cooperative problem solving and creating a vision of the development of the city. The game consists of several successive rounds, which are sessions of the city council and the intervals between them. During each session, participants build strategies for development of the city, the concepts of sustainable development and discuss offers of investors.

The study concerns students of the first year at the second cycle full-time studies in the major Architecture and Urban Studies in the Faculty of Architecture of the Silesian University of Technology. The paper concentrates on possibilities of improving teaching and learning of urban courses such as town planning, revitalization, town structure or urban design, which are compulsory subjects for architecture studies in Poland.

The paper concludes with a brief discussion of results obtained in this research based on both: comparing the students’ grades when teaching standard or new course (using the game) and also on the results of surveys conducted among students at the end of the semester.

Despite all the benefits of described experimental learning like raise of knowledge, competences and creativity of future urban designers the research results showed also that playing “The City” helped to transform students from passive listeners to active participants, working in teams and expressing their opinions. For most of them these in-class games were enjoyable and interesting and improving the teaching. The limit of the experiment was the lack of willingness of some students (almost 12% each year) to serious involvement in the game. The research results may be useful to complete educational process and to break the routine as well.