Games as Capacity Building Instruments

1. Games as Capacity Building Instruments How seriously has “Serious Play” been applied in Urban Planning?

2. Why Games in Capacity Building? • Complements “Traditional” Training • Supports WBI ‘action learning” • Scalability Action Learning

3. Educational Games in Urban Planning ?

4. WBI Urban Street Addressing Board Game Background:request from the African Local Government Action Forum (ALGAF) for a course on street addressing Objective: Rely on simple interactive techniques to develop an educational game on “Street Addressing” that will familiarize technical concepts and demonstrate the importance of street addressing to developing countries. Learning objectives: • To learn about the benefits and applications of street addressing in an urban setting; • To be aware of the challenges and issues of implementing a street addressing strategy; • To develop collaborating, problem solving, resource management and team building skills through strategic play; • To learn important street addressing terminologies.

5. WBI Urban Street Addressing Board Game Game Mechanic Concepts • 3-6 players • 45 minutes to an hour of play time • Can be facilitated in workshop settings. • Rule book will be in different languages • “Challenges” of differing severity levels, both positive and negative to allow for an element of chance. Derived from real life case examples of urban management issues in cities. • “Resources” (eg. Municipal revenue, grant, street fixtures, street numbers etc.) used to progress in the game and encouraging resource management. • growth in the physical form of the city

6. Conclusion • Games used in Ad Hoc fashion for informal role playing activities in WBI workshops/courses. • Design educational games or ‘capacity games’ in more structured and targeted manner. • Games appear to assist in i) raising awareness through play, ii) influence behavior and decision making and iii) sensitize on policy issues. • Still lot to learn about their potential as didactic tools in building capacity.

7. Expectations from this Seminar • The objective is to gather good practice and learn how to apply it in ‘capacity building games”- such as deciding on specifics of the street addressing game Floor to the Experts!