Planning power play : community education through gaming

This thesis is primarily involved with the development of a planning teaching game called Planning Power Play, and the testing of this game's effectiveness as an educational tool with residents of a local community. The rapid growth of our North American urban centres has brought with it an increasing demand that the citizens be allowed to participate in the planning of their own local residential areas. However, the art of citizen involvement in the modern planning context suffers from a lack of effective techniques of implementation which in part explains the reluctance of many policy makers to initiate such programmes at all. This thesis is intended to assist in overcoming this shortcoming by introducing a new method of encouraging active citizen participation in the planning process. The study hypothesizes that a planning game can be developed that will be an effective educational tool in citizen involvement programmes in the neighbourhood setting. The thesis initially reviews much of the literature pertaining to teaching games citing examples of the effectiveness of existing teaching games, and building a theory of teaching game draftsmanship. It then proceeds to explain the development of a new teaching game called Planning Power Play. Five test sessions of Planning Power Play indicated that it was a successful teaching game and potentially useful tool in situations where citizen contact was required. The game fostered an informal social atmosphere facilitating discussion between the planner and the citizens, with the result that both parties learned from the experience. The tests indicated that Planning Power Play taught the players the practical constraints imposed upon the development of their local area by the variety of interest groups expressing their divergent viewpoints through the municipal political bargaining process. In addition, the game was practical for use in the citizen participation milieu where many participants were novice game players. The game proved to be engrossing, easy to learn, quick to play, and extremely portable and adaptable. The conclusion was reached that this thesis was primarily an exploratory study. Planning Power Play is a satisfactory teaching game, but it is not meant to be the final word on planning teaching games. Rather, it is hoped that this game will constitute an initial step encouraging further research in this relatively new aspect of urban planning.Applied Science, Faculty ofCommunity and Regional Planning (SCARP), School ofGraduat