Landscapes of Hope: weaving shared values through resilience narratives and serious geogames

Abstract

This article deals with questions and practices involving the debate on the role of shared urban values as a measure of an interactive and healthy urban life to design the post-pandemic city based on the ethics of collaboration and trust. It was in this sense that, over a series of teaching and research activities at the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy, University College Dublin, Ireland, we proposed the application of narrative of resilience and serious geogames in the debate of care in public engagement. This was done in order to assess their potential in designing possible common futures through ludic elements as an approach to emancipatory learning and action. The results of these experimental activities and the participants' feedback point to the formulation of an “open” methodology, which unfolds, based on epistemologies and local actors, for the weaving of collaborative and resilient urban landscapes in the face of the problem 1) the unsustainability of urban development opposed to community values; 2) the digital revolution and the rise of individualism and detachment, and 3) urban diversity in decay due to the increase in privatization, suppression or restriction of accessing public spaces and everyday life. Next steps of the research will focus on the creation of an original game in mixed reality for the co-creation of the post-pandemic city based on care between the inhabitants and the territory at a new level of depth of engagement through hope.