Mathieu Gardrat (p), Florence Toilier

Olivier Klein

Urban freight distribution is a source of nuisances (pollution, congestion) but is essential to the economic vitality of activities. However, it remains poorly known to urban actors and usually ignored in urban development projects. The Urbalog board game is a way of introducing the challenge that represents city logistics to a large public (residents, shopkeepers, developers, etc.) in order to encourage its integration in the urban planning process and to develop knowledge on this topic.
In addition to this dimension of raising awareness among urban actors, the Urbalog game can be used as a mediation tool around an urban project represented by the game board. It is then possible to establish dialogue between the city stakeholders involved in the game, the playful nature of the approach allowing to free oneself from the censorship of each one. Finally, through the exchanges it generates between the various urban actors, Urbalog is a valuable tool to feed the simulation models resulting from our research work on the sensitivity to innovations, regulations, economic developments, etc.

Nir Fulman, Itzhak Benenson (p), Eran Ben Elia

Mathieu Gardrat

Understanding the behavior of drivers in response to parking prices and cruising time is crucial for establishing effective parking policies. We investigate this behavior with PARKGAME, a serious game. PARKGAME players navigate a virtual road network using keyboard keys in attempt to find parking and walk to a destination before a fictional meeting starts. They cruise the neighborhood of a common destination in attempt to park on-street at a low fee. Parking is always available at a high price at a parking lot that is located, depending on the scenario, at a different distance from the destination. The player who arrives late pays an additional lateness fee out of a starting budget. Parking sooner and closer to destination is lucrative. 49 participants were recruited to participate in PARKGAME sessions. Players displayed consistent cruising behavior. Risk averse players repeatedly headed to the lot while risk takers continued cruising even if fined for lateness. Spatial cruising patterns depend on the relative distance between lot and destination. Game experiments made it possible to construct a formal spatial model of individual parking search behavior as a biased random walk towards destination.

Pol Henry (p), Olivier Klein

Mathieu Gardrat

In tomorrow’s cities, the new forms and technical solutions of mobility will have a key role in the urban reshuffle. Autonomous vehicles will bring real modifications in our approach of urban forms or urban infrastructures, but especially in our mobility uses. In this context, LAET3 made of autonomous vehicles uses a significant issue in his research. For that, the lab wants to put sideways technical and technological issues to carry out foresight studies on societal issues of the arrival of autonomous vehicles in our cities. Consequently, the lab led the construction and experimentation of an serious game named « RoboSpectif ». Produced by students of higher education, this serious game is a board game that was engineered as a research tool able to achieve an foresight study of autonomous vehicles uses in tomorrow’s cities. The initiative to develop an experimental research tool like this allows to debate of methods and potential of serious games in urban research. With the experience that we have of construction and deployment of RoboSpectif, we can discuss of serious game’s contributions and boundaries in urban research.

Fanny Cottet (p)

Mathieu Gardrat

"The serious game « Mission Post-Car 2060 » is an urban foresight experience which includes a board game and a software enhancing participative urban design. The serious game was produced in cooperation with UMR Géographie-cités and Forum des Vies Mobiles in a French research program called « Post-car Ile-de-France ». The main goals of this research were to test methods, consequences and the distance to target of reducing the use of individual cars in cities. The serious game contains two elements, a multi-agent system and a board game, both of them being tools to collectively “play” different urban configurations without cars and their evolutions over the next thirty years. The game was developed and tested in 2018 and 2019 by a group of five students on multiple types of audiences (students, researchers, citizens)."