Playful Introduction on “Making Smart Cities More Playable”

This chapter provides a brief introduction to playable cities. Future cities are smart. They have embedded sensors, actuators, and data processors. These devices are connected in the internet of things, in which city dwellers and their wearables are among the ‘things’ that are sensed, and such devices can collect and process data and actuate. Why not use this smart technology and the smartness of the city dwellers to make a city playable? Smart technology can make a city more enjoyable by introducing smart interactive urban art and smart and interactive playful installations and by granting city dwellers and their emerging smart communities access to the data that are collected by a smart city or to the smart devices that are embedded in a smart city’s infrastructure. Communities, gamers, makers, and hackers will also see possibilities in using cheap smart devices that are connected in a community-owned network to make a community more livable and to make being part of it more enjoyable. In this chapter, we examine why play is a necessary component of smart cities and we present examples of urban play, of enjoyable events, and of turning everyday experiences into play. Our observations on play in urban environments and on making urban environments playable should help put the other chapters in this book in context. The contributions of the other chapters to the objectives of this book are summarized in the second part of this chapter.