Preface (to Playable Cities)

In this book, we address the issue of playfulness and playability in intelligent and smart cities. Playful technology can be introduced and authorized by city authorities. This can be compared and is similar to the introduction of smart technology in theme and recreational parks. However, smart technology becomes embedded in real-life city situations and allows real-time use by city dwellers. Thus, we can investigate how embedded smart technology can play a role in the generation and understanding of affective, playful, and humorous activities and events. Moreover, we can study how smart city technology can be used in playful, participatory design of changes in an urban environment or allow those changes to be implemented by city communities themselves. Chapters in this book address pervasive games, urban games that change a city into a ‘gameful city,’ urban experiences and how to involve residents in urban city design and development. Chapters also address the playful hacking of smart city technology, mischief in smart cities, and the use of smart technology to introduce playful interactions between citizens and smart city technology in public spaces. Civic hacking that introduces playful community applications is also a topic addressed in this book. Publicly available data and infrastructure and accessible or hackable sensors and actuators can all help introduce playful applications and interactions and make an environment or city more playful and playable. I’m grateful to the many authors who contributed to this book. They not only contributed with chapters but also acted as reviewers for two or more chapters. In addition, Dhaval Vyas and Chamari Edirisinghe helped with reviewing chapters. My thanks also go to Steffen Walz for his willingness to write a Foreword for this book. As usual, the Springer staff was very friendly and helpful, making it a pleasure to realize this publication.