Playful Reconfigurations: Learning, Making, and Playing Geogames for Urban Participation

Participatory engagements with digital tools and urban data have become a defining trend in smart city and digital twin projects. However, many platforms, interactive apps, and immersive media fall short compared to analog participation formats regarding open‐ended collaborations and the inclusion of situated perspectives. In this article, we explore the potential of geogames to address these contextual and contingent aspects of urban participation. Drawing on Suchman’s concept of “situated actions,” we argue that gameplay and game making enable “reconfigurations” between structured game systems and open‐ended play. We further propose that these “playful reconfigurations” bear the potential to attune digital media to contextual perspectives on urban planning issues and specific places. We illustrate this approach through three engagements with geogames conducted within the New European Bauhaus project Creating NEBourhoods Together, focusing on the co‐creation of several mobility hubs. First, we introduce core geogame principles developed in three co‐creation workshops with citizens in Neuperlach. These formats highlight the corporeal and performative dimensions invoked by digital media. Based on these insights, we discuss the making of participatory geogames as a reciprocal reframing of game systems and the urban issues at stake. Finally, we reflect on the resulting geogames by playing them on‐site and observing how they co‐constitute participatory engagements with the topic of mobility. In conclusion, we propose these “reconfigurations” as a resource to play with—a means of mediating between digital technologies and urban worlds, data and situated perspectives, presumed problems and contingent controversies.