Ludocracy: Play as Tool for Urban Revival at the Interface City

Abstract

We live in the city of fear. The excessive regulation and classification of what happens in our environment has pushed us into restricted rules of the game, in which there is no space left for improvisation, imagination or emotions. In this planned and managed environment by a few ones, the erroneous incorporation of the technology has increased the degree of control of the measurable variables, basing on them their public policy. This lack of care for intangible variables representing the human life of cities has caused, together with the introduction of the ICTs, the step towards the digital: a virtual place to achieve freedom and the debate that has been lost in the physical public space. Given this new physical-digital public space duality we consider its possible connection with the city as interface. The gamification of the processes of cities, the physical-digital hybridization of the urban games or the Lighter & Quicker & Cheaper concept are present in contemporary innovative projects reviewed below. As a proposal for the future we bet on ludocracy as an actuator mechanism for the reconquest of the physical public space showing the city as an augmented playground.