Gamification of Early-Stage Planning, Participation and Education in Urban Mobility: The MobileCityGame

Strategic planning is of utmost importance for cities to achieve climate targets, while maintaining citizen satisfaction and meeting financial constraints. However, large assessment models are often costly and too complex for smaller cities. Thus, we designed a simplified, intuitive and dynamic transport simulation tool and serious game MobileCity to run on mobile devices for strategy processes, participation and teaching. A real transportation model running on local devices allows the free combination of different mobility interventions and shows dynamic indicators for climate, finances and livability, while offering an intuitive interface with supporting information. We currently extend the free iOS and Android demonstrator for Karlsruhe (Germany) and transfer it to European cities within the DUT project "CarGoNE-City". In this paper, we present its core functionalities and features, before assessing scenarios and concluding on lessons learned and applications. Our main messages from applying the MobileCity-App are: the timing of interventions matters for all output indicators and a sound combination of push and pull measures helps meeting climate, livability and financial targets without going into extremes.