Gamification for Innovative Urban Design Education and Its Integration with Public Participation

Dear colleagues,

The scope of this Special Issue is to document cross-sectional research at the intersection of computer science and urban policies in the cities of the future, where public participation and true acceptance of sustainability are crucial. For these, we have identified four main action areas of interest: 1. training and interaction with students in an area with a substantial visual component as well as social impact such as architecture, especially urbanism and urban planning in the design of urban public spaces; 2. the education of multimedia engineers, where gamified processes using ICTs will be designed and implemented; 3. the emotional component of users and designers of the public space, and the motivation and degree of satisfaction in the use of ICTs and gamified proposal of students, professionals, and the general public; and 4. the study and improvement of public participation in this kind of projects and proposals.

The main hypothesis of this Special Issue is based in proving the following affirmation: “The implementation of virtual strategies combined with other gamified ones in the field of urban design will provide an improvement in public participation since they are a more dynamic, realistic and agile collaborative environment, thanks to the augmented and immersive visual technologies”. In addition, a secondary hypothesis is defined: “gamified strategies for the comprehension of three dimensional space improve the spatial competences of non-expert users (general public) as well as students and professionals, providing a greater motivation in their use and a higher degree of satisfaction”. The general objective of this Special Issue is to document the state of the art in the use of digital technologies, in particular to evaluate the inclusion of serious game strategies and virtual reality in several areas of formal and informal teaching of collaborative urban design, in order to improve it, streamline it, and increase its positive social impact.

Prof. Dr. Ernest Redondo-Domínguez
Dr. Isidro Navarro-Delgado
Dr. Joan Mora-Guiard
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• improving public motivation, implication, and satisfaction in urban decision making processes using ICTs
• gamification
• urban design and multimedia education
• educational research
• public participation
• usability
• e-learning