Play and the city

Abstract

This article is a critical reflection on the relation between play and urban environments, with a particular focus on so-called smart cities. It is also intended as a provocation for designers and scholars to think about the possibilities of transforming cities through play. Based on a romantic theory of play adapted to the information age, this article argues that cities are becoming data production centers in which citizens are datamined for unclear purposes. The resulting data networks are supposedly meant to fuel the development of smart cities. However, access to and use of this data are often either exclusive for corporations and opaque governments or published directly as open data with few useful interfaces to experiment or engage with. This article argues that play, via playful interactions, can become a useful interface and design practice to turn smart cities into humanscaled experiences of information-heavy urban environments. This article does not propose any specific solution but more of a perspective that, if successful, should inspire designers and scholars to think playfully about smart cities.