Learning placemaking by playing
How did it come about?
In an early stage, we noticed a problem: long PowerPoint presentations made participants lose interest. So we asked ourselves a question: how can we teach placemaking more effectively? The answer was gamification. That's how Mide tu Impacto (Measure Your Impact) was born first, a simulation of placemaking interventions in a card format, and then PlaceMakers, a more complete and structured evolution that incorporates the fundamental components of placemaking: hardware, software, and orgware.
These tools scaled up to be used in the URBANO Experiencia and URBANO GADs programs. In total, they were played across 16 sessions, with approximately 195 people, plus 3 feedback sessions. And the results speak for themselves: young people contributed a great brainstorm of ideas for public space, public servants experienced a participatory methodology firsthand, and both teachers and young people showed interest in bringing these games to their own classes and sessions.
🃏 PlaceMakers
An agile and strategic card game in which players become actors who transform public spaces into lively and meaningful places. Through hardware (infrastructure), software (activities), and orgware (community organization) cards, they must create combinations that activate their neighborhood, square, park, or street, overcoming surprise events and competing to generate the greatest positive impact.
There are three types of cards in play:
The intervention cards (hardware, software, and orgware, which combine to activate a space), the event cards (urban contingencies such as vandalism, bad weather, or timely improvements), and the action cards (which allow you to intervene directly, steal cards, or cancel events). To win, you'll need to use your cards strategically, overcome the unexpected events, and activate spaces with balanced interventions, proving that you are the best placemaker in the game.
And now PlaceMakers can be yours! We've played it with volunteers, public servants, and Architecture professors from the University of Cuenca, and now you too can bring it to your table.
🎯 Mide tu Impacto
PlaceMakers in action: a board game that lets you develop placemaking strategies with your friends, evaluating a public space before and after an intervention. The goal is to enhance group work to create healthy, safe, and fun spaces, with a minimum budget and maximum creativity.
With the unexpected event cards, even more fun is added: two team members draw random cards from the deck that shape the whole group's intervention.
How do you play?
You choose a real public space in your city, you evaluate it with a template of indicators (before and after), you design a placemaking strategy as a team with a maximum budget of 12 coins, you give your project a name and vision, and at the end you vote for the best implementation. Because placemaking seeks to redesign empty and unsafe spaces into vibrant, fun, and welcoming places for everyone.