Explore the vast range of titles available.

Virtual reality environments presented on tablets and smartphones have potential to aid the early diagnosis of conditions such as Alzheimer's dementia by quantifying impairments in navigation performance. However, it is unclear whether performance on mobile devices can predict navigation errors in the real world. We compared the performance of 49 participants (25 females, 18-35 years old) at wayfinding and path integration tasks designed in our mobile app 'Sea Hero Quest' with their performance at similar tasks in a real-world environment. We first performed this experiment in the streets of London (UK) and replicated it in Paris (France). In both cities, we found a significant correlation between virtual and real-world wayfinding performance and a male advantage in both environments, although smaller in the real world (Cohen's d in the game = 0.89, in the real world = 0.59). Results in London and Paris were highly similar, and controlling for familiarity with video games did not change the results. The strength of the correlation between real world and virtual environment increased with the difficulty of the virtual wayfinding task, indicating that Sea Hero Quest does not merely capture video gaming skills. The fact that the Sea Hero Quest wayfinding task has real-world ecological validity constitutes a step toward controllable, sensitive, safe, low-cost, and easy to administer digital cognitive assessment of navigation ability.

Studies on city-building games as educational tools show positive results in addressing different learning objectives, but also identify a missing link to reality, as they are mostly computer-based. Given the differences between existing games and their capabilities, the exact function of these games in an urban planning curriculum is unclear. The city-building game Cities: Skylines currently has three different versions (Digital, Tabletop, VR). Through an affordance analysis of the game's three versions, this study analyses how the versions afford four primary knowledge dimensions, and in doing so identifies different educational applications for each version of Cities: Skylines in different planning disciplines. The results show that: (a) the board game is strong in fostering player participation and critical thinking more suited for the social and health studies, public policy, and citizen participation domains of urban planning; (b) the digital version functions as moddable simulator, ensuring familiarity with existing systems and monitoring their effects, useful in logistics and transportation planning; (c) the VR form viscerally involves players in the simulated processes, applicable in design-focused segments of urban planning, such as sustainable design theory, housing, and land-use management. The results of this study can help urban planning educators identify possible uses for different versions of Cities: Skylines.

Video games are recognized as significant tools and mediums to be used in civic participation in spatial planning and fostering local communities. As the phenomenon is widely recognized in papers presenting singular case studies and broader analyses in the field, selecting such serious games with certain characteristics remains unclear. The informed process of choosing games with particular properties regarding genesis, graphic style, genre, and complexity as the response for specified needs and process assumptions appears to be supportive in preventing unnecessary costs and data overproduction. Such avoidance is an important part of sustainable digital transformation. Therefore, there is a need for a more conscious process of selecting video games to be used in a participatory process. The following paper aims to propose a numerical base for a decisional instrument that could be useful for specifying the characteristics of games to be utilized in participation. They performed a multicriteria analysis of documented cases of implementing video games in civic engagement, allowing the creation of a set of numeric indicators that help determine the properties of games that will be most appropriate for given process assumptions. Such a tool can prevent overproducing data on the one hand and may cause dissemination of the presented way of handling the participation process on the other.

City‐building games (CBGs) have a long history of focusing on societal simulation and urban management gameplay, including The Sumerian Game (1964), Micropolis, later named SimCity (1989), and Utopia: Creation of a Nation (1991). In this article, we present the outcomes of a pilot study through which we have developed an innovative process that transfers CBGs’ gameplay actions into real‐world planning systems. To evaluate the interplay between CBG simulation and the real world, we delivered workshops to 140 young people and adults to design their local community in South Lancaster, UK, using Cities: Skylines I and II. A novel approach using GIS and machine learning tools was developed to analyse young people’s planning decisions and needs in the area, focusing on the act of “play” within the game. These analytical tools, which involved the semantic classification of game imagery, yielded insights into land‐use decisions. Through game updates released during the study of Cities: Skylines II, we explored new analytical potential and established a process to extract gameplay results that provide additional urban block and street‐level tools for analysis, from CBG to geogame. The limitations of these approaches include the “black box” nature of the game and its planning model, such as zoning and focus on car‐based infrastructure. However, Cities: Skylines has a large player community and strong potential to turn into a geogame in support of real‐world planning and consultation, engaging communities. This article contributes to the literature with a novel and replicable process and case study. When geogames are applied to real‐world problems, the result is a demonstration of the ability of simulations to inform real‐world decisions.

Growing urban population and contemporary urban systems lock-in unsustainable urban development pathways, deteriorating the living quality of urban dwellers. The systemic complexity of these challenges renders it difficult to find solutions using existing planning processes. Alternatively, transformative planning processes are radical, take place on multiple scales, and are often irreversible; therefore, require the integration of local stakeholders’ perspectives, which are often contradictory. We identify perceived levers of urban transformative change using a serious game to facilitate the integration of these perspectives through simulating neighbourhood transformation processes in two European case studies. Building on existing transformation frameworks, we organize, conceptualize, and compare the effectiveness of these levers through demonstrating their interactions with different scales of transformation. Specifically, drawing from close commonalities between large-scale (Three Spheres of Transformation) and place-based (Place-making) transformation frameworks, we show how these interactions can help to develop recommendations to unlock urban transformative change. Results show that access to participation is a key lever enabling urban transformative change. It appears to be mid-level effective to unlock urban transformative change through interactions with the political sphere of transformation and procedural element of Place-making. Ultimately, however, most effective are those levers that interact with all scales of transformation. For example, by engaging a combination of levers including access to participation , public spaces , parking , place-characteristics and place-identity. These findings could be operationalized by self-organized transformation processes focused on repurposing hard infrastructure into public spaces, whilst ensuring continuity of place-based social- and physical features. Local stakeholders could further use such processes to better understand and engage with their individual roles in the transformative process, because interactions with the personal scale, i.e., personal sphere of transformation appear paramount to unlock urban transformative change.

Background Dramatic increases in child overweight have occurred in China. A comprehensive look at trends in physical activity and sedentary behaviors among Chinese youth is needed. The study aimed to examine trends in domain-specific physical activity and sedentary behaviors, explore mean and distributional changes in predicted behaviors over time, and investigate how behaviors vary by residence. Methods Using 2004–2011 China Health and Nutrition Survey data, adjusted means for MET-hours/week from physical activity and hours/week from sedentary behaviors were determined for school children (6–18 years), stratifying by gender, age group, and residence. Physical activity domains included in-school physical activity, active leisure (out-of-school physical activity), active travel (walking or biking), and domestic activity (cooking, cleaning, and child care). For each physical activity domain, the MET-hours/week measure was determined from the total weekly time spent (hours) in domain-specific activities and corresponding MET-values using the Compendium of Energy Expenditures for Youth. Sedentary behaviors included television, computer use, homework, and other behaviors (board games, toys, extracurricular reading and writing). For each sedentary behavior, the hours/week measure was determined from total weekly time spent in specific sedentary behaviors. Residence groups included megacities (population ≥ 20million), cities/towns (300,000 ≤ population < 20million), and rural/suburban areas (population < 300,000). Repeated measure linear mixed and quantile regression models were used to predict adjusted means. Results Little change in physical activity behaviors occurred over time, with the exception of statistically significant trends toward increased domestic activity among male children ( p  < .05). Across all gender and age groups, statistically significant trends over time toward an average increase in computer use were seen ( p  < .01); these increases were largely driven by those ≥50th percentile on the distribution. Children living in megacities (versus rural areas) reported higher levels of physical activity, homework, and computer use. Conclusions Intensified, systematic intervention and policy efforts promoting physical activity and reducing sedentary behaviors among children are needed.

The use of games as a method for planning and designing cities is often associated with visualisation, from simplistic to immersive environments. They can also include complex and sophisticated models which provide an evidence base. The use of such technology as artefacts, aids, or mechanics curates the player experience in different and very often subtle ways, influencing how we engage with (simulated) urban phenomena, and, therefore, how the games can be used. In this article, we aim to explore how different aspects of technology use in city games influence the player experience and game outcomes. The article describes two games built upon the same city gaming framework, played with professionals in Rome and Haifa, respectively. Using a mixed-method, action research approach, the article examines how the high-tech, free form single-player games elicit the mental models of players (traffic controllers and planners in both cases). Questionnaires and the players’ reflections on the gameplay, models used, and outcomes have been transcribed and analysed. Observations and results point to several dimensions that are critical to the outcomes of digital city games. Agency, exploration, openness, complexity, and learning are aspects that are strongly influenced by technology and models, and in turn, determine the outcomes of the game. City games that balance these aspects unlock player expertise to better understand the game dynamics and enable their imagination to better negotiate and resolve conflicts in design and planning.

The authors use the location-based, augmented-reality game Way finder Live, which one of them designed, as a case study to analyze urban play. Acknowledging the difficulty of defining urban play, they expand existing approaches to the topic by drawing on current theories about interfaces, assemblages, and coding in such fields as media and cultural studies, game and play studies, and urban studies. They consider Way finder Live as an interface--a site of both connection and translation--for urban play, one that encourages its players to test a given city's physical and social boundaries. They argue that the game offers a fruitful, if always contingent and contextual, framework for analyzing digitally mediated urban play. Key words: affect; assemblage; coding; decoding; encoding; interface; location-based gaming; urban play; Way finder Live.

Introduction: Child nutrition status is very important in all societies, which is influenced by the interaction of multiple factors including food security and socioeconomic status in both genders. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between food security and socioeconomic status with anthropometric indices among 2-5-year-old urban children in eight different cities in Iran. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, anthropometric Z scores of 7028 children of urban area were measured by using World Health Organization (WHO) Anthro software based on WHO 2007 standards. Family food security was assessed by using HFIAS 9-item questionnaire. Socioeconomic status as well as health factors were analyzed using the SPSS. Results: Based on the present study, significant correlation was observed between sleep time, birth weight, and food security (P < 0.05) with body mass index (BMI), while the rest of the variables including age, family size, number of children, parents' education, breastfeeding duration, watching TV, playing computer games, playing outdoors, number of main eating, and number of snacks showed no significant relation (P > 0.05). Conclusion: It was shown that 2-5 years old children's life are the most vital and vulnerable to the hazards of undernutrition or overweight and obesity, which could affect the whole health of the person. As food security affects BMI, it is important to focus more on this issue in order to improve child's health status.