This paper provides a general overview on different perspectives and studies on social cohesion, offers a definition of social cohesion that is deeply rooted in current literature, and provides a framework that can be used to characterize social cohesion and help support resilient cities. The framework highlights the factors that play a substantial role in enabling social cohesion, and shows from which perspectives it can be fostered.

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Challenging neighbourhoods in large cities most often lack social coherence. Meaningful social interaction between citizens in such neighbourhoods is needed to increase coherence, and games may be a means to this end. This paper reflects on the structure of a dedicated game design workshop with teenagers from 12 to 16 years of age designed to this purpose. The relevance of both the identified requirements and the emergent game ideas are presented and discussed together with directions for future work for design of games for social interaction through participation.

Social interaction is part of the fabric of society, and is essential to challenge many types of social barriers. Locationbased games provide a means to foster such interaction in local communities. The design of such games is currently based primarily on designer experience and on literature on game design in general, and not on an understanding of user requirements. This article explores the preferences and desires of adolescents in neighbourhoods of Rotterdam South to socially interact with others and engage with their own neighbourhood via locationbased games. Adolescents are informants in the exploration of gaming activities for social interaction, which, when subjected to expert review with the MDA framework, produce gameplay requirements for the desired purpose: social interaction in public space. Such requirements provide researchers and game designers insights on the game dynamics best suited to foster location based social interaction.

Location-based activities can challenge citizens to explore their neighbourhood in new playful ways. This paper presents a classification of such playful activities based on the literature and experience gained (1) in co-creation sessions and (2) gameplay for neighbourhood exploration with citizens in the Hague. The location-based game designed for this purpose encouraged neighbourhood exploration and social interaction that went beyond the everyday normal. Results showed that citizens are specifically interested in activities that allow them to discover new information about, and places in, their neighbourhood when these are related to their own life. The results of this paper provide new knowledge on game design to inform designers on which type of interactions and activities foster neighbourhood exploration and social interaction.