A Framework for a Gameful Collective Urbanism Based on Tokenized Location Data and Liquid Democracy: Early Prototyping of a Case Study Using E-bikes

Abstract

The participation of citizens in designing their social and built environments is vital for the creation of sustainable cities and communities. However, in practice, collective decision-making remains challenging. Several researchers have proposed innovative models of governance to achieve a more democratic participation. This paper attempts to contribute to this topic from the viewpoint of urban planning. The objectives are twofold. First, to introduce a conceptual framework of a gameful collective process of urbanism based on location data. Second, to present an early stage of prototyping a case study using e-bikes. Research questions are elaborated as follows: How can collective processes of urban planning engage the collective intelligence and the local knowledge of the community? How to utilize technological tools to support new forms of participatory urban governance? The main contribution of this work lies in the combination of the concepts of temporal ownership of public space, tokenization of location data, and liquid democracy, to design a dynamic and gameful decision-making process that promotes collective intelligence.

Location Hunting Game: Developing an Application to Promote Gameful Hybrid Machi-aruki Town Exploration

“…In addition, online participants can engage in a simple voting process as a civic learning experience. This voting process is based on a conceptual framework of location-based liquid voting, which was introduced in a previous publication by the authors [35] and inspired by the work of Sakai [36]. This voting model will only be briefly explained in the present article.…”

“…Here, players can vote on which of these locations are the best in their opinion. As mentioned earlier, the voting is a location-based liquid process [35]. Being location-based indicates that the voting power is weighted by location tokens.…”

“…These tokens are used by the players to vote and express their opinion on which locations they like best. The liquid aspect of the voting refers to the availability of two voting options: (1) direct voting, whereby players can express their opinion by directly voting on a location; and (2) delegation, whereby participants can give their vote, partially or fully, to others, as a process of social interaction and collective intelligence [35]. This way, the physical presence in public space is encouraged in LHG and it is what generates the interaction that happens in the digital realm.…”