Video Games

The so-called Robert Moses Cup invites the gaming- and planning-inclined to design a game capturing the essence of Robert Moses.

April 25, 2016 - Grist

The new game Block’Hood seeks to illustrate and educate about the connection between sustainability and social and economic needs in city and neighborhood building.

March 21, 2016 - Dezeen

An online video game has the perfect remedy for anyone who hates modernism—and Le Corbusier more specifically.

February 12, 2016 - The Architect's Newspaper

The video game INFRA trades your typical Russian ultra-nationalists and Nazi zombies for a city on the verge of ruin. The protagonist, an engineer, is tasked with the seemingly mundane tasks that will bring the place back to life.

February 3, 2016 - CityLab

Couldn't find what the perfect gift for the plannerd in your life? There's always next year.

December 25, 2015 - CityLab

The game is called INFRA—the action is set in a city where corruption in the private and public sectors has left the city on the brink of collapse.

July 12, 2015 - CityLab

Emanuel Maiberg discusses an ongoing crisis in a simulated version of reality familiar to many planners—i.e., the homelessness problem in SimCity 4.

January 17, 2015 - Motherboard

Not heard of Minecraft yet? Than you must not have a 10-year-old child in your house. Luckily, Sarah Goodyear does, and for our benefit, she describes the popular children's video game that explores real-world urban planning ideas.

September 19, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities

The new edition of the Grand Theft Auto series will parody LA, including its idiosyncratic planning landscape, which will feature avaricious developers, activist NIMBYs, and a oceanside dwelling starchitect.

November 4, 2011 - Curbed LA

Apparently in the horror first-person shooter videogame F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin for XBox, you can win a special "City Planner" achievement by -- blowing stuff up.

February 4, 2011 - YouTube

Beatville is a new "open source, multi-player environment for real cities", which purports to be a useful tool for democratizing urban planning.

January 28, 2011 - Urban Omnibus

A website called "Isle of Tune" lets you build streets SimCity-style, with a twist- the houses and streetlights become musical elements in the sequence that you make.

December 20, 2010 - TechCrunch

A new video game has been released that has players trying to solve urban issues and make cities work better. Next American City columnist Christian Madera reviews.

October 12, 2010 - Next American City

Today IBM is releasing a new video game called CityOne that reportedly is like SimCity but with more serious environmental and economic issues at stake. And yes, the gamer plays the role of a city planner.

May 4, 2010 - Fast Company

Using a real city as the setting for a video game can be kinda touchy -- especially if it's a less-than-complimentary reimagining of the city as a zombie wasteland. Post-Katrina New Orleans gets the dystopian video game treatment.

December 8, 2009 - Good

The military has recently opened a new type of recruitment office known as "The Army Experience Center" in a Philadelphia shopping mall. It's like an arcade, where video games and other interactive technologies provide visitors a glimpse of what it might be like to be in the military. It's a new approach, one that capitalizes on the modern teenager's affection for video games to attract them to the military life. You could call it persuasive, cajoling, or even a thinly-veiled attempt to con kids with flashy games, but, as it provides exactly what its target audience wants, the bottom line is that it's very effective. Why couldn't a city do the same thing?

January 24, 2009 - Nate Berg