{"id":601,"date":"2011-09-23T08:12:55","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T14:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=601"},"modified":"2013-10-12T09:48:46","modified_gmt":"2013-10-12T15:48:46","slug":"urbanology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=601","title":{"rendered":"Urbanology 101"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Kaid Benfield\u2019s recent post<\/a> about the BMW-Guggenheim Lab\u2019s Urbanology<\/a> game inspired me to play the game a few times myself. \u00a0Then I asked my University of Denver\u00a0Culture and The City<\/a> class (which met for the first time last week) to have a go at it to see where it would take us.<\/p>\n

I played the game a total of 20 times. Three cities showed up 65% of the time as being consistent with my personal values and priorities about what the “Good City” should look like. These include Shanghai (25% of the time), Berlin (20%), and Toronto (20%).\u00a0 Six other cities\u2014Abu Dhabi, Beijing, London, Houston, and San Francisco\u2014rose to the top the rest of the time.\u00a0 My most frequent high priority was Sustainability (investments in \u201cgreening\u201d the city) which showed up 30% of the time.\u00a0 Lifestyle (investments in arts, sports, culture, and tourism) was a close second at 25%.\u00a0 My most frequent low priority, by a fairly wide margin, was Wealth (making the city safe for business investment), at 35% of the time. This was followed by Innovation (investing in education and entrepreneurism) at 25%.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Nanjing Road, Shanghai<\/p><\/div>\n

As Benfield and\u00a0others<\/a>\u00a0note, interpreting game results is difficult. \u00a0The questions force tough choices–not a bad thing–but usually fail to reflect the complexity and nuance of the issues facing contemporary cities.\u00a0 And, as Benfield discovered, sometimes the same value shows up as a high priority and other times it shows up as a low priority. \u00a0This didn’t happen too often in my experience. However, in one trial where sustainability prioritized high it was matched with Houston (strange bedfellows to be sure!) and in the one trial where it prioritized low it matched with Toronto (again, a bit puzzling).\u00a0\u00a0 Lifestyle never showed up as the lowest priority in any trial, which was somewhat comforting given the way this value is defined by the game.<\/p>\n

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Cathedral and Concert Hall, Berlin<\/p><\/div>\n

I think the results make some sense in my case, given that I\u2019m an anthropologist interested in sustainability\u2014albeit of a more intercultural than environmental sort\u2014and the difference that culture can make in shaping urban experience.\u00a0 But I’m also interested in education (obviously), which means the relatively frequent low prioritizing of Innovation threw me for a loop. That Berlin and Toronto rose to the top as two of my ideal Good Cities is no surprise given the former\u2019s reputation for arts and culture and the latter\u2019s reputation for accommodating social diversity and multiculturalism. Both cities also tend to rank very high in the various annual surveys that track the World’s Most Livable Cities<\/a>. However, Shanghai\u2019s status as my most frequently identified good city is a surprise, mostly because I know much less about it and because it tends to rank much, much lower in Livable City surveys (for what they are worth). \u00a0In any event, this result has certainly inspired me to learn much more about Shanghai in preparation for our discussion of Asian urbanism later in the course.<\/p>\n

The results achieved by my game-playing students provide some interesting comparisons and contrasts. Culture and The City is an anthropology elective that can be used to satisfy requirements of our interdisciplinary Urban Studies<\/a> and Sustainability<\/a> minors. This term I have 23 enrolled students plus several auditors. Most of the enrolled students are majoring in disciplines located across the traditional liberal arts. \u00a0Four are graduate students in anthropology\u2019s Museum and Heritage Studies<\/a> track.\u00a0 Five are international exchange students from England, Italy, and the Czech Republic who are studying at the University of Denver for the fall term.\u00a0 These students add a very nice intercultural flavor to the class.<\/p>\n

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“Gay Village”, Toronto<\/p><\/div>\n

The list of “good cities” most frequently mentioned by the students mirrors mine, but in a slightly different order. Berlin \u00a0enjoyed most favored city status with 30% of the mentions, followed by Toronto with 27% and Shanghai with 26%.\u00a0 From there it’s a fairly significant frequency drop-off to Abu Dhabi, Chicago, Singapore, Houston, London, San Francisco and a host of others.\u00a0 The students note the same inconsistencies and disconnects as the blogging urbanologists.\u00a0 In terms of urban values their low priorities matched mine, with Wealth the most frequently identified low priority (47% of the mentions by students) followed\u00a0 by Innovation as a very distant second (9%). Interestingly, the high priorities for students were two different ones than mine: Livability (investments in security, recreation, and individual comforts) at 38% and Health (investments in general physical well-being) at 26%. \u00a0For students sustainability was the third most frequently mentioned value, at 22%. \u00a0I\u2019m tempted to attribute this difference to generational factors: at this point in my life I\u2019m much more interested in the quality of the urban community that\u2019s to be inherited by my middle-school aged son, and much less interested in the individual personal comforts and amenities we might reasonably expect to be of great interest to college students.<\/p>\n

The game\u2019s simplicity notwithstanding, I think Urbanology has some distinctive merits as a pedagogical tool.\u00a0 The game nicely frames some of the pressing issues facing the contemporary city. It highlights the difficulty of the choices confronting citizens engaged in community action\u2014an engagement that our university actively seeks to promote. \u00a0\u00a0The game gets us thinking about personal values as they apply to city-building, and general characteristics of the Good City. \u00a0It should also foster research interest in the qualities of those particular cities that Urbanology reveals to be instructor and class favorites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kaid Benfield\u2019s recent post about the BMW-Guggenheim Lab\u2019s Urbanology game inspired me to play the game a few times myself. \u00a0Then I asked my University of Denver\u00a0Culture and The City class (which met for the first time last week) to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8,10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-sustainability","category-urban-studies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-9H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3049,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions\/3049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}