Georgina Guillen-Hanson, Mattia Thibault
pp. 193 – 215, download
(https://doi.org/10.55612/s-5002-061-007)
Abstract
Play in, with, and within the city is a topic that includes notions such as our right to the city and the challenges that current urban layouts and settlements largely determined by socioeconomic circumstances bring about. Through the lens of Gehl’s Urban Quality Criteria and Max-Neef’s Human Development Scale, this paper explores the evidence of how playfulness enabled the satisfaction of human needs as a part of the adaptation process to the ”new” interactions with and within the city, taking the dynamics that emerged after the implementation of the COVID-19 pandemic as a reference. This paper argues that issues hindering our right to the city can be reframed and understood differently from a human-need satisfaction approach. This appreciation can help harness the pandemic’s learnings about play in urban environments, contextualize them among ongoing global crises (i.e., war in Europe, climate change), and support reshaping relationships with and within the city inspired by playfulness
Keywords: Fundamental human needs, playfulness, urban quality criteria, urban play, gamification
CRediT author statement. Georgina Guillen-Hanson: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft preparation. Mattia Thibault: Validation, Writing – review and editing.
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