Despite increasing interest in the 24-hour city, the effective human bonds with a place at this time have received little attention. Place experience is an amorphous and psychological theory with relevance to individual citizens interaction with their environment. During the nighttime, this interaction declines dramatically. As a solution, urban planners suggest collaborative placemaking and believe, since in collaborative process citizens directly participate in decisions, positive experiences toward the city increase amongst them. However, motivating citizens to participate in voluntary actions is not a straightforward task. To respond to this gap, this chapter first reviews the relevant literature to explore the role of collaborative placemaking in boosting place experience in the nighttime. Then, it introduces the state-of-art gamification as an approach/toolkit that can prepare a platform to motivate citizens to participate as volunteers in the collaborative process. In conclusion, the chapter defines a framework that urban games can use as a civic toolkit at nighttime.
TopIntroduction
Although our world, including cities, is in a daily transition between day and night, the concept of public urban places and cities’ atmosphere during the nighttime is often forgotten. Nevertheless, in modern cities, humans have to spend more time at night in outdoor spaces (Batty, 2020; Seijas and Gelders, 2020; Strumsky et al., 2019; Roberts, 2012). Besides, the sun does not shine somewhat on all parts of this planet. For instance, in northern regions, the daylight hours are concise in November and December. It makes people isolate themselves in their homes, and as a consequence, the ratio of outdoor activities and effective bonds between citizens and their city decrease. For instance, Costamagna, Lind and Stjernström in their article (2018), state that the quality of life and social interactions in winter cities reduce because of extended darkness.
Moreover, with modern life's hectic pace, night shift jobs are inevitable and a daily routine for many people. Regarding the GLA Economic report1 (London.Gov.Uk., 2020), “A third of everyone working in London works at night – that is 1.6 million people.” It is clear; these people do not like to spend all of their night in a ghost city. Therefore, it is more important to colonize the nighttime by improving the city’s nightlife in today’s world. Unless the city will be a miserable place for its dwellers or as Susan Sontag (1969) wrote in her “Letter from Sweden” which was published in Ramparts Magazine, the “inner weather here is dark”.
Apart from its nature’s broad scope, experts agree, a positive sense of place and a sufficient attachment to a place or “place experience” can improve individuals’ bond and interaction within the concept of place. It can also make a place to be more social and live. In other words, place experience explains how humans interact with their surrounding environment (Rieh, 2020; Urbaniak and Walsh, 2019). During the night, this “interaction” declines dramatically. To be more exact; as place experience, it follows our psychological perceptions of social and environmental conditions; thus, in the nighttime, it is very likeable that a city tends to be less social and interactive for its dwellers. Therefore, it is an undertaking for the government and place-makers to shorten negative stressors associated with night and develop strategies to make cities suitable for 24 hours.
As a response to the mentioned problem, urban planners, design practitioners and policymakers suggest collaborative place-making to improve the bonds between citizens and the city. Regarding scholars, collaborative placemaking can enhance the sense of place and place experience (Thompson and Prokopy, 2016). In this process, the author of the present chapter shares responsibilities between citizens and local anchors and governments to build a shared understanding or common sense in the notion of the “problem” in both citizens and governments. However, there is a question about how professional place makers and governments can evaluate citizens and non-professionals knowledge and how citizens should engage with upper-layer decisions in a city. Moreover, in a collaborative process, we first need a group of volunteer citizens to participate in the development and urban planning. This means upper layers must prepare a platform/context that provides an opportunity for citizens engagement and collaboration and promotes and motivates them to do it.
In this regard, after reviewing the relevant literature to find out how collaborative placemaking can develop interaction in possible psychological dimensions of place experience, this chapter investigates the potential role of this strategic approach in empowering the sense of place and its experience amongst citizens in the night time. The chapter also introduces the state-of-art “Gamification” as a human-centred approach that can be used as a toolkit for collaborative place-making (Hansen et al., 2020; Cazacu et al., 2020; Ferri et al., 2020; Li et al., 2020). The paper will investigate how technology and games become a significant platform for participating in a collaborative process. This opportunity can empower citizens and collect and mobilize them (Schouten, 2015) around the civic problem of the low ratio of interaction and place experience in nighttime and, in turn, it can directly boost their place experience towards the night time. Moreover, other professional stakeholders such as urban planners, architects, governments also can use these toolkits to monitor citizens as secret agents and explore and touch their needs (Li et al., 2020; Schouten et al., 2020; Schouten, 2015). In a nutshell, the chapter follows the following structure: