participatory-planning-sandboxes opportunity asserted
Participatory planning sandboxes
City-builder interfaces over calibrated urban models with simulated resident voices, used by communities and planners to explore tradeoffs together.
thesis
Planners already use city builders to communicate, but the games' models are not calibrated to real cities and residents are absent. Simulation-based inference can calibrate traffic, housing, and service models to local data; language-model residents grounded in survey data can voice how proposals affect them. The city builder becomes a deliberation interface, with game mechanics (overlays, budgets, forecasts) as the legibility layer.
design sketch
A neighborhood is loaded from open data. Participants zone, budget, and route transit; overlays show calibrated effects; simulated residents from different groups react, each tied to the data that grounds them. Sessions export a report of options and tradeoffs.
validation experiment
Calibrate a traffic and housing model for one district, run three participatory sessions, and measure whether participants' understanding of tradeoffs (pre and post quiz) improves relative to a slide presentation. Success: significant improvement with participants rating the tool as fair.
key risks
- Simulated residents substitute for real community input.
- False precision of calibrated models.
- Political misuse.
falsifiable prediction
A city government will use a game-style calibrated simulation with simulated resident feedback in a formal planning consultation.
Public planning document or press release dated after 2026-10-24 that names the tool, states that it simulates resident responses, and records its use in an official consultation.