In a quest to develop a plan to house the additional 1 million people expected to grow New Zealand's largest city in the next 30 years, Auckland is asking residents to submit ideas by using a "housing simulator" game.
"From participatory budgets to civic engagement games, cities are coming up with all kinds of new ways to bring citizens into the planning process," writes Ben Schiller. "And here’s another nice idea: a 'housing simulator' from Auckland."
The simulator allows residents to play with allowable building heights in different types of urban environments, the mix of house sizes, and how much greenfield development to allow, in order to increase Aukland's housing supply by 400,000 new homes.
"Officials hope the tool will help residents engage with its Unitary Plan, a blueprint for the city’s future. 'Auckland’s a big and varied place, but the simulator gives people a really simple way to visualize some of the decisions that need to be made through the unitary plan,' says Auckland councillor Michael Goudie, in a press release. 'It shows the trade-offs between heights in our centers, growth in density across suburban Auckland and growth out into rural areas.'”
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