URBAN DEVELOPMENT MODELLING: THE POTENTIAL OF GAMING SIMULATORS FOR EDUCATION AND PARTICIPATORY PLANNING (A CASE STUDY OF CITIES: SKYLINES)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17721/2413-7154/2026.95.126-152Keywords:
urban planning, gaming simulation, simulator Cities: Skylines, agent-based modelling, professional education, post-war reconstruction, scenario methodAbstract
The article examines the analytical and pedagogical potential of the urban simulator Cities: Skylines as a tool for training urban planners and developing participatory planning practices. The methodological basis is qualitative simulation modelling with elements of participant observation: over 100 hours of interaction with the platform and three controlled scenario experiments in “Scenarios” mode, with fixed initial conditions, measurable success criteria, and the requirement of maintaining a positive budget balance. The scenarios covered three different types of urban planning challenges: revitalisation of a degraded urban environment (“Environmental Crisis and Recovery”), development of an energy-independent city from scratch (“Energy Independence”), and optimisation of transport logistics under extreme terrain conditions (“Alpine Villages”). The results confirmed that the simulator reproduces not only quantitative parameters of urban processes but also their qualitative logic: nonlinearity of cause-and-effect relationships, time lags between management decisions and their systemic consequences, and conflicts between success criteria. An “accumulated management reflex” effect was identified: strategies effective under certain conditions become a constraint when transitioning to a fundamentally different task. The two-tier nature of the platform is separately substantiated: the base version serves as an accessible educational tool and a “common language” for participatory planning, while the version with a user-modification ecosystem becomes a specialised analytical environment with engineering precision in traffic management and demographic modelling. The study concludes that integrating such tools is strategically appropriate for training spatial planning professionals and developing a participatory culture in Ukraine, primarily for post-war reconstruction.
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