International Journal of Human Capital in Urban Management
Quarterly Publication

The application of a gamification approach in promoting citizen engagement in Tehran's urban policy-making process


Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 19 May 2026
International Journal of Human Capital in Urban Management

Document Type : REVIEW PAPER

Author

M. Ghorbanian

School of Architecture and Environmental Design, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran

Abstract
Contemporary urban centers, including Tehran, the capital of Iran, are grappling with complex challenges such as institutional fragmentation, data scarcity, and a decline in citizen engagement, which underscore the need for innovative approaches to urban governance. This article explores the potential of gamification—the application of game design elements in non-game contexts—as a strategic tool to enhance citizen participation in Tehran's urban policymaking and management processes. By leveraging elements such as points, competition, progress levels, and rewards, gamification can transform traditional, often opaque and formal, policymaking into a more appealing, transparent, and accessible experience for a broader public. The primary objective of this study is to elucidate the foundational concepts of gamification, analyze its impact on the quality of urban policy decisions and implementation, and propose practical, context-specific strategies for its successful application in Tehran. Through a detailed examination of successful global case studies, including CityScopeAR in the United States, ParmoSense in Japan, and Game.UP in Germany and Austria, this research analyzes the potential for local adaptation and alignment of these approaches with Tehran's unique socio-cultural needs and existing infrastructure. The findings suggest that a well-designed gamification framework can not only significantly increase citizen participation rates but also generate valuable data for evidence-based policymaking, foster a stronger sense of community belonging, and empower citizens to assume a more proactive role in shaping their city's future. Ultimately, this research provides a comprehensive and actionable set of recommendations for Tehran's urban management to strengthen smart and participatory governance in the Iranian capital.

Keywords

Citizen Participation
Gamification
Smart Governance
Tehran Urban Management
Urban Policy-making
Subjects
Aguiar Castillo, L.; Rufo Torres, J.; De Saa Pérez, P.; Pérez Jiménez, R., (2018). How to encourage recycling behaviour? The case of WasteApp: a gamified mobile application. Sustainability., 10(5): 1–15 (15 pages).
Alhassan, A.Y., (2025). Rethinking participation in urban planning: analytical and practical contributions of social network analysis. Frontiers of Urban and Rural Planning., 3(1): 1-17 (17 pages).
Al-Kodmany, K., (2020). Public participation and methods of visual communication. in tall buildings and the city: improving the understanding of placemaking, imageability, and tourism: 83–119. The Urban Book Series. Springer Singapore. (37 pages).
 Alonso, L.; Zhang, Y.R.; Grignard, A.; Noyman, A.; Sakai, Y.; ElKatsha, M.; Doorley, R.; Larson, K., (2018). CityScope: A data‑driven interactive simulation tool for urban design: Use case Volpe. In A.J. Morales, C. Gershenson, D. Braha, A.A. Minai, and Y. Bar‑Yam (Eds.), Unifying Themes in Complex Systems IX (Springer Proceedings in Complexity, pp. 253–261). Springer, Cham. (9 pages).
Alshahrani, A., (2025). Bridging cities and citizens with generative AI: public readiness and trust in urban planning. Buildings, 15(14), 2494: 1-22 (22 pages).
Ampatzidou, C.; Gugerell, K.; Constantinescu, T.I.; Devisch, O.; Jauschneg, M.; Berger, M., (2018). All work and no play? Facilitating serious games and gamified applications in participatory urban planning and governance. Urban Plan., 3(1), 34–46 (13 pages).
Arakawa, Y.; Matsuda, Y., (2021). Gamification mechanism for enhancing a participatory urban sensing: Survey and practical results. J. Inf. Process., 29: 1–10 (10 pages).
Arnstein, S.R., (1969). A ladder of citizen participation. J. Am. Plan. Assoc., 35(4): 216–224 (9 pages). 
Baiocchi, G.; Ganuza, E., (2014). Participatory budgeting as if emancipation mattered. Politics Soc., 42(1): 29–50 (22 pages).
Bharathi, A.K.B.G.; Singh, A.; Tucker, C.S.; Nembhard, H.B., (2016). Knowledge discovery of game design features by mining user-generated feedback. Comput. Hum. Behav., 60, 361–371 (11 pages).
Bijlani, V.A., (2023). Sustainable cities with gamification: How gamification can help improve citizen health and reduce the carbon footprint. In González-Lezcano, R.A. (Ed) Intersecting Health, Livability, and Human Behavior in Urban Environments. (pp. 205–226). IGI Global. (22 pages).
Briones, A.G.; Chamoso, P.; Rivas, A.; Rodríguez, S.; De La Prieta, F.; Prieto, J.; Corchado, J.M., (2018). Use of gamification techniques to encourage garbage recycling: A smart city approach. In Uden, L., Hadzima, B., Ting, IH. (eds) Knowledge Management in Organizations (pp. 674–685). KMO 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 877. Springer. (12 pages).
Buijs-Spanjers, K.R.; Hegge, H.H.; Cnossen, F.; Hoogendoorn, E.; Jaarsma, D.A.; de Rooij, S.E., (2019). Dark play of serious games: effectiveness and features. Games Health J., 8(4): 301–306 (6 pages).
Caillois, R., (2001). Man, play, and games. University of Illinois Press, Urbana (208 pages).
Cavada, M., (2023). Evaluate space after COVID-19: Smart city strategies for gamification. Int. J. Hum.–Comput. Interact., 39(2): 319–330 (12 pages).
Chamoso, P.; González-Briones, A.; De La Prieta, F.; Venyagamoorthy, G. K.; Corchado, J. M., (2020). Smart city as a distributed platform: Toward a system for citizen-oriented management. Comput. Commun., 152, 323–332 (10 pages).
Chamoso, P.; González‑Briones, A.; Rodríguez, S.; Corchado, J. M., (2018). Tendencies of technologies and platforms in smart cities: A state‑of‑the‑art review. Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput., 2018, Article 3086854: 1–17 (17 pages).
Cho, J.Y.; Suh, J., (2023). Spatial ability performance in interior design and architecture: comparison of static and virtual reality modes. Buildings, 13(12), 3128: 1-25 (25 pages).
Choo, M.; Choi, Y.W.; Yoon, H.; Bae, S.B.; Yoon, D.K., (2023). Citizen engagement in smart city planning: The case of living labs in South Korea. Urban Planning, 8(2): 32-43 (12 pages).
City of Helsinki, (2020). Participation through play: The urban gamification initiative [Web]. City of Helsinki.
Constantinescu, T.I.; Devisch, O.; Huybrechts, L., (2020). Participation, for whom? The potential of gamified participatory artefacts in uncovering power relations within urban renewal projects. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf., 9(5): 319: 1–23 (23 pages).
de Heer, J.; de Groot, T.; Hrynkiewicz, R., (2010). Serious gaming is serious business in urban planning. In Next Generation Infrastructure Systems for Eco-Cities (pp. 1–6). IEEE. (6 pages).
Deterding, S.; Dixon, D.; Khaled, R.; Nacke, L., (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining “gamification”. In Proc. 15th Int. Academic MindTrek Conf. (pp. 9–15). ACM. (7 pages).
Devisch, O.; Poplin, A.; Sofronie, S., (2016). The gamification of civic participation: Two experiments in improving the skills of citizens to reflect collectively on spatial issues. J. Urban Technol., 23(2): 81–102 (22 pages).
Djaouti, D.; Alvarez, J.; Jessel, J.P.; Rampnoux, O., (2011). Origins of serious games. In Ma, M., Oikonomou, A., and Jain, L.C. (Eds.), Serious Games and Edutainment Applications (pp. 25–43). Springer. London.  (19 pages).
Engagement Game Lab, (2010). Participatory Chinatown – Project Overview (Web).
Every Voice Engaged Foundation, (2018). Budget Games: Making participatory budgeting fun and effective. (6 pages).
FixMyStreet Pro., (2023). SocietyWorks. Retrieved from (Web resource).
Fonseca, D.; Villagrasa, S.; Navarro, I.; Redondo, E.; Valls, F.; Sánchez, A., (2017). Urban gamification in architecture education. In Á. Rocha, A.M. Correia, H. Adeli, L. P. Reis, and S. Costanzo (Eds.), Recent Advances in Information Systems and Technologies (Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, Vol. 571, pp. 335–341). Springer, Cham. (7 pages).
Fox, N.; Campbell-Arvai, V.; Lindquist, M.; Van Berkel, D.; Serrano-Vergel, R., (2022). Gamifying decision support systems to promote inclusive and educational urban planning design. Urban Planning, 7(2): 239-252 (19 pages).
Frasca, G., (2009). Game experience may vary: Understanding play. In Entertainment Computing–ICEC 2009 (pp. 334–334). Springer. (1 page).
Fraternali, P.; González, S.L.H., (2019). Model driven development of gamified applications. J. Web Eng., 18(7): 655–694 (40 pages).
Fung, A., (2006). Varieties of participation in complex governance. Public Adm. Rev., 66(s1): 66–75 (10 pages).
Game4City Consortium, (2020). Teaching urban design through serious games. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Report, 40 pages).
Game-based Public Participation, Int. J. Commun., 8, 759–786 (28 pages).
García-Retuerta, D. and Corchado, J.M., (2022). Gamification proposal of an improved energy saving system for smart homes. In J.M. Corchado and S. Trabelsi (Eds.), Sustainable Smart Cities and Territories (Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, Vol. 253, pp. 315–317). Springer, Cham. (3 pages).
Gnat, M.; Leszek, K.; Olszewski, R., (2016, July). The use of geoinformation technology, augmented reality and gamification in the urban modeling process. In International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications. Cham: Springer International Publishing. 484-496 (13 pages).
Gordon, E. and Manosevitch, E., (2011). Augmented deliberation: Merging physical and virtual interaction to engage communities in urban planning. New Media Soc., 13(1): 75–95 (21 pages).
Gordon, E. and Schirra, S., (2011). Playing with empathy: Digital role‑playing games in public meetings. In Proc. 5th Int. Conf. on Communities & Technologies (C&T ’11) (pp. 179–185). ACM. (7 pages).
Gordon, E.; Baldwin-Philippi, J., (2014). Playful civic learning: Enabling reflection and lateral trust in
GreenApes. (2021). Sustainable behavior made fun. (Web resource).
Guerra, P.R.G.de A.; Oriol, E.de C.; Souza, M.G.S.de., (2024). Gamification of Public Policies: Case Studies in Health, Environment and Security. Rev. Gestão Soc. Ambient., 18(9): e08659: 1–19 (19 pages).
Hamari, J.; Koivisto, J.; Sarsa, H., (2014). Does gamification work? A literature review of empirical studies on gamification. In Proc. 47th Hawaii Int. Conf. on System Sciences (pp. 3025–3034). IEEE. (10 pages).
Hassan, L.; Hamari, J., (2020). Gameful civic engagement: A review of the literature on gamification of e-participation. Government Information Quarterly, 37(3), 101461: 1-21 (21 pages). 
Huotari, K.; Hamari, J., (2017). A definition for gamification: Anchoring gamification in the service marketing literature. Electron. Mark., 27(1): 21–31 (11 pages).
Kapp, K.M., (2012). The gamification of learning and instruction: Game-based methods and strategies for training and education. John Wiley & Sons, San Francisco (336 pages).
Kasurinen, J. and Knutas, A., (2018). Publication trends in gamification: A systematic mapping study. Comput. Sci. Rev., 27, 33–44 (12 pages).
Kavouras, I.; Rallis, I.; Sardis, E.; Protopapadakis, E.; Doulamis, A.; Doulamis, N., (2025). Empowering communities through gamified urban design solutions. Smart Cities, 8(2), 44: 1-24 (24 pages).
Kavouras, I.; Sardis, E.; Protopapadakis, E.; Rallis, I.; Doulamis, A.; Doulamis, N., (2023). A low-cost gamified urban planning methodology enhanced with co-creation and participatory approaches. Sustainability, 15(3), 2297: 1-27 (27 pages).
Kawanaka, S.; Matsuda, Y.; Suwa, H.; Fujimoto, M.; Arakawa, Y.; Yasumoto, K., (2020). Gamified participatory sensing in tourism: An experimental study of the effects on tourist behavior and satisfaction. Smart Cities, 3(3): 37–56 (20 pages).
Kazhamiakin, R.; Marconi, A.; Perillo, M.; Pistore, M.; Valetto, G.; Piras, L.; Perri, N., (2015). Using gamification to incentivize sustainable urban mobility. In 2015 IEEE 1st Int. Smart Cities Conf. IEEE. (pp. 1–6) (6 pages).
Klamert, K. and Münster, S., (2017). Child’s Play — A literature-based survey on gamified tools and methods for fostering public participation in urban planning. In P. Parycek, Y. Charalabidis, A.V. Chugunov,; P. Panagiotopoulos; T. A. Pardo (Eds.), Electronic Participation. ePart 2017 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 10429, pp. 24–33). Springer, Cham (10 pages).
Koster, R., (2013). Theory of fun for game design (2nd ed.). O’Reilly Media, Sebastopol, CA (300 pages).
Landa Oregi, I.; Urra-Uriarte, S.; Gonzalez Ochoantesana, I.; Rodríguez, M.A.; Molina-Costa, P., (2025). Enhancing citizen participation in citizen-centered smart cities: insights from two european case studies. Urban Science, 9(5): 140, 1-20. (20 pages).
Lebed, F., (2020). Play and Spiel are not the same: Anti-Wittgensteinian arguments and consideration of game as a kind of human play. Games Cult., 16(6): 743–761 (19 pages).
Lifelo, Z., and Ding, J., (2024). Artificial intelligence‑enabled metaverse for sustainable smart cities: technologies, applications, challenges, and future directions. Electronics, 13(24), Article 4874: 1–31 (31 pages).
Mayer, I.S., (2009). The gaming of policy and the politics of gaming: A review. Simul. Gaming, 40(6): 825–862 (38 pages).
Miao, H.; Saleh, M.S.M.; Zolkepli, I.A., (2022). Gamification as a learning tool for pro-environmental behavior: A systematic review. Malaysian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (MJSSH), 7(12), e001881-e001881: 1-22 (22 pages).  
Michael, D.R.; Chen, S.L., (2005). Serious games: Games that educate, train, and inform. Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade, Boston (312 pages).
MIT Media Lab, (2019). CityScope: Urban design and civic engagement platform. City Science Group (Project page).
Mora, A.; Riera, D.; Gonzalez, C.; Arnedo-Moreno, J., (2017). Gamification: A systematic review of design frameworks. J. Comput. High. Educ., 29(3): 516–545 (30 pages).
Muehlhaus, S.L.; Eghtebas, C.; Seifert, N.; Schubert, G.; Petzold, F.; Klinker, G., (2023). Game.UP: Gamified urban planning participation enhancing exploration, motivation, and interactions. Int. J. Hum.–Comput. Interact., 39(2): 331–347 (17 pages).
Naranjo‑Zolotov, M.; Oliveira, T.; Casteleyn, S.; Irani, Z., (2019). Continuous usage of e‑participation: The role of the sense of virtual community. Gov. Inf. Q., 36(3): 536–545 (10 pages).
Ng, P.; Zhu, S.; Li, Y.; van Ameijde, J., (2024). Digitally gamified co‑creation: Enhancing community engagement in urban design through a participant‑centric framework. Des. Sci., 10, Article e17: 1–35 (35 pages).
Nicholson, S., (2015). A recipe for meaningful gamification. In Reiners, T. and Wood, L.C. (Eds.), Gamification in Education and Business (pp. 1–20). Springer. (20 pages).
Nourian, P.; Azadi, S.; Bai, N.; de Andrade, B.; Abu Zaid, N.; Rezvani, S.; Pereira Roders, A., (2024). EquiCity game: A mathematical serious game for participatory design of spatial configurations. Sci. Rep., 14(1), Article 10912: 1–15 (15 pages).
Noyman, A.; Sakai, Y.; Larson, K., (2019). CityScopeAR: Urban design and crowdsourced engagement platform [Preprint]. arXiv. (5 pages).
Oliveira, F.M.; Cordeiro, I.L.; Ramalho, A.L.D.O.S.; dos Santos, T.M., (2024). Systematic Literature Review About Gamification In Public Management. Práticas em Contabilidade e Gestão, 12(2): 1-25, (25 pages).
Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development (OECD)., (2020). Behavioural insights for environmental policy: Green nudges. OECD Publishing.
Özden, S.; Arslantürk, E.; Senem, M.; As, İ., (2023). Gamification in urban planning – Experiencing the future city. Archit. Plan. J., 28(3): 44: 1–14 (14 pages).
Pajarito, D.; Gould, M., (2017). Smart mobility, the role of mobile games. In Serious Games: 3rd Joint Int. Conf., JCSG 2017 (pp. 44–59). Springer. (16 pages).
Papaioannou, T.G.; Dimitriou, N.; Vasilakis, K.; Schoofs, A.; Nikiforakis, M.; Pursche, F.; Deliyski, N.; Taha, A.; Kotsopoulos, D.; Bardaki, C.; Kotsilitis, S.; Garbi, A., (2018). An IoT-based gamified approach for reducing occupants’ energy wastage in public buildings. Sensors, 18(2), 537: 1-24 (24 pages).
Park, J.; Fujii, S., (2023). Civic engagement in a citizen-led living lab for smart cities: evidence from South Korea. Urban Planning, 8(2): 93-107 (15 pages).
Parra-González, M.E.; López-Belmonte, J.; Segura-Robles, A.; Moreno-Guerrero, A.J.,  (2021). Gamification and flipped learning and their influence on aspects related to the teaching‑learning process. Heliyon, 7(2): 1–10 (10pages).
Pellegrini, A.D., (2010). Games and play mean different things in an educational context. Nature, 467(7311): 27–27 (1 page).
Poplin, A., (2011). Games and serious games in urban planning: Study cases. In Comput. Sci. Appl.–ICCSA 2011 (pp. 1–14). Springer. Berlin, Heidelberg. (14 pages).  
Poplin, A., (2014). Digital serious game for urban planning: “B3—design your marketplace!”. Environ. Plan. B: Plan. Des., 41(3): 493–511 (19 pages).
Poplin, A.; Kerkhove, T.; Reasoner, M.; Roy, A.; Brown, N., (2017). Serious geoGames for civic engagement in urban planning: Discussion based on four game prototypes. In C. Yamu, A. Poplin, O. Devisch, and G. de Roo (Eds.), The Virtual and the Real in Planning and Urban Design: Perspectives, Practices and Applications (pp. 189–213). Routledge. (25 pages).
Prandi, C.; Nisi, V.; Salomoni, P.; Nunes, N.J., (2015). From gamification to pervasive game in mapping urban accessibility. In Proc. 11th Biannual Conf. Italian SIGCHI Chapter (pp. 126–129). ACM. (4 pages).
Prilenska, V., (2019). Current research trends in games for public participation in planning. RTU Sci. Proc., 15(1): 113–121 (9 pages).
Redondo, E.; Zapata, H.; Navarro, I; Fonseca, D.; Gimenez, L.; Pérez, M.Á.; Sánchez-Sepúlveda, M., (2020). GAME4CITY. Gamification for citizens through the use of virtual reality made available to the masses. Viability study in two public events. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 315-332). Cham: Springer International Publishing. (18 pages).
Reinart, B.; Poplin, A., (2014). Games in urban planning – a comparative study. REAL CORP 2014 Proc., 239–248. CORP. (10 pages).
Resek, C.L.; Siniscalchi, P.P.; Caetano, B.P.; Oliveira, K.W.; Paula, M.M.; Souza, J.M., (2022). Gamification of citizen participation: a systematic mapping. IEEE Transactions on Games, 16(1): 1-15, (15 pages).
Romano, M.; Díaz, P.; Aedo, I., (2022). Gamification-less: may gamification really foster civic participation? A controlled field experiment. J. Ambient Intell. Hum. Comput., 13(9): 4451-4465 (14 pages).  
Ryan, R.M.; Deci, E.L., (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. Am. Psychol., 55(1): 68–78 (11 pages).
Seaborn, K.; Fels, D.I., (2015). Gamification in theory and action: A survey. Int. J. Hum.–Comput. Stud., 74, 14–31 (18 pages).
Sengupta, U.; Tantoush, M.; Bassanino, M.; Cheung, E., (2020). The hybrid space of collaborative location-based mobile games and the city: a case study of ingress. Urban Planning, 5(4): 358-370 (13 pages).
Sergeyeva, O.; Bogomiagkova, E.; Orekh, E.; Kolesnik, N., (2019, October). Gamification of civic engagement in smart cities (new Russian practices). In M. Ben Ahmed; A.A. Boudhir; D. Santos, M.El Aroussi;  İ.R. Karas (Eds.), Innovations in Smart Cities Applications Edition 3: The Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Smart City Applications (Lecture Notes in Intelligent Transportation and Infrastructure, pp. 53–62). Springer, Cham. (10 pages).
Sgueo, G., (2019). Is gamification making cities smarter? Ius Publicum Netw. Rev., 1–16 (16 pages).
Shareable, (2010). Participatory Chinatown (Web article).
Steinkuehler, C.A., (2012). Learning in massively multiplayer online games. In Embracing Diversity in the Learning Sciences (pp. 522–529). Routledge. (8 pages).
Tappert, S.; Mehan, A.; Tuominen, P.; Varga, Z., (2024). Citizen participation, digital agency, and urban development [Editorial]. Urban Planning, 9, Article 7810: 1-6 (6 pages).
Thibault, M., (2019). Towards a typology of urban gamification. In Proc. 52nd Hawaii Int. Conf. on System Sciences (pp. 1476–1485). Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. (10 pages).
Thibault, M., (2020). Understanding urban gamification: Playful meaning-making in real and digital city spaces. Int. J. Arts Technol., 12(1): 3–17 (15 pages).
Thibault, M.; Baer, M.F., (2021). Urban gamification during lockdown and social isolation: From the teddy bear challenge to window expeditions. In Proc. 5th Int. GamiFIN Conf. (pp. 130–139). CEUR-WS. (10 pages).
Thiel, S. K.; Fröhlich, P., (2016). Gamification as motivation to engage in location-based public participation. In Prog. Location-Based Serv. 2016 (pp. 399–421). Springer (23 pages).
Tóbiás, K.; Boros, L., (2025). Participatory planning and gamification: insights from Hungary. Land, 14(3), 573: 1-24 (24 pages).
Vanolo, A., (2018). Cities and the politics of gamification. Cities, 74, 320–326 (7 pages).
Venturi, S.; Zulauf, K.; Cuel, R.; Wagner, R., (2025). Trash to treasure: gamification and informed recycling behavior. Resour. Conserv. Recyl. Adv., 215, 108108: 1-11 (11 pages).
Werbach, K.; Hunter, D., (2012). For the win: How game thinking can revolutionize your business. Wharton Digital Press, Philadelphia (148 pages).
Yao, Y.; Li, Z.; Ma, S., (2025). Exploring gamification's role in shaping socially sustainable urban spaces: A case study of Gensen in SOLANA, Beijing. Buildings (2075-5309), 15(12): 1-21 (21 pages).
Zhou, Z.; Chen, Z.; Jin, X.L.; Yuan, Z., (2025). Unveiling motivational configurations in shaping meaningful engagement in green gamification. Eur. J. Inf. Syst., 34(4): 715-738 (24 pages).
Zhou, Z.; Lin, Y.; Li, Y., (2024). Large language model empowered participatory urban planning. arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.01698, 1–18 (18 pages).
Zyda, M., (2005). From visual simulation to virtual reality to games. Computer, 38(9): 25–32. IEEE. (8 pages).
 
  • Receive Date 27 August 2025
  • Revise Date 12 November 2025
  • Accept Date 19 May 2026

Home

Authorship

Submit Manuscript

Indexing and Abstracting

Editorial Board

Unrestricted Reuse in Compliance with BOAI

Open Access Policy

Self-Archiving Policy

Privacy Statement

Publisher Business Model

Publisher and Sponsor

Contact Us