An Innovative Game-Based Approach for Teaching Urban Sustainability

Abstract This paper is based on SUSTAIN, an ERASMUS+ project with an innovative perspective on urban transportation, and its target is to promote the importance of sustainability on the everyday problem of urban transportation among the students of higher education (and not only), who are the policy makers of tomorrow. In order to achieve its goals, the research team is currently developing a course that will be based on an interactive serious board game with an analytical style of education. SUSTAIN’s purpose is to create a game that will allow students to learn about transportation sustainability and societal metabolism through playing. The project partners develop small and illustrative simulation models, which will make the definitions more concrete and allow students to experiment largely in a consequence-free environment. The simulation models can be used to identify scenario exemplars on how we can achieve sustainable urban transportation and consequently a balanced societal metabolism, while on the same time taking into account formal decision making processes. In this paper, we are going to explain a Stocks ---amp--- Flows Diagram for the above mentioned model, with a system dynamics approach.