My formula for a \u2018new urbanism\u2019 involves making the functional playable. To me, one of the greatest tragedies that befalls us as we age and get caught up in the day-to-day of capitalistic survival is the loss of our sense of play. Games are for \u2018kids,\u2019 unless they involve drinking or team building; games for adults apparently have to be either purely nonsensical or purely functional. I don\u2019t see why they can\u2019t be both.<\/p>\n
The \u2018Playable City\u2019 concept in Bristol is an example of how people can reclaim space, and make mundane objects like lamp posts and post boxes fun and interactive. I also like Chtcheglov\u2019s idea of the construction of situations. Over the summer I was back in Singapore, where this new form of entertainment called \u2018escape rooms\u2019 has taken off. Basically, you go to one of these places (usually a small shophouse) and there are several different themed rooms with storylines. You and your friends are locked in a room (that usually contains other hidden rooms) or an apartment, and have to escape in an hour by solving puzzles and completing tasks related to the story. In one room, I was in a medieval castle, chained by my wrists to the ceiling in total darkness. In another, I was in a haunted apartment, searching for the missing family that lived there. The concept came from Japan, where they took the \u2018escape the room\u2019 computer\/iphone games and turned them into real life games. It\u2019s gotten really popular in Asia, and has started to spread in the States too.<\/p>\n
In my new urbanism, I\u2019d like to take these games and make them city-wide. People would be yanked out of their routines and dropped into an entirely new narrative; they\u2019d be forced to cooperate, connive, solve, escape and rescue in these situational hijacks. Cities would be spaces of production and utility, but also of play.<\/p>\n
— Tiffany Tay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My formula for a \u2018new urbanism\u2019 involves making the functional playable. To me, one of the greatest tragedies that befalls us as we age and get caught up in the day-to-day of capitalistic survival is the loss of our sense…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[123],"class_list":["post-694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-remix-the-city","tag-formulary-for-a-new-urbanism","wpcat-7-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=694"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13762,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions\/13762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}