Ecology 2020

In April 2006, a group of students from around Southern Wisconsin spent a weekend working with urban planners and virtual stakeholders to redesign State Street, Madison’s most famous thoroughfare.

After conducting an ethnographic study of an urban planning practicum in the fall of 2005, Ecology 2020 was built using design principles tested during Madison2200. The substantial changes to the game structure included:

1. Moving from an Excel-based model to an ArcGIS-based model running in CommunityViz

2. Incorporating virutal stakeholders and their views into the site visit by using handheld GPS units

3. Incoporating stakeholder feedback into the game structure

In Ecology 2020, players worked to balance the needs of mulitple stakeholder groups and interacted with those stakeholders during the site visit through the use of handheld GPS units. Urban Science builds upon the success of Ecology 2020.