ABSTRACT
Urban planning and architecture have always played a fundamental role in videogames, directly or indirectly. Together with the characters and the historical plot of the game, they have made it possible to create attractive virtual worlds in which to enjoy experiences that go beyond fiction. Today, we are at a turning point. New technologies applied to the development of videogames provide a great opportunity to rethink new smart ways of planning and managing the city that are more participatory and inclusive in the post-Covid world. Within this context, the main objective of this paper is to explore and highlight the experimental possibilities that virtual space can offer to urban planning and architecture of a smart city. In this sense, it is proposed the integration in the urban planning process of a methodology that seeks to speculate on the possibilities that virtual models can offer, merging virtual space and real space in a collaborative work. As a result, the existence of a symbiotic relationship between reality and virtuality is confirmed, making possible new resilient ways of understanding space, as well as testing new strategies, systems and complex social, political and/or economic organizations in virtual urban environments very close to reality. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The new current pandemic situation has meant that some previously unknown concepts have become part of our everyday language, as is the case with health areas. These are the demarcations for the distribution of health services, and their boundaries depend on broad criteria such as demographic, geographic, labor, epidemiological, road provisioning, or health facilities within them. But, from a planning perspective, what could be the minimum unit of confinement? What would be their characteristics and minimum services? What would be the appropriate criteria to define these units? The very experience lived during this pandemic, makes us reflect and put on the table the debate on the policies and action plans determined by the different governments from the perspective of the praxis of urbanism. From this experience, this study aims to reflect, from the perspective of urban planning, on the potential criteria best suited to the definition of minimum units of social confinement that can be included in the processes of urban planning and management. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.