How a video game might help us build better cities | Karoliina Korppoo

180,544 views ・ 2017-10-10

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We humans are becoming an urban species,
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so cities, they are our natural habitat.
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That is where we live.
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In 2014, over 54 percent
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of the world population
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was living in cities,
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and I can bet you
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that so many of these people have thought
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of how they would do things differently,
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like if I only had the tools
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to change things in my city,
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what would I do?
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What would my dream city be like?
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And these tools,
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this is just what we gave them.
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Two years ago, my team and I,
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we released a game,
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"Cities: Skylines."
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It is a game about building cities.
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So I have always been interested in cities as systems.
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It's something that I find immensely interesting.
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But what I didn't understand
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was that I am not alone in this.
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People love cities.
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They are interested. They have ideas.
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The game was an instant hit.
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So far, over three and a half million people have played it.
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And it's not just about playing.
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We also have really awesome sharing systems.
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So people play, they create cities
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and then they are sharing these creations,
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showing off what they have made.
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And what I will show you
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is some of these cities
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created by the players.
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So the game is about self-expression,
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creativity,
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not just overcoming the challenges posed by the simulation.
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It is about showing what your cities look like.
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So I have a couple of videos.
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These are from YouTube.
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And these are some of the most interesting city designs I have seen.
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So they are all different,
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and I hope you like all of these.
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This one is called The Netherlands.
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It's by Silvarret.
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And when you start the game,
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you have an empty piece of land.
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This land, it can be based on the real world,
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it can be hand-crafted in the map editor,
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or you can, of course, download a city made by someone else
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and play in that.
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But what Silvarret has done here
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is that what he wanted to make
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was not a real city.
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This is a fantasy city,
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even though it looks real.
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So what he wanted to do was a fantasy city that could be in the Netherlands.
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So he kind of investigated
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what are the characteristics of cities in the Netherlands
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and combined a couple of those,
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and this is what he created.
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So it is a city,
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but it is not a real city,
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but it could be.
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It looks just like the Netherlands.
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So the places are really densely populated.
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So what you need is highways, trains,
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anything connecting these small town centers together.
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Lots of people, lots of moving,
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so transportation is the key here.
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But then let's go even more on the fantasy side.
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Let's go into the future.
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This is one of my personal favorites.
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These city designs are what I love the most.
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So this is a tiered city by Conflictnerd,
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and the basic idea is that you have concentric circle routes.
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So the city is a big circle
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with tinier circles inside.
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And the thing is that you put all of the services in the center,
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and then people actually live on the outer ring,
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because there is less traffic, less noise, less pollution,
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so that is where you want to live.
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But the services are still really close by.
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They are in the center.
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And this is the soul of the game.
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The player has to understand
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what are the wishes, what are the needs
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of the tiny people living in the cities.
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So you need to know where you should put the things.
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Like, it's not enough to have a hospital.
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It needs to be accessible.
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Citizens need to reach the hospital.
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And this is one way to do it.
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So maybe this is something that we might be seeing someday.
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And then even more into the future.
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Astergea by Yuttho.
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So Yuttho does YouTube videos and plays the game.
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What he did here was actually a 12-point series
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of creating this city.
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So what he does is he plays the game,
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he records it
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and he explains as he's going what he's doing and why.
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And as a part of this series,
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he actually did an interview with an actual urban planner
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called Jeff Speck.
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And Speck is an expert on the concept of walkability.
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The basic idea is that if you want your citizens to walk,
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which is kind of beneficial,
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you actually need to have walking as a reasonable means of transportation.
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It should be a good way to reach places.
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So what Yuttho did was that he explained this concept,
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he had Speck explain it, too,
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and then he applied it to the city that he was building.
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So what we are seeing is Yuttho's vision of the future:
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lots of public transportation, walkways, plazas,
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connecting high-rise buildings.
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Maybe this is what the future might look like.
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And the game system works really well for this.
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We are seeing some real-world uses to this game.
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So we know that some urban planners are using it as a sketching tool,
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so while the simulation is not completely realistic,
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it is realistic enough that if something works in the game,
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it is highly likely that it will also work in the real world,
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so that you can actually try out things,
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see if this intersection might fit this kind of a situation.
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If we build a new road, would it help?
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And this is what you can do with this game.
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There was one really interesting contest held
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by the Finnish city of Hämeenlinna.
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So what they did was that they had a new area
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that they wanted to develop in the city.
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They made a map with the existing city,
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they left empty the area that they would want to develop
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and shared this map.
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So anyone could download the map,
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play the game, build the area
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and submit their creations to the city council.
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So they have not yet built anything,
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but it might just be that they use one of these plans
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made with the game
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to actually build the real city.
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And these videos that I have shown you,
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these are the people who are coming up with new kinds of solutions.
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We know that cities are growing.
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They're getting bigger as we go,
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and the percentage of population living in cities is projected to rise.
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So we need the solutions
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and these people, playing the game,
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they are trying out different kinds of solutions.
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They might have something that is really important.
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So what we are seeing here is dream cities that might be real one day.
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So it might be
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that this is not just a game.
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It might be a way
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to decide our own fate.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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