ClairCity Skylines




A serious game about air quality, carbon and health.


Earlier posts have taken as their subjects Gamification and Motivation and Gamification and domestic energy consumption. This post looks at a particular game, ClairCity Skylines and its context, as described in

ClairCity Project: citizen-led scenarios to improve air quality in European cities.

by Enda Hayes et al. (2018), Air Pollution XXVI pp. 233 – 241. Open access:


The ClairCity Project is concerned with air pollution particularly in major cities; Bristol, Amsterdam, Ljubljana, Sosnowiec, Aveiro and Liguria (Genova) are piloting it. The project aims to create a “major shift in public understanding towards the causes of poor air quality, inviting citizens to give their opinions on air pollution and carbon reduction policies to shape the cities of the future.”
The game ClairCity Skylines is one of the means used to promote citizen engagement, and it is thus felt to be relevant to Community Energy, the topic of this blog.

The Skylines Game allows the players ‘to augment a stylised “living city” ’ resembling one of the pilot cities in the project. Players take the role of Major of ClairCity, and make decisions about low carbon, clean air policies and the ways in which they interact with other important issues. Players are retained through offering “the unique opportunity to replay and try-out alternative strategies and behaviours”, and are forced to question “their pre-conceived notions and the emotional reality of their envisaged future”.

The game has a policy library based on sources including existing databases of city solutions. Ideas are scored for short and long term impacts on climate/carbon, air quality/health, citizen satisfaction/happiness and city economy. Players promote ideas to policies “with the aim to improve air quality, carbon and health in the city while maintaining citizen satisfaction and the city economy.” Policies are categorised in such terms as transport, energy, industry, waste, and agriculture; regulatory, financial incentive, technological improvement, information provision; and the responsible authority.

Methods of promoting the game (in Bristol) have included “commuter pop-ups in train and bus stations … social media … local networks and community groups … events … such as walking and running festivals, science centre days … and local media news”.

Interim results are presented and analysed, and have allowed some main areas of concern to be identified in Bristol. A discussion follows, and it is concluded that “By putting people at the heart of both the problems and the solutions, the research has stimulated the public engagement necessary to tackle our challenging emissions problems through the development of a range of citizen-led future scenario and policy packages.”

The game can be downloaded in iOS and Android versions at:

A power point presentation on the project is available at

A YouTube presentation can be seen at:



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage

    Introduction The need to limit the harmful effects of climate change is a powerful motive for preventing carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere, and for removing CO2 that is already there, but there can be subsidiary aims associated with carbon capture, and there are many methods of accomplishing it. According to a definition published in 2014, “Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) encompasses methods and technologies to remove CO2 from … flue gas and from the atmosphere, followed by recycling the CO2 for utilization and determining safe and permanent storage options” (RCN-CCUS, 2014a). A definition of carbon capture and storage (CCS) used by Torvanger (2020) “refers to a group of technologies that reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from coal-fired or gas-fired power stations, or from process industries." The term sequestration is also used for the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere or from combustion gases, and permanent prevention of its...
Read more

Climate fiction and climate action

The interactions between climate fiction and environmental activism are the subject of a paper by Alacovska and Holt (2023). They describe environmental activism as “grassroots, decentralised social movements” which attempt to address issues of “inequality and systemic injustice arising from anthropogenic climate change, environmental degradation and ecological collapse” by means of non-hierarchical collective organising. The main object of their paper is to propose methods for future research, but here we will only draw on their introduction to the subject and its background. They believe that the popular genre of climate fiction influences climate activism , with the potential to stimulate the imagination and to energise the “quest for the attainment of better climate alternatives”. This stands in contrast with much writing on climate change, which is concerned with data and “mathematical prediction models for forecasting and comprehending the gravity of global environmental challeng...
Read more

Solar installations in the UK.

It is no doubt safest to assume that any correlation between an increase in solar generation in the UK and declining consumption of electrical energy from the grid is no more than that; nevertheless, a correlation is suggestive, and it could be instructive to pursue it further. To do this we will need to know more about solar installations in the UK. Ofgem, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets for the UK, publishes data on the total FiT PV installation capacity for each year. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/total-installed-capacity-kw-installation-type Capacity in kW, as of 30 September 2017 is given as follows (here rounded to the nearest thousand). Community                                       287,000 Domestic              ...
Read more