ABSTRACT
Urban Development Investment Game (U-DIG) was developed as a response to the need for a gaming tool for the understanding of urban dynamics and for research into urban innovation to improve the quality of urban life. The value of U-DIG lies in its worth as a tool for understanding existing urban situation and as a research device to help develop a better quality of urban life. Environment-behavior incongruence related to urban movement contributes significantly to the pathology of urban existence. The behavior-contingent environmental design and management strategy explicated by Studer argues for the necessity of modeling and simulating of proposed environment-behavior ensembles. A behavior-contingent approach requires that the proposed environment be pretested in terms of the behavior system it will produce. Operational Games that combine physical models with human players are explored as useful and efficient tools for the exploration and teaching of architectural processes. The chapter discusses the educational advantages inherent in designing operational gaming simulations.
