The Dream Garden Game: Integrating Gamification and Playful Design to Support Public Participation in Urban Greening Policymaking

As greening initiatives are increasingly implemented by public agencies to enhance climate resilience in urban environments, meaningful engagement with communities to support public participation becomes critical. While it has been well-documented that effective community engagement is needed to inform policymaking, particularly in disadvantaged communities, description and documentation of specific methods for enhancing public participation remain limited in the study of urban greening policymaking. This study helps fill this gap by describing and reflecting on the application of a pilot engagement methodology that integrates gamification and playful design strategies to identify the types of plants people prefer in residential landscapes and the expected ecosystem services influencing their preferences. We developed an interactive engagement activity called The Dream Garden Game in which participants selected plants and groundcover materials to design the outdoor spaces of a hypothetical single-family residence. Participants shared and discussed their dream garden designs in groups, providing qualitative data regarding individual plant preferences. Through critical reflection on our experiences applying the pilot methodology, we propose that the approach shows promise for enhancing participation in the engagement process and supports research efforts to document personal and culturally significant drivers for plant selection. We also identify challenges implementing the method, including barriers to accessibility, time commitments of planning and preparation, and potential bias in the data collection process. Through this work, we offer lessons on how engagement methods integrating gamification and playful design can enhance public participation and information gathering to support the development of inclusive greening policies and initiatives.