مجلة العمارة وبيئة الطفل
Volume 11, Numéro 1, Pages 4-26
2026-02-28
The City As A Playable Landscape: Investigating How Children’s Digital Games Shape Imagined And Lived Urban Experiences
Authors : Messaoudi Abir . Khalfallah Boudjemaa .
Abstract
The video game industry, today the world’s largest cultural sector, raises a central question: how do digital spaces influence children’s perception and experience of the city? Originally designed for entertainment, video games have evolved beyond this function to become cultural and symbolic mediators, providing a space for exploration between imagination and reality. For children, gaming is more than mere distraction: it constitutes a way of “inhabiting” the world and of symbolically and practically appropriating space. This experience generates a productive tension between the freedom offered by the virtual and the need for attentiveness to specific environmental constraints. The game thus becomes a space of action, cycle, and life, while urbanity — as a rational and structured organization — imposes separation from imagination. The trajective dimension, that is, the transition between the real and the virtual, is essential for analyzing the practices specific to digital spaces. These environments, governed by their own rules, aesthetics, and limitations, reveal by contrast the shortcomings of certain real urban contexts. Modernist architecture, often perceived as austere and dehumanizing, contrasts with the participatory and inclusive imagination fostered by video game worlds. Thus, video games cannot be reduced to simple entertainment: they open an interdisciplinary field of investigation and offer new ways of engaging with the city, while highlighting the lack of urban spaces truly designed for children. The key issue remains understanding how these digital experiences can encourage younger generations to actively participate in the symbolic and practical construction of urban space, ultimately redefining how we think about, represent, and experience the city.
Keywords
Children’s experience; digital imagination; urban space; video games; Virtual-reality transition.
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