London street photo. Credit: Carlos RM from Flickr
Introducing the online game for Londoners which researchers hope will one day influence the shape of the nation's capital. —Daniele Quercia - An online game which tests Londoners' ability to recognise parts of the capital has been devised by researchers as the first step in a project to create a "memory map" of the city. "Urbanopticon", which can be found at http://www.urbanopticon.org is free to use and takes just minutes to play. Players are shown randomly-selected photographs of different London streets and asked to name the nearest tube station, or to identify the borough in which the photo was taken. They can also share their score with friends on Facebook and Twitter. The game is also part of a serious experiment, however. Building on long-standing studies which show that we each create our own mental map of a city, the researchers will use the results to map recognisability across London. Theorists have suggested that the recognisability of the urban environment is closely linked to people's well-being. The project will also investigate how far it is linked to social deprivation. In the long-term, the data from Urbanopticon could be used to help town planners focus on where the urban environment needs most improvement, so that people feel more at home. Daniele Quercia, from the University of Cambridge's Computer Laboratory and one of four researchers who designed the project, said: "When we build communities, we try to give ourselves pointers and signs that enable us to recognise where we are. This improves our ability to find our way around and, as a result, it improves our lives." "The question is, where has this been done to best effect, and why?
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