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Climate change is acknowledged as the largest threat to our societies in the coming decades, potentially affecting large and diverse groups of urban residents in this century of urbanization. As urban areas house highly diverse people with differing vulnerabilities, intensifying climate change is likely to shift the focus of discussions from a general urban perspective to who in cities will be affected by climate change, and how. This brings the urban equity question to the forefront. Here we assess how climate change events may amplify urban inequity. We find that heatwaves, but also flooding, landslides, and even mitigation and adaptation measures, affect specific population groups more than others. As underlying sensitivity factors we consistently identify socioeconomic status and gender. We synthesize the findings with regard to equity types – meaning outcome-based, process-oriented and context-related equity – and suggest solutions for avoiding increased equity and justice concerns as a result of climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors contribute to the discussion on suburban developments by way of modeling the underlying social dynamics between suburban actors in two European suburban areas: the Wirral (Liverpool), UK and Leipzig, Germany. Data from questionnaires carried out in the two study areas are used to model social attraction and repulsion: that is, social segregation processes among socioeconomic groups. The model suggests that these social dynamics would, if other possible influences are ignored, lead to a situation of fluctuating residential in-migration and out-migration and to waves of suburbanization in the study regions. There are no persistent states: suburbanization would steadily continue until external--that is, not modeled--forces restrict movement, impact the spatial characteristics of the suburbs, or alter the social interactions among the actors. Suburban in-migration could only be reduced by strict planning regulations and/ or other external forces which impact actor-class constellations and interdependencies, for example, by measures to restrict migration to more distant suburban locations and to provide preferential housing in the inner urban areas. The analysis further indicates that suburbs develop into independent residential areas, separate from the urban centers, as the primary source of migration to suburbs is no longer the urban centers; the vast majority of moves occur within suburbs or into suburbs from outside the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this guest editorial, we survey some of the main themes and issues in anthropogenic global warming. We emphasize the great potential of simulation/games as an educational strategy. The diversity of issues in climate change is matched by the variety of simulation/games. We then provide a summary of the main points of each of the eight articles, which together contain a wide range of perspectives on climate change, of types of simulation/gaming, of level of abstraction, and of method of implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Climate change (CC) is an increasing societal concern for many countries around the world, and yet international negotiations continue to make slow progress. CC is an issue that is proving difficult to address using traditional approaches to information provision and education. This article reviews the development of climate and CC games and simulations in recent years as an alternative and novel way of addressing CC issues and communicating with decision makers. It gives an overview of published CC games and analyses a selection of 52 sophisticated CC games in detail. The results allow comparisons of the temporal development of climate games, actors involved in CC game development, game formats, and game subjects. Many climate games appeared around the time of the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009, with an increasing number of commercial game developers entering the field. Role-play and management games dominate the scene, but we see a rapid increase in the number of online games or games with an online component. Both local and global mitigation issues are frequently addressed and as yet few games focus on adaptation to CC. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article introduces QuAG, a role-playing game, to enhance understanding of urban development through a social simulation. The participants represent actors of city development, divided into moving (e.g., residents, industry, retail) and nonmoving actors (e.g., planners, politicians). Development is performed by the relocation of actors between urban and suburban areas depending on the regions' attractiveness and the actors' preferences. An area's attractiveness varies with the location changes of actors and the manipulation by planners. The game is based on a qualitative computer model with similar rules and elements. The role-play was effective in two ways: it sensitized participants to the interdependencies among actors and their contribution to a region's attractiveness and made the computer model more tangible to them. If a similar impact of the planning measures in the game can be expected in the real world, the effects of investments can provide strong incentives for the movers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]