Country: Italy – City: Palermo – Address: Italy, Palermo, via Costante Girardengo, 18

Palermo’s ZEN neighbourhood like you’ve never played it before! An evening with Urbalia

Description:

What if the city could be reinvented… by playing? On the occasion of GeoNight, Marco Picone and Emanuela Caravello invite the public to take part in a playful experience in the heart of Palermo’s ZEN neighbourhood, at the Laboratorio ZEN Insieme. Participants will play the board game Urbalia, taking on roles such as a tourism guru, a radical architect, a city councillor, and other characters with special powers. Working alongside a team of local experts, they will compete with other groups to design the best possible neighbourhood. At the end of the game, the winning player will be awarded the title of mayor of the city!
Through play, participants will collectively create a space for reflection and imagination: a training ground for territorial empathy and an alternative to simplified and stigmatizing narratives. The game becomes a way to reclaim place, question the right to the city, explore socio-spatial inequalities, and imagine possibilities for urban transformation. Open to a broad audience, the initiative takes the form of public geography, where play becomes an accessible language to talk about space, power, and urban futures. An invitation to discover that geography is not only studied: sometimes it is played. And by playing, we can change the way space is perceived, shared, and governed.

Main objectives:

The main objective of the event is to actively involve a broad and diverse audience in reflecting on urban space through a playful, inclusive and participatory experience. By using the board game Urbalia, the event aims to show how play can become a powerful tool of public geography, capable of making complex urban issues such as planning, governance and spatial inequalities accessible and engaging. Starting from the specific context of Palermo’s ZEN neighbourhood, the activity seeks to foster collective reflection on the right to the city, on how places are represented and experienced, and on the possibilities for imagining alternative urban futures. At the same time, the event aims to challenge simplified and stigmatizing narratives often associated with marginalised urban areas, encouraging participants to experiment with different perspectives by taking on diverse urban roles.

Event language: Italian

The event will be: Only in presence

Reference person: Marco Picone and Emanuela Caravello – Role or function: University professor and Research fellow – Reference organization: University of Palermo, Department of Architecture

Those who organize are: Academics

Estimated starting time (local time): 4:00:00 PM

Expected duration: the whole afternoon

Event program: The event will take place starting at 4:00 PM at the Laboratorio ZEN Insieme, located at 18 Via Costante Girardengo in Palermo.

GeoNight code: 2026161