From the wilderness of Hyrule, the continent of Tamriel, and the geographies of Middle Earth, players of video games are exposed to wondrous, fantastic, but ultimately fake, landscapes. Given the time people may spend in these worlds compared to the time they spend being trained in geoscience, we wondered whether expert geoscientists would differ from non-geoscientists in whether they judge the landscapes in these video games to be “realistic”. Since video games present a great opportunity for tangential learning, it would be a missed opportunity if it turns out that features obviously fake to geoscientists are perceived as plausible by non-geoscientists.

To satisfy our curiosity and answer this question, we conducted a survey where we asked people to judge both photos from real landscapes as well as screenshots from the recent The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild video game on how likely they thought the features in the picture were to exist in the real world. Since game world screenshots are easily identified based on their rendered, pixelated nature, we pre-processed all pictures with an artistic “Van Gogh” filter that removed the rendered nature but retained the dominant landscape features.

We found that there is a small but significant difference between geoscientists and non-geoscientists, with geoscientists being slightly better at judging which pictures are from the real world versus from the video game world. While significant, the effect is small enough to conclude that fantastical worlds in video games can be used for tangential learning on geoscientific subjects. ... Read more

Amsterdam is dealing with a discontinuity between a gentrified urban centre and a disadvantaged periphery, caused by the presence of different spatial concepts. The centre follows the concept of centralisation and therefore has fine grain, marked by the richness of connections between the different scaled grids. Centrality happens on the streets and so these streets, including the radials, function as high streets full of vital urban life. The periphery, however, follows the concept of decentralisation and has a coarse grain with a disengagement between the different scaled-grids. The vivid high streets of the centre change into traffic arteries, characterised by a thinness of experience of public space. Centrality happens in self-contained pockets and neighbourhoods are culturally and socially homogeneous. In between centre and periphery the Ringzone is located, which is actually a grey zone dominated by the metropolitan scale.
Meanwhile, the municipality aims to maintain welfare and prosperity for all residents and therefore should acknowledge the social and economic importance of public space. The social benefit of spatial interventions is, however, not visible in the municipal strategy and in the scale and character of the projects close to the Ringzone. Moreover, trends like gentrification and fragmentation cause a growing dichotomy between centre and periphery. Amsterdam should not take this for granted, but needs to restore the balance between centre and periphery by creating continuity of vital urban life instead. Therefore, the city should focus on linking the concept of centralisation and decentralisation by making use of the radials connecting both city parts and crossing the Ring. The radials have potential as arteries of public life and the local economy, leading towards a reorientation process from centre towards periphery. Vital urban life is the end-product of the different scaled grids in the city and creating urban life therefore starts by integrating these grids. The strategy shows how Amsterdam can make a step towards continuity by zooming in on several locations in Amsterdam’s peripheral district Nieuw-West. This new approach towards the radials contribute to ‘The City in Balance’ and offers new insight for both other city parts and entire cities dealing with a dichotomy. ... Read more