When Jiarui Li, an international student from China, enrolled at Montreal’s Concordia University to learn how to design video games, he didn’t expect to also find himself immersed in the world of urban planning.

That’s been the case this past year, which saw Li create virtual buildings, roads and green spaces, with sustainability in mind throughout – all while working on an exciting new project at Concordia’s Next-Generation Cities Institute (NGCI).

The project, CityPlayer, uses the elements of video-game-playing – or gamification – to make urban planning interactive and accessible. Li acted as lead programmer in the development of a prototype game, My Perfect Neighbourhood, which allows players to find the ideal balance between a livable and sustainable environment.

Li, 22, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science in August, was contracted to work on the game by NGCI senior advisor Chris Gibbs, who runs the institute’s gamified urban simulation platform. The platform is funded partly through a $120,000, three-year partnership with Behaviour Interactive, Canada’s major independent video-game studio, as well as the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Communities and Cities, held by NGCI’s founding co-director, Ursula Eicker.

It was an opportunity for Li – who also goes by Ray – to get the kind of experiential learning that Concordia prides itself on. “I’ve learned quite a few things,” he says, laughing as he attempts to list them. “I don’t know where to start!”

He says designing My Perfect Neighbourhood, which takes place in a virtual replica of Montreal’s Ville-Marie borough, helped him gain proficiency in developing large-scale systems with Unity, the software widely used in the video-game industry. For its sustainability component, he learned how to distill complex information from a group of experts – the NGCI’s researchers – into a user-friendly game.

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