Our Lab explores digital games that enable players to build cities. City builder video games can take them to past, present and future settings, being more or less closely linked to the material and social realities we experience outside the digital realm. We are investigating the complex relationships between game mechanics and aesthetics on the one side and the urban imaginaries standing behind games and practices of players on the other.

In the public event series organized by the Working Group Interdisciplinary Urban Research in cooperation with NUR – Network Urban Research, researchers from TU Darmstadt and invited guests from various disciplines and universities present their current work on the topic of cities. Each semester, the City Talks provide new insights from urban research and its subdisciplines. The City Talks are open to anyone interested – students, research assistants, experts, and non-university stakeholders are all welcome to attend.

The Urban Scholar Lab (USL) is held once per semester by Dr. Felipe De Souza and Dr. Claudia Ba. The aim of the lab is to present, discuss, and receive feedback on your research or thesis (B.A., M.A., doctoral, or post-doctoral theses) in an inspiring and interdisciplinary setting that is low-threshold and ungraded. Presenters benefit from the experience of speaking in front of an engaged academic urban studies community, sharpening their arguments, and gaining insights from other research areas and disciplines.

The aim of the NUR “Urban Writing Lab” format is to advance urban research-related publications by regularly working on papers and PHD theses for three hours at a time. Each session comprises three 45-minute Pomodoro sessions, followed by an exchange of texts within the group to receive constructive criticism.