Learn City Design through board games, video games and movies
A brand new online course on City Design with funny short video lectures and a variety of different assignments
City Design online course shows the fundamentals of city planning, building and exploitation via funny short video lectures and a variety of brief assignments for self-control.
It is ideal for people who want to know about designing the cities before starting professional readings or to draw inspiration.
Program
The course starts with cases answering questions of why, how and where and depicting different cities. The second part of the course touches more practical study and shows how such games as The Settlers of Catan, Age of Empires, Star Craft, Heroes of Might and Magic, Clash of Clans, Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies, various Tycoons, Battle City and others could be helpful in understanding main principles of City Design. Yes, here practical study means playing these games.
The third part of the course is dedicated to unreal cities (like the city in Monsters, Inc.) and how to make current cities better. Also there will be a place for ideas of future cities as space or underwater cities. Finally, the last part of the course describes how algorithms, programming (remember labyrinths in Inception movie?) and math logic ease the process of designing the city.
Month 1 | History of Cities
- How cities began
- Cities’ roles and main characteristics
Month 2 | Game City Design
- Cities in board games and video games
- Tower defense and real-time strategies
Month 3 | Future of Cities
- Smart cities and ideas for improvements
- Space cities (Star Wars, WALL-E)
Month 4 | Program the City
- Code the city (Lord of the Rings, Inception)
- Estimate and predict population and traffic
Assignments
To test the knowledge during the course various Stepic’s capabilities are used. Three quizzes from the intro lesson are shown below as examples.
Multiple choice
Easy quizzes to choose one or multiple correct answers. As well as yes-no questions.
Logic puzzles
Open-ended questions with automatic grading. For instance, algorithmic problems, checking numbers or sequences.
Text open-ended questions
Tests on text essays with certain words, phrases or definitions. Or even a free answer.
Also, many other types of quizzes will be used in the course.
Start now at stepic.org/city.
