Main Theme of Summer School 2007 “Design of Gaming Simulation for Urban Management and Urban Planning” the designers’ officina The proposal is to reverse the traditional concept of GS design: create a device/tool or media to permit different players to be familiar with a “situation”, structure, system, problem etcetera. That means: a team composed by different expert knowledge, among them a GS designer. During the workshop goal of the team is to explore the use of GS design as device, tool and media of design. The process is focused in design process itself: designers are players. The players must find a way to design a GS for a given topic, under pressure of time and work on a situation that has two main characteristics: uncertainty and complexity (data/metadata, knowledge/meta-knowledge, target/meta-target, form/format…). some reasons why on urban GS The period between 1950s and 1970s has been very fertile for the gaming simulations in urban planning. The proliferation of these gaming simulations in that period has been so rich that many of these, which were designed in that period, still constitute the coreof training and didactical activities in many territorial disciplines. The decadence between 1980s and the beginning of 1990s has not put obstacles to the diffusion and the innovative research activities. Nevertheless, the same period has also experienced a progressive erosion of participation to activities and exchange between researchers and scholars: from the first ISAGA conferences where territorial gaming simulations represented a consistent part of projects and research results presented, until the latest conferences where they became progressively marginal. However, the practice shows that this does not correspond with a diminished attention or the lack of research interests: on contrary, due to the crisis of the urban and territorial planning at the end of the 1980s, the territorial gaming simulations started to be considered with greater attention for its intrinsic characteristics. This makes them an excellent tool for integrating innovative models and techniques. It also could be seen in relation to the NTIC and the evolution of hybrid forms. In that perspective, we would like to promote a specific encounter between designers, researchers, scholars and users of territorial gaming simulation via this special edition of ISAGA Summer School: from its uses in normative planning finalised to the description of the present, of the desirable future and of the action plans to be activated in order to reach the more acceptable future, to the uses in allocative planning with all its attention on the crystallisation of the power that provides resources for desirable objectives and activities. I believe that a new culture is taking form among planners. In this culture, planners should continue to embrace a close relationship with the political process and a respect for business, but without losing sight of equity and the broad public interest in the elements mentioned above. Side by side to this, it seems to us that a new cultural approach is also increasingly affirmed among the researchers and scholars, in the design and applications of territorial gaming simulations. To this new culture, we would like to give an adequate attention, to activate and increase exchange and confrontations between different schools and different national and international contexts. The aim of school is to co-teach and co-learn more about the spectrum of gaming- simulation methods that have been (or could be) used. Teachers and participants are involved in to explore the way the simulation-gaming methods are designed and applied, the insights they generated and the impacts they may (or may not) have. The participants will learn more about the transformations and changes in these domains, as well as about the various uses of simulation and gaming techniques We would like to offer possible contributions in showing a variety of applications (or combinations of techniques) in various countries. This variety of simulation and gaming methods may include advanced modelling (e.g. cellular automata, neuronal networks, systems dynamics, discrete event simulation) gaming (e.g. board games, computer mediated games, Internet games, day in a life simulations, policy games, urban management games, etc.) or combination of various gaming-simulation techniques (e.g. policy exercises). During the School an international interest group will be constituted. Its main objectives will be to keep up to date the contact list of members and organizations (research centres, universities, associations) and to manage a web-site where interested participants can exchange ideas, opinions, results, where to publish freefor- use materials and that will represent an official publishing place for the interest group members.