Urban Planning Simulation Game and the Development of Spatial Competence

The use of simulation has proven to be helpful for many academics from various disciplines in the last decade. In the field of pedagogy, not only does simulation help in learning something new, but it also can be utilized as a learning tool for students. Today, there have been a lot of academic discourse of what kind of competence that can be harvested from the use of simulation. On the other hand, spatial intelligence is one type of intelligence whose existence is foreshadowed by the two more popular intelligence today; verbal and mathematical intelligence. To this day, only a few studies have thoroughly explored how to develop spatial intelligence, but only for children. This lack of dedicated framework and research has produced a consequential impediment for the uptake of simulation use in university-level education, particularly in spatial- oriented subjects. This paper addresses this shortcoming by reintroducing several key information regarding simulation, model, gamification, and its connection to spatial intelligence. This literature review will then be applied to an urban planning simulation game case study of SimCity. The result of this paper shows that there are several types of simulation that can train specific spatial competencies, which will further students' spatial competence.