"The Serious Game: a learning tool to enhance the communities in the context of sustainable cities"

: In smart communities, people need and user's awareness is key issues. Recent literature contains several social elements in the urban planning field and recognizes the fundamental role fulfilled by human factors. Users are the focus in delivering new urban services and in achieving sustainability in the longer terms, they are observed as key actors to attain real sustainability. Nowadays, this goal seems closer thanks to new interactive technologies that allow applying innovative learning methods as well as social research methods. Among the learning tools, the Serious Games (SGs) represent a very promising medium to be adopted in this context. They have multiple learning objectives and can be applied in many areas for all targets of people. One of the most important features of the SGs is to make interesting and entertaining issues improving the knowledge of users’ actions and teaching SGs could represent a strategic hub to promote educational programs and involve the adoption of new lifestyles based on the idea of energy saving. The main challenge is to understand the several possibilities and application fields where this tool can be applied, discovering its countless potentiality. In this contribution the characteristics of SGs are analyzed, their application fields, their benefits, and rescues descending by their use are synthetically presented and discussed.