The article explores how the quality of life within a deprived urban environment might be improved through the ‘gamification’ of and interaction with, more-than-human elements within the environment. It argues that such quality may be achieved through the community’s multicentered value from the bottom up. This is shown through the case study of the Co-De|GT urban mobile application that was developed in the Synergetic Landscapes unit through real-life research by design experimental studio teaching. Complimentary experimentation took place during the Relating Systems Thinking and Design 10 symposium in the Co-De|BP workshop, where experts were able to be collocated for interactive real-time data gathering. This application addresses the need for collective action towards more-than-human synergy across an urban ecosystem through gamification, community collaboration and DIY culture. It intends to generate a sustainable, scalable token economy where humans and non-humans play equal roles, earning, trading and being paid for goods and services to test such potentials for future economies underpinned by blockchain. This work diverges from dominant economic models that do not recognise the performance of and the limits to, material extraction from the ecosystem. The current economic model has led to the global financial crisis (GFC). Furthermore, it is based on the unsustainable perpetual consumption of services and goods, which may lead to the untangling and critical failure of the market system globally. Therefore, this work investigates how gamification and tokenization may support a complementary and parallel economic market that sustains and grows urban ecosystems. While the research does not speculate on policy implications, it posits how such markets may ameliorate some of the brittleness apparent in the global economic model. It demonstrates a systemic approach to urban ecosystem performance for the future post-Anthropocene communities and economies.

This article focuses on contemporary craft as a transactional phenomenon in the twenty-first century. It explores the influence of automation technology – such as laser-cutters and robotics – arguing that our approach to automation has gone unchanged since the Industrial Revolution. Practical implementations of automation reinforce a Marxist ideology that labor is placed under threat and individuals stripped of skill. By focusing on craft as a fundamentally transactional activity between individuals, the essay confronts preconceived ideas regarding automation. It steps through a series of theoretical frameworks including Wittgenstein, Arendt and Marx to unpack the relationship between labor, value and craft. Using two case-studies – one designing aided by a laser cutter, the other drawing portraiture with an industrial robot – the author offers a conceptual shift from considering production to be “from” machines to production “with” machines. I use this shift within the case-studies to offer a delineation of streams for approaching and ultimately reclaiming craft from machines.