Virtual Urbanism: A Conceptual Framework for Digital Urban Mediation

Virtual cities in video games have emerged as significant sites for the production and reinterpretation of contemporary urban imaginaries. By translating the complexity of real-world urban life into interactive and emotionally engaging environments, they offer new ways of experiencing and understanding cities. Despite their growing importance, research on virtual urbanism remains fragmented across disciplines and lacks a coherent conceptual foundation. Consequently, there is an urgent need for an integrative conceptual framework that explains how virtual cities mediate the production and transformation of urban knowledge. Drawing on an interdisciplinary synthesis of the literature from urban theory, media studies, and game design, this study identifies three key analytical dimensions (representation, abstraction, and spatial cognition) through which virtual urban experience is mediated, alongside urban rearticulation as a distinct process through which virtual urban experiences may be reinterpreted in relation to real urban thought and practice. These insights are integrated into the Virtual Urbanism Feedback Model (VUFM), a cyclical framework composed of three interconnected domains: Real to Virtual Inputs, Ludic Urban Transformations, and Virtual to Real Outputs. The model conceptualizes virtual cities as dynamic epistemic systems in which real and digital urban processes continuously interact through cycles of translation, reinterpretation, and feedback. The study contributes a unified conceptual framework for understanding digital urban mediation and highlights its implications for urban planning, urban design education, participatory planning, and the study of spatial experience in increasingly hybrid urban environments.