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Pokémon Go is dumb.Chances are you've at least heard of the game that's been sweeping the nation (and much of the rest of the developed world), even if you don't fully understand the concept or the logistics behind the game. The game's raison d'être is absurdly straightforward: there are trillions of tiny monsters (Pokémon, if you will) out and about in our world and it's the responsibility of the Pokemon Trainer (the player) to help Professor MacGuffin Willow catch them all. That's it. At its most elemental, Pokémon Go is high-tech geocaching, but worse: players don't know what Pokémon spawn where or when said Pokémon spawn, so players need to keep their smartphones powered up and the app open while playing, draining data and battery.But the game is incredibly popular and addictive: since launching on July 7 of this year, the game was downloaded over 100 million times by August 1. One month into the widespread American release of the game, users spent an average of 26 minutes a day in the app, and Niantic Labs, the Google spin-off responsible for Pokémon Go, has reportedly made over $200 million in the game's first month on the market.But Pokémon Go might save your neighborhood.To people unfamiliar with the game, the scene looks like something out of a millennial reboot of Dawn of the Dead: people milling about idly in public places, eyes glued to their smartphones, apparently shutting out the world around them. But on-screen, players are immersed in "augmented reality" (AR): the app uses the smartphone's GPS position to show the player on a stylized, simplified map of their surroundings. As a player walks through the real world, their avatar walks with them and the map slowly scrolls. PokéStops, where players restock on supplies, and PokéGyms, where players send their Pokémon to battle other players' Pokémon, are highlighted as colorful pylons. Players must physically walk to a pylon, which is activated when the GPS shows they're close enough to the real-world landmark the PokéStop or PokéGym is based on. Once the location is activated, players can interact with the location. Pokémon themselves can spawn theoretically anywhere on the map at any time, but they're predisposed to appear where players congregate or at a PokéStop where a player can place a "lure" to attract Pokémon.If that game description sounded like a bunch of jibberish, that's okay. Suffice it to say the game requires significant amounts of walking, and in the last five weeks Pokémon Go may have propelled the Complete Streets movement ahead by a matter of years, for that one simple reason: people are walking more in their neighborhoods. Within the game's first week, some fitness apps saw measurable increases in users' walking habits. Pokémon Go's real-world PokéStop and PokéGym locations began as "portals" in Niantic's earlier augmented-reality game Ingress. Generally speaking, PokéStops and PokéGyms are located at real-world landmarks that are unique, locations of interest, or places where people congregate, which means Pokémon Go is overwhelmingly rewarding local communities with pedestrian-friendly infrastructure and strong community identifiers. Libraries, churches, statues, parks, public art installations, fountains, and transit stations - often initially constructed as community gathering places decades ago - are enjoying a bit of a renaissance now in the Pokémon Go era as PokéStops and PokéGyms. If a player lives in an area with few unique identifiers or gathering places (like, say, sprawling single-family housing subdivisions), they'll have to travel further to find PokéStops to load up on supplies. Since PokéGyms are more rare than PokéStops (for instance, Chicago's Millennium Park has about 24 PokéStops and only two PokéGyms), players in those rural/exurban/suburban sprawl areas may have to travel even further to find a place to battle their Pokémon.While casual observers have noted the zombie-like Pokémon Go players milling around staring at their smartphones fulfill just about every millennial trope there is, the game is proving to be a very social experience. Groups of friends often plan excursions just to maximize their Pokémon Go time. Transit providers in St. Louis and Vancouver are actively marketing their services for Pokémon Go players, and some transportation providers have gone a step further and run dedicated bus service just for Pokémon Go players. The game even is being credited as a "life-saver" for people with social anxiety.But Pokémon Go is also rewarding local communities in the form of increased business activity. For instance, Pokémon Go is being credited with singlehandedly saving a Washington state ice cream shop. Player surveys also suggest an economic incentive to local businesses in the early days of Pokémon Go, with findings that will make economic development officials salivate:* 82% of Pokémon Go players visited a business while playing the game* 51% of players have visited a business for the first time while playing the game* Players who visit a business while playing the game spend an average of $11.30 per visitThose statistics combined with the game's focus on walking will inevitably reward more traditional downtown shopping districts rather than strip malls or big-box stores. This dumb game is being credited for helping to revitalize walkable neighborhoods all over the country, even in neighborhoods with "tougher reputations". Perhaps more significantly, however, Pokémon Go is exposing how UNwalkable some neighborhoods and communities are. From The Daily Dot:"The same happened for Rayne DeVivo, who started playing the game with her two young sons in central Illinois. 'We have one PokéStop (a water tower) within walking distance, the rest are "in town" which is on the other side of the interstate, so we have to drive to those,' she said. Play is difficult because there are no sidewalks in her area, and the game often prompts them to catch Pokémon on their neighbors' property."Some areas are starting to see a bit of a backlash to the increased traffic Pokémon Go is generating, with some communities threatening to ticket Pokémon Go players for disrupting traffic. But a community that chooses to threaten players with tickets rather than do something about their "narrow streets and no sidewalks" issue is (hopefully) in the minority, given the demographic trends planners and developers are observing.When does a fad become a trend?Pokémon Go is a fad. It will inevitably fade, regardless of its insane popularity today. (When was the last time you watered your FarmVille crops?) But even if augmented reality games and applications do fade away, the demand for more walkable communities is here to stay. Demographic trends have been pretty clear for years now: millennials want to walk and a majority of millennials (and 46% of Baby Boomers) want to live in mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods. Only 76% of 20-24 year olds in 2014 had a driver's license, compared to 92% of that demographic in 1983. Not everyone can live within a ten minute walk from a half-dozen PokéStops (or, you know, businesses or restaurants or shops or transit stations or whatever), but augmented reality games like Pokémon Go are rewarding communities that have invested in mixed-use development with pedestrian-friendly infrastructure.Pokémon Go is still a dumb game; it's even possible we've already hit peak Pokémon Go, especially as teens go back to school and as summer begins to cool off. But it's a dumb game that's encouraging people to spend more time (and money) in their neighborhoods and take notice of the built environment around them, even if they do look like they're just mindlessly staring at their smartphones. The question our communities and neighborhoods have to ask themselves now is, "are these people going to like what they see when they look up from their phones?"
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