Urban Planning Games and Simulations: From Board Games to Artificial Environments
Urban planning games and simulations span more than a century of public and professional interest. Although they are primarily recreational in nature, there is potential for them to be catalysts to educate the public on environmental, economic, and social
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Abstract Urban planning games and simulations span more than a century of public and professional interest. Although they are primarily recreational in nature, there is potential for them to be catalysts to educate the public on environmental, economic, and social issues connected with urban sustainability, resiliency, and regeneration. Early games were based on a linear (mechanical) approach to urbanism. Today’s computer simulations have various degrees of autonomous systems interactions. As games and simulations evolve in complexity and realism, so too does their ability to mirror more integrated urban systems and explore a wide range of scenario planning alternatives. Future simulations will include more autonomous interaction and eventually artificial intelligence-designed environments.
1 Urban Planning Board Games: Around and Around We Go 1.1
The Landlord’s Game, 1904
The seminal board game for urban planning was originally created to illustrate the need for social reform. The Landlord’s Game was patented by Maryland Quaker Elizabeth “Lizzie” J. Magie in 1904 “to demonstrate the evils of accruing vast sums of wealth at the expense of others. A firebrand against the railroad, steel and oil monopolists of her time, she told a reporter in 1906, ‘In a short time, I hope a very short time, men and women will discover that they are poor because Carnegie and Rockefeller, maybe, have more than they know what to do with.’” Players rolled a die to move their marker around the board. When a player lands on a space, they may purchase it if unowned or must pay a fee if owned by another player. A player wins the game by amassing the most properties and bankrupting the other players.
R. Stephens (*) International Society of City and Regional Planners, The Hague, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 T. Kaneda et al. (eds.), Simulation and Gaming in the Network Society, Translational Systems Sciences 9, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0575-6_19
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As with most successive urban planning board games, movement is linear in a closed loop and the game environment is unchanging. The original game had rules for “monopolists” and “anti-monopolists.” This board game was popular among many activists in New England with various published and homemade versions. Numerous games devoted to buying, selling, and developing land followed over the next three decades. The Landlord’s Game was reformatted in 1923 by E. M. Phillips. It included place-names and the implication that the game “circuit” was a railway. This version emphasized real estate development and railroad transportation. As with the original version, “jail” was included as a penalty, and winning meant accumulating property and wealth until the other players became bankrupt—in short, a zero-sum game (Figs. 1 and 2).
1.2
Monopoly, 1933
About a decade later, and immediately after the 1929 stock market crash, Charles Darrow designed a version of this game with the universally recognized name Monopoly. His
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