Board games for urban planners

March 7, - CityLab. Sunday Fun: New Video Game Explains Land Use Politics We're not sure if planners will find this game, since it's so close to real life, but maybe it will make a good recommendation for friends and family members? November 11, - Greater Greater Washington. April 7, - The Architect's Newspaper. Comprehensive Planning Can Be All Fun and Games Planners in an Atlanta suburb are using games tailored to adults and children to inform a new comprehensive plan.

January 2, - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Friday Fun: Now You Can Race to Keep the Trains Running on a Mobile Phone The Mini Metro transit planning game has been around in all its simple and frustrating glory for a few years now, but it only recently became available as a mobile app.

November 11, - The Verge. September 15, - DNAInfo. Lessons for Urban Planning in —From SimCity A tech writer had a chance to revisit SimCity after years away from the game for contemporary lessons in planning.

June 25, - Inverse. March 16, - Planetizen. June 28, - Curbed NY. Board Games for Urban Planners Mark Ferrall is on a mission to get planners away from their computer screens and collaborating again - over a good board game.

September 8, - Mark Ferrall. Advertise with us. Staff Planner City of Williston. View More Post Job. Planners are the types to enjoy multifaceted problems, a staple of computer games. Required to balance competing public, private, and political interests, we understand that there are no simple solutions. Games offer an accessible battleground for solving these types of complex problems.

Even as children, that mindset drew planners to the games we grew up enjoying. Now, the planner's lunch hour is victim to the digital age, crumbs in front of a computer screen replacing the office break room.

Though blogs offer endless quality content for urbanists, they overestimate the productive social value of the comment thread. Moreover, digital games, once an entertaining alternative to the real world, have become part of the bit dystopia chipping at our lives. My challenge to planners is simple: reclaim your lunch period. Board games offer opportunities for conversation beyond the gratuitous "how was your weekend" and are a medium for the social support structure necessary to birth and implement great ideas.

Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, and Puerto Rico are entertaining games sure to get your planning geek on. Ticket to Ride. Released in by Days of Wonder, Ticket To Ride is a cross-country card collection and route building game.

The concept is simple; players collect train cards of various colors, and trade those cards to connect cities on a map. Players score points by placing trains and connecting destinations on Ticket Cards. For example, a ticket card might require a player to connect Miami and Los Angeles, and the player directs trains through combinations of other city-to-city routes to complete that ticket. Ticket to Ride's fun factor comes from the palpable uncertainty you feel as players compete for routes.

While some might choose to focus on their own tickets and avoid crossing tracks, other players ruthlessly claim short segments vital for a competitor's connections. Planners will enjoy this game for the opportunity to build their own cross country rail scheme. The efficiency minded might build a starbursting hub-and-spoke system, while others create complex winding paths competing for the coveted longest rail card. The game takes only minutes to learn, yet has plenty of replay value.

Most games take 45 minutes to an hour. Transportation not your thing? Check out Carcassonne. This game is best for those who have played a European Style board game or two, and is easiest to learn with someone who has played before. Carcassonne is a board building game, where play consists of strategically placing board pieces.

Tiles have three types of land uses: cities, roads, and farms. As players lay tiles, they can place wooden figures Meeples! Points are scored as other tiles are used to complete the boundaries of cities and the endpoints of roads. There is a slight learning curve to Carcassone, but worth the wait to combine the serendipity of a card game with the strategy of a chess game.

Inexperienced players regularly corner themselves into needing a specific road or city piece. Over time, players learn to control large sections of the board and clandestinely steal points from an opponent.

While the urbanism on display is simplistic, the physical arrangement of tiles will feel somehow familiar to many planners. Patent No. US A. Washington, DC: U. Patent and Trademark Office. Google Scholar. Duke, R. New York: Sage Publications. Emmerich, R. The thirteenth floor. Los Angeles: Centropolis Entertainment. Clug, community land use game.

Feldt, A. CLUG: Community land use game. New York: The Free Press. Forsythe, T. Ketchum, C. Re: Electronic urban planning simulation games Interview. Kofman, A. Les Simerables. Mazzei, R. Mack avenue: The game.