Monopolis for the Masses

In this course, students experience economic and spatial theory through board games and follow four industries (textiles, steel, agriculture and tech) through eight cities to compare their roles in the production of space. Through each unit, we examine how ideology and incentivized behavior shape land use and impact developmental agency. We also investigate our own strategic positions through live negotiation, reading and discussion, and the use of game mechanisms as projective simulations to influence multiple win/fail states.

This course includes historical precedents of industry expansion and contraction; specifically, the architectural actualization of previously dominant sectors within their local context through rapid rise and decline. It features individual, collaborative, and/or competitive play both during the course and within the final deliverable of a custom-produced board game. By engaging with topics such as unlimited growth or economic equilibrium, labor, capitalism, asymmetrical valuation, and risk, we seek to further system-based understanding and reflect critically on industry-based development to better advocate for stakeholder interests, define the architectural position, and register territory through historical and speculative lenses.