Bay Area Regional Planner 2015

Where will you zone for more homes? Get ready to negotiate! The San Francisco Bay Area faces a housing crisis. With far more people wanting to live here than there are homes, rents have risen to record heights. However, building new housing isn't easy, with concerns about traffic, views, gentrification, and open space, to name just a few. Still, the problem can be solved, though not by San Francisco alone. You'll have to plan and build regionally.

In Bay Area Regional Planner, you'll be given some policy goals to fulfill. On each round, you'll negotiate with the other players to decide where to zone for more housing. Everyone must be in agreement, so get ready to compromise and make coalitions!

Bay Area Regional Planner is for 2-12 players and typical games run 60-120 minutes.

More than a game: You'll have more than just fun when playing Bay Area Regional Planner: you'll be navigating real world strategies and challenges in the Bay Area planning process. Developed as an educational tool for the San Francisco Bay Area Renters' Federation, Bay Area Regional Planner tries to be as accurate as possible to actual issues and numbers. Game data on commute time and current numbers of housing units are sourced from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Association of Bay Area Governments' (ABAG) Bay Area Census. Policy goals are based on actual feedback to regional plans at ABAG's Plan Bay Area public outreach workshops, and the consensus-based decision making is an abstraction of how the public process here works.