Monopoly City: An Exercise in Environmental Injustice or the Pursuit of the American Dream?

BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Margaret Smith

If there's one game that could appropriately be defined as an American classic, it's Monopoly. After all, who hasn't played the famous board game that preaches the importance of hard work, smart economic strategy and the rag-to-riches American dream?

Hasbro has never before made a Monopoly game like Monopoly City, though.

I was watching TV the other day when the Monopoly City commercial flashed on the screen.

"He was building his perfect city," the announcer exclaimed as a 10-year-old boy walked around, awestruck, in the middle of towering skyscrapers and pure blue skies, "when someone put a stinking power plant next door and ruined his plans! Monopoly City! For the first time ever, build your 3D city of soaring towers and skyscrapers, and spoil others plans with power plants. Who will triumph to build the ultimate skyscraper? New Monopoly City... Build a city, your city."

Power plants, trash dumps, soaring skyscrapers, a small 10-year-old boy and a barking Toto-like dog... it was a lot to process in 30 seconds.

The Monopoly board game has a pretty deep history. Little known to the public, the first version of Monopoly was developed by a Quaker named Elizabeth Magie. Magie's version, called "The Landlord's Game", was developed in the early 1900s with the intention of teaching people the virtues of Henry George's Single Tax Theory and the evils of land monopoly. She patented her game in 1904, but when it was pitched to leading toy manufacturer Parker Brothers, they wouldn't buy it because it was "too complicated."

That didn't stop Magie's game from gaining popularity, however. "The Landlord's Game" soon found a strong following, and many people even took the game and made their own personalized versions at home.

That's where Charles Darrow came in. Darrow, a heating and engineering salesman, lost his job during the Great Depression. Unemployed, he soon started inventing games and toys as a pastime. His version of "The Landlord's Game," developed in 1933, is the Monopoly we all know today: Down-on-their-luck Americans move around the game board and buy and sell properties in order to turn their measly $1,500 into much more. In the end, you can only win if you own the most properties and bankrupt the other players, dominating the entire market. Of course, Parker Brothers bought Darrow's game -- it was a classic American tale with an appropriately capitalist theme, much like Darrow's own life.

Monopoly has been a hit ever since. Mirroring the same process that the game encourages, Hasbro acquired Parker Brothers in 1991. Today, the game is licensed in more than 81 countries and produced in 27 different languages. You can play it on the new PlayStation3, the iPhone or even an iPod. You can play it with Disney Princesses, Transformers Robots, Star Wars characters and even buy a Littlest Pet Shop edition.

Monopoly City was the first version of the game that really confused me, though. "For the first time ever, build your 3D city of soaring towers and skyscrapers, and spoil others plans with... power plants?" What kind of economic theory, city planning and environmental development are we teaching children?

I looked to Monopoly's page on the Hasbro/Parker Brothers Web site for more information. This is what they told me:

Build on every Go and watch your city fortune grow! In this metropolitan edition of MONOPOLY, be the top property developer and watch your dream city rise before your eyes. What will you build -- houses or industrial complexes, schools, skyscrapers or stadiums? The choice is yours. But watch out -- a rival developer could build a sewage plant right next to your prize property and make its value plummet! So build wisely and rake in the rent... and the prestigious MONOPOLY tower could be yours!

The online version of Monopoly City Hasbro created to promote the new board game, Monopoly City Streets, gives a little more insight in the world of Monopoly City. Monopoly City Streets uses the same rules as Monopoly City, only instead of a board, the game is played online. The game uses Google Maps, and it allows players to buy any street in the entire world and play against other users online in real time.

Monopoly City Streets gives players two different types of chance cards: a Bonus Building Chance Card and a Hazard Chance Card. Receive a Bonus Building Chance Card, and you can build a stadium, park or school on any street you own. A Hazard Chance Card is a little more brutal. The Hazard card lets you construct a power plant, prison or sewage works on any street not protected by a bonus building. If a hazard building is built on a block you own or near your city, the value automatically plummets and you can no longer collect rent on that property.

In all reality's sake, playing Monopoly City and Monopoly City Streets is a lesson in Economics 101. If there is a power plant, sewage works or prison on your block or even near the city you live in, chances are the value of your property will go down. The rules of the game also state that a bonus building will protect your city or street from a hazard building, and in many cases, a school, park or stadium could save your neighborhood in real life, as well (after all, could you see a power plant being built next to Wrigley Field?)

Perhaps that's all Hasbro/Parker Brothers was trying to achieve in its effort to create a metropolitan version of Monopoly. And it's not like we want kids to think having power plants or sewage works dispensing toxic waste in the area is a good thing, either.

Monopoly may be getting a little too realistic with the newest version of the board game, though. Monopoly City essentially teaches you that in order for one area to prosper, another one must take the fall. After all, strategically speaking you can't build "the ultimate skyscraper" without ruining another city with power plants, sewage dumps or prisons, right?

And in the real world, power plants and factories ruin communities all too often. Just two weeks ago, environmental and racial justice activists from six states met with Environmental Protection Agency officials over the issue of environmental racism, or the dumping of toxic chemicals into areas that are disproportionately in black, low-income communities. Felicia Davis, an Atlanta-based activist with the Environmental Justice Climate Change Initiative, told the Associated Press that historically, power plants and factories have been built in low-income communities because land is cheaper and local residents are perceived as less likely to put up a fight.

So what are we teaching kids ages eight and up with Monopoly City? Are we teaching them the fundamentals of economics and capitalism, much like all Monopoly games? Or are we telling them that in order to make it to the top, earn the most money and create the perfect city, somebody else's home might have to be ruined along the way?

Well either way, if I'm a little confused as to what the message is, chances are a 10-year-old will be, too.

BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS