Gentrification the Game

Big games in public spaces seems to be a new cool trend these days and yesterday I participated in an awesome one.

Yesterday I went to Kensington Market to play a game called Gentrification. The best way I can describe it is as a giant game of real life Monopoly with extra stuff. The object of the game is to improve a neighborhood. There's five rounds in the game. Each round your team gets assigned a random property (which is a real space in real life). You can also purchase two more properties per round by taking a picture in front of a property with a sign for that round before a next team does. Once you have properties you can start building on them. The more properties in a row you own the larger of a store/business you can build. As well, each round your team has to do a task to win over the neighborhood such as advertising (chalk art on the sidewalk), a PR campaign (giving out candy to strangers), beautification (picking up recycling) a parade (this one's for real. we had an impromptu parade) and other things. You win points for completing tasks, and more if you do them well.

All and all, the game was a ton of fun to play, but my team also made it more fun. I played with Lucia, who was our team captain and recruited us all. I knew her before, but the rest of my team I just met the night before. The rest of my team was Mike, Jon, Khaleed and Meghan, who were all awesome people and brought something to the team.

Check out some of the pics:

Of course, our team won!!

And then we got free hugs!

Thanks for the people at Atmosphere Industries for putting this on. I would totally play this or any other game they do again.

Sorry, but it just has to be played now: