North Berkeley
The year is 2018. New technology brings unprecedented prosperity to the East Bay, and with it, a crushing housing crisis. The North Berkeley BART station parking lot has emerged as a potential site for new housing, but there are many disagreements over density, affordability, and cost.
It’s a challenge that new leaders rise to. As you assemble your political coalition, will you be the one that meets the greatest number of constituent goals, and goes on to govern North Berkeley?
Based on the real life debate over development at the North Berkeley BART parking lot, North Berkeley is a fast-paced game of negotiation where you take the role of a local interest groups and work out a plan that meets as many of your groups’ goals as possible.
Game Rules
FAQs
- For constituents like Save Our Parking, which wants one garage for every six new homes, does that mean that to fulfill the requirement I need two garages once there are seven homes, or once there are twelve homes?
- Round up - a second garage is needed once there are seven homes.
- When drawing another constituent randomly in a 2 or 3 player game (step 4 in the directions), it is allowed to discard a card if the card is already scoring a -1. How should this be determined for cards the outcome of which can’t be known until the end of the game? For example, Inclusionary Housing for All scores -1 if fewer than 7 Low or Middle income residents are housed. Because only phase 1 has happened and no new people have yet moved in at this point in the game the card is necessarily scoring -1 as the board only starts with four each of low and middle income, but it is not yet certain the card will score -1 after phase 2. There are several other constituent cards like this, such as Neighbors for More Parks if no parks were built in Phase 1, Affordable Housing Organizations, etc. Can these cards always be discarded? Can they never be discarded?
- Whether a card can be discarded is based on the current situation on the board - all the examples above can be discarded.
- Is it intended to be possible to draw a card that is not discardable but also cannot have its +1 condition fulfilled? For example, if a player draws Inclusionary Housing For All, there is a market-rate only building already built in Phase 1, and the answer to question 2 was that the card cannot be discarded, it would not be possible to fulfill the +1 point of having every square with housing contain at least one low or middle income home no matter what happens in Phase 2.
- Yes.