Researchers from the University of Birmingham and the University of Nebraska collaborated on adapting an existing board game called Rufopoly to engage stakeholders in rural land use issues in the Great Plains region. Called Plainsopoly, the game was played by over 60 participants at a rural futures conference, who discussed land use scenarios and policy tools while moving around the board. The game facilitated productive dialogue on challenging issues and helped stakeholders gain new perspectives outside their usual viewpoints. Feedback from one game issue was also able to directly inform the US Secretary of Agriculture. Games are becoming an important public engagement tool for addressing complex planning and policy issues through facilitated learning in a fun, lower-stakes environment.

1. Playing Around with Rural Futures in Birmingham and Nebraska
Researchers from Birmingham City University and the University of Nebraska have recently
collaborated on an exciting project to develop a board game to improve the way different publics
engage with, and understand, complex land and resource management issues facing their
communities. Building on the highly successful Rufopoly game,an output from the Rural Economy
and Land Use Programme in the United Kingdom where people answer real life questions from
research on the rural urban fringe, Plainsopoly was born.
In collaboration with ProfessorsAlister Scott and Richard Wakeford from Birmingham City University,
a team of researchers led by Professor Jessica Shoemaker from the University of Nebraska College of
Law adapted the UK research questions to cover contemporary land use and rural development
issues in the Great Plains. The result was centre stage in a session at the recent Rural Futures
Conference in Lincoln, Nebraska. Over 60 participants played the game within a hypothetical
landscape reminiscent of, but not directly identical to, the land base of the Great Plains. Using dice,
players moved around the board, discussing variousland-use questions and scenarios that enabled
them to create their own overall visions for the area. Finally, participants were invited to analyze
which tools of governments – at federal, state and local levels – would either help or hinder the
realisation of the visions they had expressed.
Professor Scott,the architect of the original Rufopoly game, commented,“Games have a way of
taking people outside their usual agendas and viewpoints creating new learning and opportunity
spaces to engage with complex planning issues. Crucially this is outside the emotional space of their
reality. The dice provide a powerful manager of the agendas players have to confront. It takes
engagement and makes it fun but also creates a serious learning opportunity. Whilst the web
provides a great space for engagement processes, there seems a strong attraction with a board
game which involves face-to-face interaction, debate, and discussion with the added element of
chance.”
Games have become an important tool for changing the face of public engagement processes by
facilitating the learning that is hidden within them. Professor Shoemaker stated, “The diverse landbased resources of the Great Plains are a tremendous asset, but it is sometimes challenging to
engage private landowners, community members, and other stakeholders in a productive dialogue
about how to achieve the highest, best, and most sustainable uses of that land. Plainsopoly proved
to be a fantastic vehicle for speeding participants’ learning about the impact of an individual’s land
use decisions on a range of interlocking concerns and for engaging participants in a robust,
substantive dialogue about the future of rural places, given both the opportunities and challenges
presented by current land use management policy and governance regimes.”
While set in hypothetical landscapes, the results can have an immediate impact. For
example,Professor Wakefordwas able to takeone issue emerging from the game – the impact of
capital taxation on land use – and feed it back directly to US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.
“Several Nebraskans mentioned how potential capital taxliabilities deter American farmers from
retiring, making it harder for younger, potentially more innovative people to bring new ideas to the
profession. Secretary Vilsack was aware of the concern, but explained that this was one of a number
of ideas he could not himself deliver but needed to be a part of a joined-up approach to shaping

2. government tools to encourage the best use of land.”Taxation has been mentioned as a major
influence on land use in Europe1.
Preston Peterson, a law student who helped develop the game questions for the Great Plains setting
and participated in facilitating the exercise directly at the recent Rural Futures Conference,
commented, “The Plainsopoly simulation environment helped a diverse group of conference
participants work together to address the challenges of developing and implementing a sustainable
land use policy, and by putting discussions about real-world issues into the context of a hypothetical
landscape, it enabled stakeholders to lower their guards so as to have a real conversation about
otherwise difficult and sometimes controversial topics.”
Games thus provide an important tool in the increasing armoury of engagement weapons that can
be used to help improve policy and plan processes.
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1
See for example “Land in Europe: prices, taxes and use patterns: EEA Technical report No 4/2010”;
ISSN 1725-2237