User:Alfeldt

CLUG: The Community Land Use Game      4/2/94 (Originally Cornell Land Use Game)

CLUG was developed as a teaching aid in 1963 and has been revised and modified hundreds of times over the past 30 years by a variety of users in the U.S. and several other countries. The basic format of the game is a group of players who try to make a profit and at least survive while building and managing a small city. The rules of the game are a simplified version of the classical principles of land use economics and the basic objective of playing is to understand how those principles operate in a dynamic local economy. More immediate goals such as reducing costs, finding employment, minimizing taxes, etc. provide the major motivation of most players, however.

Players are grouped into teams of 3-6 persons each with a limited amount of capital which is used to buy land, build and operate land uses, pay taxes and transportation costs, and meet payrolls and shopping costs owed to other players. Transportation costs are lower along major highways and for Industries are lowest near the Terminal providing access to the outside world. A rudimentary city council decides where municipal services will be supplied, how they will be paid for, and may make other civic decisions including how land uses should be controlled.

Play proceeds in a number of rounds, which generally take about a half hour each, though the first round often requires an hour or more while players become familiar with the mechanics of the game. Most players understand the basic operation of the game and most of the principles it embodies after 2-4 rounds of play, although playing a few additional rounds helps to make the principles and their longer-term consequences more clear. Most players become deeply engrossed in the game and are loath to stop when the end of the game is announced. Playing the game for about six rounds over two or more sessions of 3-4 hours each is one of the more effective styles of presentation. While games as long as 80 rounds over several semesters have been reported, more than 15-20 rounds is probably not an effective use of teaching time. The game was originally intended for graduate students but it has been used successfully with undergraduate and high school students as well as professionals, local officials, and businessmen.

Several dozen people have contributed variations and ideas to the design of CLUG but Allan Feldt was the original designer and has been one of the more consistent users and distributors of the model. Earlier copyrighted versions of the game rules are now out of print and over the past few years, rules and instructions for running the game have been reproduced on demand and freely distributed to anyone requesting them with the request that the original designer if the game be acknowledged. .

Allan G. Feldt, Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan alfeldt@umich.edu