The map for Cross Bronx Expressway shows eight out of twelve community board districts in the southern section of the Bronx. A few communities in the city of New York, in the state of New York, in the country of the United States, on this planet we call Earth. The game zooms into this small corner of urban life, in an effort to simulate the historic changes that happened in cities across the globe during the second half of the 20th century. Examining the effects of these changes on the South Bronx reveals many of the issues that arose during this period.

The game covers six decades from 1940 through 2000. In 1948, the same year the Cross Bronx Expressway began construction, the Marshall Plan was rebuilding Europe after World War II. Beginning prior to the start of the game, development initiatives were modernizing cities around the globe. These changes would redefine urban life for the rest of the twentieth century, both physically and in the socio-economic organisms that grew out of them. Viewed through the history of the South Bronx, which sees its socio-economic organism shaped by these development initiatives, a critical picture is presented of the process of urban development as a whole, and its impacts on local populations.

The game aims to model that socio-economic organism, to create a body politic between the players which simulates the decision spaces faced by the historical actors. To do this meant moving beyond the individualist perspective found in many city-building games, that center player positions around funding the development of a city to earn profits and prestige in order to win the game. In these games, impact is measured not by the city itself, but by the capital (both social and financial) players can earn through it. Impacts which do not have direct effects on the economy are abstracted away, if not removed all together.

Economic games in general and city builders in particular have trouble modeling history, because they typically operate in this type of economic vacuum. The effects of urban planning touched far more than just the buildings and profits they produced. To present this history meant building a model that could capture both the economic and the social factors, and have them play off of each other through the city-building mechanics. To properly place the players within the social context however, meant neither their positions nor their motivations could be equal.

Cross Bronx Expressway models this history through three asymmetric factions – the public sector, the private sector and the community itself – each with their own idea of what the city should be. They use the means at their disposal, each a bit different from the others, to address the changing needs of the population, mitigating the multitude of issues that arise. Collectively they must ensure that there is neither a social nor an economic collapse, but individually they each want to shape the city to their vision.

The time scale of each turn of the game is twelve to fifteen months. As players look at the board, the limitations that these factions historically dealt with are modelled by their disparate needs and the tight action economy they face to deal with them. This creates a decision space that forces players to be tactical, reacting to the board state as it is each turn, even though the game will evaluate them strategically, based on the cumulative effects of their actions over a longer timescale. Players do not directly score points for the things that they do, but for the impact their actions have at the end of each decade.

At the end of every decade of play in Cross Bronx Expressway there is a census. Based on the board state at the beginning of the census, players pay upkeep costs and taxes for what they’ve built, and account for the revenue they’ve been able to generate if the socio-economic conditions have not deteriorated (all players must work together to avoid the collective loss conditions of social disenfranchisement and economic bankruptcy). The map is then evaluated to determine how the city reflects each of their faction objectives to score them points individually.

Conflict in the game arises through the entanglements of player actions, and the ripple effects these have, not just on other players, but also on the population of the South Bronx.  Represented as cubes on the map, players interact with the population, and the actions of one player affects the others through their relationships with the population. While some of these actions work to serve the needs of that population, they can often have other costs which put that population at risk of becoming vulnerable.

The vulnerable in Cross Bronx Expressway are also on the map, representing the adverse effects events and player actions can have on the population. If these vulnerabilities are not mitigated, the vulnerable can be lost and if too many vulnerable are lost, the population is disenfranchised. In addition to working towards their individual objectives, players will need to put in work to prevent losses. This creates tension, as actions often require risking vulnerable losses to achieve faction objectives. A feedback loop is created between the players and the population, with the actions of one directly affecting the other. In this way, each decision is not just an economic one, but a social one as well.

By tying the actions of asymmetric factions to both the economics and the social impacts, Cross Bronx Expressway is able to provide a version of city-building well suited for reflecting history. While still an abstraction, with the population represented on the board the model does not shy away from some of the tougher realities that emerge. Even more so, as we will detail further in our next article, by framing one of those factions as the communities those populations represent, it provides them agency in that history.

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