Playing the game of growth – Board game highlights Missoula’s planning issues

If you ever suspected Mayor Mike Kadas was playing games with the fate of Missoula, you’re right.

By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian

Literally.

Debate over density bonuses, open space, travel corridors and doughnut areas can leave citizens in a fog of government acronyms. To better bring the choices alive, Kadas has been designing a board game for anyone with an opinion to plan the future of the valley.

Using City Council’s Plat, Annexation and Zoning Committee as his "beta site," or test audience, Kadas unfurled the dining room-table-sized maps and bags of chips that signify a bird’s-eye view of Missoula. The green areas (which take up most of the map) are undevelopable. They are the public lands, floodplains, conservation easements, and steep slopes that can’t hold houses.

The remaining brown areas show where housing can go. But they’re shaded according to how much housing is already there.

The chips signify 40 acres and 40 homes. Stacking them implies increasing density: Four chips mean four houses per acre – the average figure for Missoula’s residential neighborhoods. Twenty chips would be 20 houses per acre, perhaps signifying an apartment complex or trailer court.

There are 113 chips per game. That works out to 4,520 homes. And that’s roughly how many new homes will be built in the Missoula Valley over the next decade, assuming it continues its 2 percent-a-year growth rate.

"In effect, in 10 years we’ve got to use all these chips or start kicking people out?" PAZ Chairman John Engen asked.

In short: Yes. And the problem is relatively easy in Missoula. Play this game in Boise, Idaho, and you’ve got to deal with a 3- to 4-percent growth rate.

"It’s coming," Kadas said. "You’ve got to decide where to put it."

The problems got bigger as the beta test went on. The map showed some land belonging to the University of Montana in undevelopable green. That was a technical accident because the mapping program assumed the university was public property.

Councilman Jerry Ballas noticed the map didn’t show the "airport influence zone": an invisible boundary around Missoula International Airport where development is restricted because of jet engine noise or aircraft safety concerns. Scott Morgan wondered what would happen if the city allowed accessory dwelling units, sometimes called "granny flats," to be built in people’s back yards. Doing so would allow a new layer of housing chips to be spread over much of the already developed areas. But it might also ignite political protest if residents disliked the increased density more than they liked affordable housing.

And while the goal is to find places to build, players also need to carve out open spaces for future parks and viewsheds. Audience member Jane Van Fossen mentioned the recent challenge of finding space for a new veterans cemetery.

Some things simply aren’t considered. Ken Wall of Geodata Services is helping develop the maps and development rules. He said adding things like commercial or industrial space, street grids, or housing types could make the game unplayable.

"We’ve found that people can’t comprehend more than five colors at once," Wall said. "We did about 50 versions of this map trying to find out what we needed to see."

Putting the game on a computer would greatly expand its options. For example, new programs can use aerial photos of the city and add computer images of the additional houses. But the complexity problem remains. A Missoula map small enough to fit on most computer screens would be unreadable. Using some kind of zoom feature makes it difficult to recall the big picture.

But the goal is to refine the game into something that can be sent to neighborhood council meetings, the Western Montana Fair, classrooms and any other places where people gather. An Internet version may eventually be developed that people could play on their home computers. Most important, some way of collecting the new ideas or consensus for growing Missoula must be found.

"There are some instructions that we didn’t even read," Kadas said as the council members struggled with their chip piles. "But that’s the American way. We just go to it and put it together."

Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at [email protected]

http://missoulian.com/articles/2003/09/29/news/local/news02.txt