Meet Daniel Wright, director of the UNC Charlotte Masters in Real Estate Program, developer of real estate and board games.
Monopoly, Catan, Suburbia, Tiny Towns, My City and New York 1901, are among the board games tucked into Daniel Wright’s bookshelf in his office at UNC Charlotte. An architecture undergrad turned real estate developer turned college professor, Wright is the current director of the Masters in Real Estate program at the university and the creator of a new board game: PLACES. Wright uses this board game as a teaching tool in many of his classes, employing it to contextualize his students’ finance-heavy course load with urban planning principles.
Before taking a position at the university, Wright had been a project manager for retail, office, medical office, and multi-family developments and an asset manager for institutional land investments. “And then before that my undergraduate degree was in Architecture, so my mind is actually more design oriented.” This orientation also means that Wright expects great urbanism from real estate developers, “For me, there's a need for holistic communities. And so that's having good design, that's having good planning, it's having economically sustainable activities. It's having equity. It's having diversity, all those things, I think are really important within our communities. So for me, real estate is much more than a building or a deal, it's how do we create communities?”
However, that isn’t necessarily true for his students, who are housed within the Belk College of Business’ finance program. Wright shares, “Most students don't care even a bit about design, and those who do, don't know how to care about it. They know that there's some impact, but they think what do I do? And I'm not going to be a designer? So, how does that even play into what I care about? Realizing what I'm up against is part of the battle.”
This is where PLACES comes in, a board game that Wright created that allows players to create great places through strategic investments and wise management. Complete with original watercolor paintings by Wright himself, players compete to assemble the most valuable portfolio. PLACES is an acronym representing the spaces that a healthy community needs: play, live, academic, community, employ, and shop. “For a community to thrive, it must have all these activities calibrated to the appropriate scale, geography, climate and culture,” Wright shares.
The game works as a great conduit to teach real estate principles while also giving students a chance to connect with each other. “I think for education, it's so much easier to teach using a game than a lecture, and you can of course supplement with a lecture, but I think the game is really helpful. If nothing else, a game can simply allow people to have fun and smile and actually talk to each other.”
Unlikely as it is for a finance professor to be teaching urbanist principles, PLACES demonstrates how these ideas can be brought to people who may not know a lot about planning, development, or city building. In his office with shelves filled with board games, Daniel Wright is working to find his own answer to the question, “How do we create better places?”
Sonia Birla is a student at UNC Charlotte majoring in Finance, Geography, and International Studies. She is the James Hardie Fellow for Urban Development Spring 2024.