Photos of the Day: Monopoly Street Art

All images source: This is Colossal.

This is Colossal reports that a street artist or group of street artists known as 'Bored' has begun turning the streets of Chicago into a real life Monopoly board (Hat tip: Roger Ebert).

It's not all fun: this is a post-housing-bubble play on the great American real estate board game, which evolved from 1903 but was developed in its final form and bought by Parker Brothers in 1934. The board game recalls a prosperous town suffering through an earlier time of financial distress. Monopoly was conceived to depict Depression-era Atlantic City (see here, here, here, here, here and here). Atlantic City became a colourful centre during the Depression, a seaside resort town where one could dodge Prohibition (for a typically weird local story from the 1930s, go here). Decades later, Atlantic City's heyday was revived through its legalization of gambling and casinos.

The game now has dozens of local editions. The goal of the game is for one player to own and control all available urban properties by any means possible, whether by buying real estate, dominating the utilities or railways, winning beauty contests, skipping prison, trading properties, forming alliances, collecting heavy rents, or by chance.