From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners
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Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners
#2[deleted]
Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners
#3It's crazy how much SimCity cities look like the cities we've built for the last 75 years. Our cities really can be simplified to a game "fun" for someone to dive in right away. My thesis is that cities are oversimplified and stratified into easily separable blocks because they're easier to "industrialize" that way. This is causing crazy transportation requirements and isolation. If we mixed uses up a bit we could save on transportation overhead and be exposed to more things. The driver of this SimCity pattern of development is undoubtedly the single occupancy automobile. Sprawl works best for the car and the car works best for sprawl. Denser, mixed up uses work best with walking, biking, and transit. Conspiracy theorist in me says the auto industry influenced city planning from the ground up because they could profit off of it. Who profits when you walk more? Well, everyone... healthier bodies, healthier minds, more efficient transportation, etc. etc. etc.
Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners
#4It really is something. I remember a friend from childhood who gave me a pirated copy of the original Sim City. He's now a city planner in Los Angeles.
Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners
#5Here's a video of an urban planner playing Sim City 2000, and commenting on the various ways in which it's accurate or inaccurate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUQaCoxybW8
Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners
#6It's crazy how much SimCity cities look like the cities we've built for the last 75 years. Our cities really can be simplified to a game "fun" for someone to dive in right away. My thesis is that cities are oversimplified and stratified into easily separable blocks because they're easier to "industrialize" that way. This is causing crazy transportation requirements and isolation. If we mixed uses up a bit we could sa…
You are not the only one that believes that the auto industry worked to change urban transportation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners
#7I don't get the feeling that SimCity suggests that car-centric solutions are the "right" answers. My interpretation always was that it shows you how ideal mass transit solutions were but why economic pressure could keep them from working. Ultimately it seemed like the message was that pure capitalism was biased towards solutions that just barely met the citizens' needs.
The lack of parking lots was always an obvious bias, though a reasonable game design choice considering the visual appeal. I remember when SimCity 4 modders started making more buildings with "correct" parking lots (and other scaling aspects), it was so contrastive with the built-ins that people often either rejected it, or worked to acquire enough custom buildings that they could turn off all the default ones, which required a pretty staggering number of assets.
Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners
#8I don't get the feeling that SimCity suggests that car-centric solutions are the "right" answers. My interpretation always was that it shows you how ideal mass transit solutions were but why economic pressure could keep them from working. Ultimately it seemed like the message was that pure capitalism was biased towards solutions that just barely met the citizens' needs. The lack of parking lots was always an obvious…
Mass transit enthusiasts would probably love OpenTTD. Instead of managing a city, you manage a transit company that operates ships, planes, trucks, buses, and most of all trains.
Cities grow as you serve them with more mass transit, which maybe is more optimistic than real life, but on the other hand the game also teaches you that tearing up half the city to install a massive train yard is very expensive and will make local politicians furious with you, requiring you to bribe them with cash (or reforestation campaigns..) if you want to continue construction in their city.
Unfortunately it's missing subways, but the trams provided by community extensions are a pretty decent substitute.
Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners
#9If anything SimCity, makes transit heavy options seem really easy to build. Building a new subway in the game is easier (and not very expensive) than re-doing a grid of roads in an area that's already developed.
Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners
#10It's crazy how much SimCity cities look like the cities we've built for the last 75 years. Our cities really can be simplified to a game "fun" for someone to dive in right away. My thesis is that cities are oversimplified and stratified into easily separable blocks because they're easier to "industrialize" that way. This is causing crazy transportation requirements and isolation. If we mixed uses up a bit we could sa…
The book you’re looking for is “Seeing Like A State”