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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

#71

Post by woolvalley »

DonHopkins wrote: post #41
nkrisc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the latter, while you can't build a building zoned for multiple uses, you can certainly very much blend zoning very thoroughly, alternating commercial and residential buildings as you go down the street. Of course, the simulation likely isn't sophisticated enough to make full use of that (people will travel across the entire map to go shopping). I can also understand from a gameplay perspective why this is the cas…

It's very much because of gameplay issues. Theoretically the computer can simulate whatever model you can dream up, but the much harder problem is the user understanding, visualizing and editing that model with an easy interface that feels fun like playing a game, not tedious like doing your taxes in Excel or rigging skeletons in 3D Studio Max. Think of the number of extra user interface panels and gizmos and views a…

Couldn't we solve this with a percentage type for zoning, or adding a "mixed commerical/residential" zone? UI wise that shouldn't be any more complicated.

Or you can change the zoning into japanese zoning, where the UI can stay simple as you escalate the permission level of a zone. https://code.uberinternal.com/T2597239

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#72

Post by bane »

Given its popularity, tech minded players and complete failure of Maxis as a steward of the game, I'm incredibly surprised a popular and well maintained Open Source city sim hasn't appeared[1]

1 - I'm aware of Lincity, OpenCity and OpenSC2k, but none of them are popular and/or are recreations, not full-up new city makers.

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#74

Post by soup10 »

bane wrote: post #72

Given its popularity, tech minded players and complete failure of Maxis as a steward of the game, I'm incredibly surprised a popular and well maintained Open Source city sim hasn't appeared[1] 1 - I'm aware of Lincity, OpenCity and OpenSC2k, but none of them are popular and/or are recreations, not full-up new city makers.

successful open source game dev is pretty rare. i don't know why, but i'd guess mostly that polishing a game to modern standards is a heck of a grind.(not to mention artists aren't really keen on working for free either) There's plenty of half-baked open source games...

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#75

Post by chucksmash »

woolvalley wrote: post #71
DonHopkins wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very much because of gameplay issues. Theoretically the computer can simulate whatever model you can dream up, but the much harder problem is the user understanding, visualizing and editing that model with an easy interface that feels fun like playing a game, not tedious like doing your taxes in Excel or rigging skeletons in 3D Studio Max. Think of the number of extra user interface panels and gizmos and views a…

Couldn't we solve this with a percentage type for zoning, or adding a "mixed commerical/residential" zone? UI wise that shouldn't be any more complicated. Or you can change the zoning into japanese zoning, where the UI can stay simple as you escalate the permission level of a zone. https://code.uberinternal.com/T2597239

Seems like you've accidentally posted the wrong link.

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#76

Post by alexfringes »

nostrademons wrote: post #55
andys627 wrote: post #3

It'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…

People have certainly built Cities: Skylines cities with mixed-use developments, quaint mountain towns, little enclaves built around a park or monument, car-less cities, pedestrian-only cities, modular cities connected by mass transit, etc. I think the problem - in SimCity, Cities: Skylines, other video games, and real life - is that if you're building for aesthetics , there are many right answers, but if you're buil…

This might be the one reason that makes the F2P Sim City worth mentioning, in which where I’ve found it much more challenging to achieve aesthetics while growing at a reasonable pace. Having grown up with the original Sim City series, I naturally have a dislike for the F2P version, but in the context of your post I appreciated the irony of F2P enforcing a certain realism as a side effect of, well, a realistic economic factor. Ok, now somebody take this and work in a proposal for a blockchain hybrid of the two.

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#77

Post by [deleted] »

filesystemdude wrote: post #39

I loved SimCity and it's probably among the reasons I got a masters degree in GIS with a focus in city planning. It turns out for a lot of reasons, real city planning wasn't for me, though it took that degree and six years on my city's planning board to figure that out. Glacial speeds of progress, a job that's mostly reactionary instead of visionary, "stakeholders" with infinite time to tell you why any change is the…

[deleted]

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#78

Post by rangersanger »

filesystemdude wrote: post #39

I loved SimCity and it's probably among the reasons I got a masters degree in GIS with a focus in city planning. It turns out for a lot of reasons, real city planning wasn't for me, though it took that degree and six years on my city's planning board to figure that out. Glacial speeds of progress, a job that's mostly reactionary instead of visionary, "stakeholders" with infinite time to tell you why any change is the…

I count myself so lucky that I managed to figure these exact same things out my sr year of college. Got the degree and promptly did not use it. Though I contend it's still the most applicable skill set to product management of any degree.

Re: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners

#80

Post by Arn_Thor »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #67
panic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument isn't about results—it's that the model itself was built on ideological assumptions instead of anything empirical.

Well, I tried to find out what these ideological assumptions were, but: There were no neighborhoods, no parks, no roads, no suburbs, and no racial or ethnic conflicts. - surely a simplification, but doesn't sound ideological. Tax contributions of poor people are lower - well, again, this is probably a mathematical fact, rather than an ideological.

The ideological problem is assuming that all these factors don't matter—that taxes and zoning are the only factors that matter.

Some very fundamental examples of what's missing: Selective policing affects incarceration rates, neighborhood ethnic makeup affects city budgets which in turn affect land values and safety (Flint water crisis and other pollution) which in turn affect economic prospects and future tax income, what goes on in city A in terms of taxation and opportunities affects neighboring city B, it's assumed that traditional zoning policies generate the most land value which is incorrect in many cases, it ignores how public spending on infrastructure affects economic opportunities in the short an long term..

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