How 'SimCity' Inspired a Generation of City Planners (latimes.com)

Jessica Roy, writing for LA Times: Thirty years ago, Maxis released "SimCity" for Mac and Amiga. It was succeeded by "SimCity 2000" in 1993, "SimCity 3000" in 1999, "SimCity 4" in 2003, a version for the Nintendo DS in 2007, "SimCity: BuildIt" in 2013 and an app launched in 2014. Along the way, the games have introduced millions of players to the joys and frustrations of zoning, street grids and infrastructure funding -- and influenced a generation of people who plan cities for a living.

For many urban and transit planners, architects, government officials and activists, "SimCity" was their first taste of running a city. It was the first time they realized that neighborhoods, towns and cities were things that were planned, and that it was someone's job to decide where streets, schools, bus stops and stores were supposed to go.

Comments

Re:Cities Skylines is better

[grasshoppa]

No mod points, but I absolutely agree. Skylines is the spiritual successor to SimCities of old, and it's amazing.

Re:Godzilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats why modern cities are designed with long straight boulevards. Not to be architecturally pleasing, but to give the kaiju a clear run across the landscape without running into buildings.

Joseph Smith Jr used the grid system in Nauvoo in the 1830s. Brigham Young continued it in Utah Territory in the 1840s, but the stipulation he wanted the streets wide enough that an ox cart could do a U-turn. I think both these example predate SimCity. The grid system used by Smith and Young make navigation super easy: chose the city center, street numbers increase by 100 as you move away from the center and include the direction (200N 300W is 2 blocks north and 3 blocks west of the center point); 8 blocks to the mile. If this were combined with the proper layout of residential, commercial, industrial, and recreational use and you could avoid a lot of gridlock.

Re:City Planners are crazy

[sinij]

From your own link:

They found that for every 1 percent increase in highway capacity, traffic increases 0.29 to 1.1 percent in the long term (about five years out), and up to 0.68 percent in the short term (one or two years).

The reported data clearly indicates that building more highway capacity is both short and long term effective solution to traffic.