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Funnily enough, one of the scenarios in SimCity on the SNES was dealing with Bern traffic in 1965. I remember that one being pretty easy as all you needed to d

Funnily enough, one of the scenarios in SimCity on the SNES was dealing with Bern traffic in 1965. I remember that one being pretty easy as all you needed to do was bulldoze a bunch of roads and replacing it with rail.

lonelappde 7y ago
Funny how such blatant propaganda passed right under the noses of millions of kids.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  Sim City (especially later versions) has generally been built around models based on American car-centric planning. The game very much encourages sprawl-style development.
  - journalctl 7y ago
    That there’s no mixed use zoning kind of says it all. Although, rather adorably, apparently a lot of city planners were inspired by Sim City! [1] [1] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-simcity-inspired-urban-planners-20190305-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-simcity...
    - microtherion 7y ago
      And yet we're still waiting for our Arcologies.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Finding the easiest way to solve a problem given constraints is a poor exemplar of propaganda. I’m sure it is and was possible to build perfectly lovely car centric cities in various Sim City games. If your problem is congestion you need to increase capacity. This requires either bigger tubes (freeways instead of single lane roads) or fitting more stuff into the same tubes, greater pressure (a tram or some other form of rail). If you want to maintain a historic city you can’t do a total rebuild so you can’t build freeways. Thus rail is the only solution apart from congestion charges. Reality constrains possible solutions. If you model reality in a game the solutions won’t be too much different.
- adrianN 7y ago
  That trains can transport a lot more people than cars is not propaganda, it's just a fact of life.
  - blue_devil 7y ago
    Squint your eyes at a traffic jam on a European roundabout, and you will easily see the non-existent train in that stretched out line of cars.
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  I remember reading an article, probably linked from here, about how SimCity teaches some controversial "lessons" in terms of city planning. Interesting to think about that sort of subconscious (and probably unintentional) indoctrination

lonelappde 7y ago

Funny how such blatant propaganda passed right under the noses of millions of kids.

jacobolus 7y ago
Sim City (especially later versions) has generally been built around models based on American car-centric planning. The game very much encourages sprawl-style development.
- journalctl 7y ago
  That there’s no mixed use zoning kind of says it all. Although, rather adorably, apparently a lot of city planners were inspired by Sim City! [1] [1] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-simcity-inspired-urban-planners-20190305-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-simcity...
  - microtherion 7y ago
    And yet we're still waiting for our Arcologies.
barry-cotter 7y ago
Finding the easiest way to solve a problem given constraints is a poor exemplar of propaganda. I’m sure it is and was possible to build perfectly lovely car centric cities in various Sim City games. If your problem is congestion you need to increase capacity. This requires either bigger tubes (freeways instead of single lane roads) or fitting more stuff into the same tubes, greater pressure (a tram or some other form of rail). If you want to maintain a historic city you can’t do a total rebuild so you can’t build freeways. Thus rail is the only solution apart from congestion charges. Reality constrains possible solutions. If you model reality in a game the solutions won’t be too much different.
adrianN 7y ago
That trains can transport a lot more people than cars is not propaganda, it's just a fact of life.
- blue_devil 7y ago
  Squint your eyes at a traffic jam on a European roundabout, and you will easily see the non-existent train in that stretched out line of cars.
Rebelgecko 7y ago
I remember reading an article, probably linked from here, about how SimCity teaches some controversial "lessons" in terms of city planning. Interesting to think about that sort of subconscious (and probably unintentional) indoctrination