3 ms·

It’s a rather obvious flaw, to anyone who has been to any continent but North America. Any old city of Europe, and many of South America, the Mideast and Asia,

It’s a rather obvious flaw, to anyone who has been to any continent but North America. Any old city of Europe, and many of South America, the Mideast and Asia, beats the generic, parking-lot dominated mid-sized American city in quality of Life. NY, SF, and a select few others illustrate the old adage about Americans always doing the right thing, after exhausting all other options. But the vast majority, operating with what planners seem to perceive as endless scrolling in all all directions, are dystopian. Sim City replicates that scenario. Neither its tools, nor depth of simulation, allow for any emergent behaviour that doesn't fit the predefined mould (pun not intended, but appreciated). It’s the grid, the strict zoning, and the coal or nuclear plant built as close to the neighboring city as possible. If your map starts with any hilly terrain, you’ll better bulldoze it now, or you’ll regret it later. If there’s any river, it better fit the grid. Good science is when you get out more than you put into you model. The same is true of simulations, and SimCity never did.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16561387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16561387 > I recall something about city planners using Sim City back in the day as part of their education, which horrified Will Wright since in his words (paraphrasing) “sim city is just cellular automata with some differential equations sprinkled on top.” It was never intended to model the development of actual cities.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Perhaps not, but cities are so very complex, with many, many moving parts (so to speak) and one of the cool things about city building games is that it helps you interact with something remarkably complex. You can start a city from scratch on easy mode. When I haven't played for a while, it's common for me to get tripped up by something stupid and have things go sideways. Fordlandia and other real world efforts to build a city from scratch in the middle of nowhere are generally infamous for having gone sideways. It's quite hard to create a functional city from scratch with all the right moving parts and once things go sideways, it's hard to come up with the money to fix the problems, assuming you can even identify them. You overbuild X and it has knock-on effects of Y and Z that didn't predict or forgot was likely and now you've painted yourself into a corner. Real cities tend to start as a nexus on some transit hub, such as a port at the mouth of a river where the terrain creates a natural port and you don't need much to make it a functional commercial port. Quite a few American cities can trace their origins to being a rail stop on a rail line. Towns can get born or die when new highways get built, depending on whether they are on the new highway or whether the new highway causes traffic to pass them by. Historic small towns on Route 66 were born from traffic passing through them and many of them "died" (or greatly shrank) when Route 66 was replaced was modern limited access highways. If you don't have enough water and electricity, no amount of tax breaks or pro-business government policies will grow your industrial base. Add water, electricity, trains and a port and now you have enormous demand for industry. Of course it doesn't model "actual cities." Models always have their limitations and it's helpful to understand what those are, but you have start somewhere for developing mental models for the complexity of all the moving parts of a living, breathing modern city. Our failure to wrap our minds around that seems to me to be a root cause of a lot of the small town blight and related social issues happening in America today. (This may also be a factor in problems in other countries, but I don't feel qualified to speak to that.)
hypertele-Xii 6y ago
> Neither its tools, nor depth of simulation, allow for any emergent behaviour that doesn't fit the predefined mould [...] It’s the grid, the strict zoning, and the coal or nuclear plant built as close to the neighboring city as possible. It's a 28-year-old game. These are technical limitations of computers of the time. You try to simulate an entire city on 1993 hardware while catering to every 2020 social justice warriors' desire.

thaumasiotes 6y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16561387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16561387 > I recall something about city planners using Sim City back in the day as part of their education, which horrified Will Wright since in his words (paraphrasing) “sim city is just cellular automata with some differential equations sprinkled on top.” It was never intended to model the development of actual cities.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
Perhaps not, but cities are so very complex, with many, many moving parts (so to speak) and one of the cool things about city building games is that it helps you interact with something remarkably complex. You can start a city from scratch on easy mode. When I haven't played for a while, it's common for me to get tripped up by something stupid and have things go sideways. Fordlandia and other real world efforts to build a city from scratch in the middle of nowhere are generally infamous for having gone sideways. It's quite hard to create a functional city from scratch with all the right moving parts and once things go sideways, it's hard to come up with the money to fix the problems, assuming you can even identify them. You overbuild X and it has knock-on effects of Y and Z that didn't predict or forgot was likely and now you've painted yourself into a corner. Real cities tend to start as a nexus on some transit hub, such as a port at the mouth of a river where the terrain creates a natural port and you don't need much to make it a functional commercial port. Quite a few American cities can trace their origins to being a rail stop on a rail line. Towns can get born or die when new highways get built, depending on whether they are on the new highway or whether the new highway causes traffic to pass them by. Historic small towns on Route 66 were born from traffic passing through them and many of them "died" (or greatly shrank) when Route 66 was replaced was modern limited access highways. If you don't have enough water and electricity, no amount of tax breaks or pro-business government policies will grow your industrial base. Add water, electricity, trains and a port and now you have enormous demand for industry. Of course it doesn't model "actual cities." Models always have their limitations and it's helpful to understand what those are, but you have start somewhere for developing mental models for the complexity of all the moving parts of a living, breathing modern city. Our failure to wrap our minds around that seems to me to be a root cause of a lot of the small town blight and related social issues happening in America today. (This may also be a factor in problems in other countries, but I don't feel qualified to speak to that.)

hypertele-Xii 6y ago

> Neither its tools, nor depth of simulation, allow for any emergent behaviour that doesn't fit the predefined mould [...] It’s the grid, the strict zoning, and the coal or nuclear plant built as close to the neighboring city as possible. It's a 28-year-old game. These are technical limitations of computers of the time. You try to simulate an entire city on 1993 hardware while catering to every 2020 social justice warriors' desire.