10 ms·

There's an interesting interview with a designer of SimCity, where he discusses parking: Geoff Manaugh: While you were making those measurements of different r

There's an interesting interview with a designer of SimCity, where he discusses parking: Geoff Manaugh: While you were making those measurements of different real-world cities, did you discover any surprising patterns or spatial relationships Librande: Yes, definitely. I think the biggest one was the parking lots. When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don’t think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots. Manaugh: You would be making SimParkingLot, rather than SimCity. Librande: [laughs] Exactly. So what we do in the game is that we just imagine they are underground. We do have parking lots in the game, and we do try to scale them—so, if you have a little grocery store, we’ll put six or seven parking spots on the side, and, if you have a big convention center or a big pro stadium, they’ll have what seem like really big lots—but they’re nowhere near what a real grocery store or pro stadium would have. We had to do the best we could do and still make the game look attractive. Source: https://bldgblog.com/2013/05/sim-city-an-interview-with-stone-librande/ https://bldgblog.com/2013/05/sim-city-an-interview-with-ston...

Mountain_Skies 3y ago
It's a pity that they didn't bake in the option to turn on realistic parking lots and road sizes for the required capacity. It does have traffic jams and more roads can help, especially since the player can control induced demand far more than in reality, but allowing the player to switch between both what's a fun game and what's a realistic simulation could have gone a long way to inform a good chunk of the population on the tradeoffs and impacts of parking and other infrastructure dedicated to automobiles.
- sleepybrett 3y ago
  I haven't looked at 'cities: skylines' or if there is a sequel... recently. I'm wondering if they finally did start modeling parking. I think 'realistic parking' should probably be an option, like you said some people want the 'classic' sim-city experience and modeling. I'd hate to drive those people away from the 'cities' series, as it just seems to be sim-city without the EA enshittification. I think it could be really interesting to allow users to try to build less car focused cities within the game. To simulate concepts like Barcelona's 'superblocks', to plan bikelanes or golfcart-focused communities like 'the villages'. Generally the devs of 'cities' seem like they are interested in many concepts (there are sooooo many dlc for skylines) .. hopefully this one bubbles up.
  - cs2great 3y ago
    Cities Skylines 2 is in the release press window, they have announced that parking and commutes will be modeled. So CS2 will be much more parking heavy, and should hopefully show just how terrible cars are in cities compared to literally any other transport mode.
  - sumtechguy 3y ago
    There is a mod for the current version of cities that does model it. You have to make sure you have enough parking or your buildings will go empty. There is a also a DLC addon where you can have walkable cities. It is pretty tricky to get just right.
    - stouset 3y ago
      Realistic parking and mixed-use commercial/residential as common in European cities are my two biggest wishes for Cities 2.
      - jabroni_salad 3y ago
        mixed use zoning (and new types of medium zoning like row houses and commie blocks) were in last week's dev diary: https://youtu.be/PBwwZ4XnW34?t=84 https://youtu.be/PBwwZ4XnW34?t=84
        stouset 3y ago
        I am so happy.
  - massysett 3y ago
    There is a sequel coming out in the next few months and the developers say that parking is modeled more realistically than in the first Cities: Skylines. In the first game, citizens did not park cars at all - cars appeared out of thin air, were driven to their destination, and then vanished again. Folks often called these "pocket cars" because citizens could put them into and take them out of their pants pockets. Apparently in the sequel buildings actually have parking, and the cars sit in the parking lot. Some citizens such as older ones prefer to drive.
nharada 3y ago
I was curious how much bigger the real stadium parking was. SimCity: https://oyster.ignimgs.com/mediawiki/apis.ign.com/simcity/e/e8/Simcity-011.jpg?width=2240 https://oyster.ignimgs.com/mediawiki/apis.ign.com/simcity/e/... Real Stadium: https://i.imgur.com/KwT1T53.png https://i.imgur.com/KwT1T53.png
- jimbob21 3y ago
  I am surprised that this was surprising to people. Cars are much bigger than people, of course you'd need bigger parking lots than seating space
  - jeddy3 3y ago
    Assuming no other transportation alternative, and single person per car as well I guess? Not assuming that, it's not that obvious how big parking needs to be.
  - Sharlin 3y ago
    > of course you'd need bigger parking lots than seating space There is a tacit assumption in your statement. Of course you don't need vast parking lots around stadiums, and there are plenty of real-world sports arenas that don't have those (some examples [1][2][3]). The parking that there is is structural, and most people simply use public transit to reach these places, which are often located in moderately densely built areas. So, allow me to restate your claim, with a different assumption: Of course you need great mass transit connections to a stadium, how else would people reach it? Edit: But yes, people also don't have a good intuition on how much space cars actually waste in bulk. For example, many people don't seem to realize how much space it saves on roadways if 50 people sit in a bus or or tram or train rather than in 30 or 40 cars. Indeed, any rational motorist should be enthusiastically in favor of any project that makes public transit more attractive or accessible, purely for selfish reasons! --- [1] Nokia Arena in Tampere https://goo.gl/maps/3WmAxfA2pCXDre8p7 https://goo.gl/maps/3WmAxfA2pCXDre8p7 [2] Helsinki Olympic Stadium https://goo.gl/maps/BQhopp5kRtTrEDR79 https://goo.gl/maps/BQhopp5kRtTrEDR79 [under renovation in the aerial imagery] [3] Tele2 Arena in Stockholm https://goo.gl/maps/za3y6HfRvocjfZR37 https://goo.gl/maps/za3y6HfRvocjfZR37
catgary 3y ago
I think anti-car activists would do great to mod SimCity to have realistic parking lots.
- davidw 3y ago
  I don't think many people are truly anti-car activists. Just that we need to redimension their absolute centrality to so many policies and budgets. I'm involved in pro-housing politics and it's just amazing how many people are like "well, ok, sure, people need a place to live and all, but let's think FIRST about where to store the automobiles. If that works out, then I guess we can build some housing". They don't say it quite like that, but it's the general idea. Cities should be about people first and foremost. Places for them to live and do business. Cars are pretty convenient for some things, and many people want one...fine. But base the decisions around people first and then work out spaces for the cars.
  - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
    It’s mostly because of zoning. If you separate retail from offices from housing, you force people to have cars to get around. Which then requires large parking lots and wide roads to deal with all the cars, in a big feedback loop. Those who can’t drive (about a third of the population are too young, too old, or disabled) are just forced to make do. Not to mention how difficult it is for the poor. Owning a car is really expensive for those living on very little money. I feel like fixing zoning would at least make possible fixing the rest.
    - causality0 3y ago
      Don't forget the socialization of costs that comes in the forms of cities crippling their traffic flow for the sake of dedicating half their road surface to people parking on it instead of driving on it. I love cars but a street covered in unmoving automobiles is an intensely perverse sight.
    - majormajor 3y ago
      You're not gonna get rid of the need to commute. Once people start forming families, "live next to work" is likely to be very unrealistic for one of the people involved, assuming they both work. One person gets a new job across town and the other doesn't? Setting aside whether or not most people would want to move anytime that happened, there's no longer a single answer. Start throwing kids in the mix and it gets even trickier. Gotta balance the schools in there, and the effect that moving would have on them, etc. Reduce the need for shopping and entertainment commuting and build more transit so that more routs have practical non-car options and you reduce the need for traffic and parking, but that's realistically an incredibly expensive proposition for many cities. You need a really really really built out transit network to enable something close to point to point commuting in under an hour across a large city. (And traffic and parking becoming crippling things for a city are issues small cities often mostly duck by their nature of being small...) It's a sort of "we all need to commit to changing our environment systematically for decades" problem.
adolph 3y ago
> When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don’t think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. . . . So what we do in the game is that we just imagine they are underground. All the new HEBs (Texas grocery store) that I've seen are built above their parking garages with a smaller amount of parking at store level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-E-B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-E-B
LeoPanthera 3y ago
Is it wrong that I think I would enjoy playing Sim Parking Lot?
- hypertele-Xii 3y ago
  Try Mini Motorways. It's a different style of game but certainly captures the futility of car-centric traffic management.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    It's a video game so if you're going to learn that lesson from that one, then hopefully you don't play its companion game, Mini Metro, because otherwise you'll conclude that train-centric management is also futile.
    - hypertele-Xii 3y ago
      But in a different way. In Motorways you actually run out of space to build infrastructure. In Metro you run out of "money" (as represented by incredibly limited resources). They are both games where you're guaranteed to lose (in pursuit of high score), but the gameplay-feel is very different.
- Macha 3y ago
  Cities Skylines has mods which can simulate parking in more detail.
  - mbo 3y ago
    The upcoming sequel has a much more robust simulation of parking requirements too: https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/road-tools https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/...
lo_zamoyski 3y ago
The excess of cars in cities is bad enough, but I do wonder whether underground parking would at least help. It can be more expensive, especially for taller buildings, but it would eliminate the eyesore and recoup the valuable urban real estate and potentially free up the streets. Realistically, we have to accept that we've spent almost a century creating a situation that has enabled car dominance and that many people are dependent on them. You can't ignore that. There is nothing wrong with cars, even in cities, but the car-centrism that has wrecked the urban environment cannot be undone simply by enacting hostile legislation. We have to ease toward a situation where their negative impact is reduced. Underground parking in new construction seems like an option, especially in cities like NYC where there is no need fear of scaring off developers. And in the case of NYC, there is precedent that goes back to at least the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, where apartment buildings do, in fact, have underground parking for the building's residents. And I suspect the costs were not huge. In many cases, the "underground parking" is merely basement level or even the ground level.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  > but the car-centrism that has wrecked the urban environment cannot be undone simply by enacting hostile legislation. This is exactly what happened in the Netherlands, but the US is a wildly corrupt country with very little in the way of actual representative democracy, which is the primary reason why this (locally) correct. In many other places, it is in fact possible to achieve these outcomes through state power.
  - yurishimo 3y ago
    It also took 40+ years. After WW2, NL was on a course to model American cities. There are some places that still harken back to that time. Dutch people also really like to drive, which nobody seems to talk about! But now the trains have been privatized, the ticket prices jacked up, and gas taxes are absolutely bonkers right now. If we’re lucky, maybe the trains can be brought back into more direct government control in the next decade but I doubt it. Good public transportation and city design is only enforceable through laws on the books. Dutch city planning in some ways is non-negotiable, but very fungible in others. We must stay vigilant if we want to see our small corner of the world continue to flourish and be a beacon of hope to North American and other western societies.
Tommah 3y ago
I played a lot of SimCity 3000, and as I recall, a lot of commercially zoned cells will end up being small parking lots. The game assigns whimsical names to properties, and the parking lots were named "They Paved Paradise."
mjevans 3y ago
Sim City's sort of on the correct solution track here. The REAL solution is going to look way more like Azimov's Caves of Steel style city. * High speed people mover beltway / sidewalks * No cost access to this transit * A Theme Park like utility corridor system Plus high speed (freeway like) bypass routes around / through the city which can exit into mega parking structures (much cheaper at large scale than wastefully cramming into a normal building's footprint) as external interface buffers between 'car land' / intercity transit, and 'pedestrian land' / intracity movement.

Mountain_Skies 3y ago

It's a pity that they didn't bake in the option to turn on realistic parking lots and road sizes for the required capacity. It does have traffic jams and more roads can help, especially since the player can control induced demand far more than in reality, but allowing the player to switch between both what's a fun game and what's a realistic simulation could have gone a long way to inform a good chunk of the population on the tradeoffs and impacts of parking and other infrastructure dedicated to automobiles.

sleepybrett 3y ago
I haven't looked at 'cities: skylines' or if there is a sequel... recently. I'm wondering if they finally did start modeling parking. I think 'realistic parking' should probably be an option, like you said some people want the 'classic' sim-city experience and modeling. I'd hate to drive those people away from the 'cities' series, as it just seems to be sim-city without the EA enshittification. I think it could be really interesting to allow users to try to build less car focused cities within the game. To simulate concepts like Barcelona's 'superblocks', to plan bikelanes or golfcart-focused communities like 'the villages'. Generally the devs of 'cities' seem like they are interested in many concepts (there are sooooo many dlc for skylines) .. hopefully this one bubbles up.
- cs2great 3y ago
  Cities Skylines 2 is in the release press window, they have announced that parking and commutes will be modeled. So CS2 will be much more parking heavy, and should hopefully show just how terrible cars are in cities compared to literally any other transport mode.
- sumtechguy 3y ago
  There is a mod for the current version of cities that does model it. You have to make sure you have enough parking or your buildings will go empty. There is a also a DLC addon where you can have walkable cities. It is pretty tricky to get just right.
  - stouset 3y ago
    Realistic parking and mixed-use commercial/residential as common in European cities are my two biggest wishes for Cities 2.
    - jabroni_salad 3y ago
      mixed use zoning (and new types of medium zoning like row houses and commie blocks) were in last week's dev diary: https://youtu.be/PBwwZ4XnW34?t=84 https://youtu.be/PBwwZ4XnW34?t=84
      - stouset 3y ago
        I am so happy.
- massysett 3y ago
  There is a sequel coming out in the next few months and the developers say that parking is modeled more realistically than in the first Cities: Skylines. In the first game, citizens did not park cars at all - cars appeared out of thin air, were driven to their destination, and then vanished again. Folks often called these "pocket cars" because citizens could put them into and take them out of their pants pockets. Apparently in the sequel buildings actually have parking, and the cars sit in the parking lot. Some citizens such as older ones prefer to drive.

nharada 3y ago

I was curious how much bigger the real stadium parking was. SimCity: https://oyster.ignimgs.com/mediawiki/apis.ign.com/simcity/e/e8/Simcity-011.jpg?width=2240 https://oyster.ignimgs.com/mediawiki/apis.ign.com/simcity/e/... Real Stadium: https://i.imgur.com/KwT1T53.png https://i.imgur.com/KwT1T53.png

jimbob21 3y ago
I am surprised that this was surprising to people. Cars are much bigger than people, of course you'd need bigger parking lots than seating space
- jeddy3 3y ago
  Assuming no other transportation alternative, and single person per car as well I guess? Not assuming that, it's not that obvious how big parking needs to be.
- Sharlin 3y ago
  > of course you'd need bigger parking lots than seating space There is a tacit assumption in your statement. Of course you don't need vast parking lots around stadiums, and there are plenty of real-world sports arenas that don't have those (some examples [1][2][3]). The parking that there is is structural, and most people simply use public transit to reach these places, which are often located in moderately densely built areas. So, allow me to restate your claim, with a different assumption: Of course you need great mass transit connections to a stadium, how else would people reach it? Edit: But yes, people also don't have a good intuition on how much space cars actually waste in bulk. For example, many people don't seem to realize how much space it saves on roadways if 50 people sit in a bus or or tram or train rather than in 30 or 40 cars. Indeed, any rational motorist should be enthusiastically in favor of any project that makes public transit more attractive or accessible, purely for selfish reasons! --- [1] Nokia Arena in Tampere https://goo.gl/maps/3WmAxfA2pCXDre8p7 https://goo.gl/maps/3WmAxfA2pCXDre8p7 [2] Helsinki Olympic Stadium https://goo.gl/maps/BQhopp5kRtTrEDR79 https://goo.gl/maps/BQhopp5kRtTrEDR79 [under renovation in the aerial imagery] [3] Tele2 Arena in Stockholm https://goo.gl/maps/za3y6HfRvocjfZR37 https://goo.gl/maps/za3y6HfRvocjfZR37

catgary 3y ago

I think anti-car activists would do great to mod SimCity to have realistic parking lots.

davidw 3y ago
I don't think many people are truly anti-car activists. Just that we need to redimension their absolute centrality to so many policies and budgets. I'm involved in pro-housing politics and it's just amazing how many people are like "well, ok, sure, people need a place to live and all, but let's think FIRST about where to store the automobiles. If that works out, then I guess we can build some housing". They don't say it quite like that, but it's the general idea. Cities should be about people first and foremost. Places for them to live and do business. Cars are pretty convenient for some things, and many people want one...fine. But base the decisions around people first and then work out spaces for the cars.
- amanaplanacanal 3y ago
  It’s mostly because of zoning. If you separate retail from offices from housing, you force people to have cars to get around. Which then requires large parking lots and wide roads to deal with all the cars, in a big feedback loop. Those who can’t drive (about a third of the population are too young, too old, or disabled) are just forced to make do. Not to mention how difficult it is for the poor. Owning a car is really expensive for those living on very little money. I feel like fixing zoning would at least make possible fixing the rest.
  - causality0 3y ago
    Don't forget the socialization of costs that comes in the forms of cities crippling their traffic flow for the sake of dedicating half their road surface to people parking on it instead of driving on it. I love cars but a street covered in unmoving automobiles is an intensely perverse sight.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    You're not gonna get rid of the need to commute. Once people start forming families, "live next to work" is likely to be very unrealistic for one of the people involved, assuming they both work. One person gets a new job across town and the other doesn't? Setting aside whether or not most people would want to move anytime that happened, there's no longer a single answer. Start throwing kids in the mix and it gets even trickier. Gotta balance the schools in there, and the effect that moving would have on them, etc. Reduce the need for shopping and entertainment commuting and build more transit so that more routs have practical non-car options and you reduce the need for traffic and parking, but that's realistically an incredibly expensive proposition for many cities. You need a really really really built out transit network to enable something close to point to point commuting in under an hour across a large city. (And traffic and parking becoming crippling things for a city are issues small cities often mostly duck by their nature of being small...) It's a sort of "we all need to commit to changing our environment systematically for decades" problem.

adolph 3y ago

> When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don’t think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. . . . So what we do in the game is that we just imagine they are underground. All the new HEBs (Texas grocery store) that I've seen are built above their parking garages with a smaller amount of parking at store level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-E-B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-E-B

LeoPanthera 3y ago

Is it wrong that I think I would enjoy playing Sim Parking Lot?

hypertele-Xii 3y ago
Try Mini Motorways. It's a different style of game but certainly captures the futility of car-centric traffic management.
- fragmede 3y ago
  It's a video game so if you're going to learn that lesson from that one, then hopefully you don't play its companion game, Mini Metro, because otherwise you'll conclude that train-centric management is also futile.
  - hypertele-Xii 3y ago
    But in a different way. In Motorways you actually run out of space to build infrastructure. In Metro you run out of "money" (as represented by incredibly limited resources). They are both games where you're guaranteed to lose (in pursuit of high score), but the gameplay-feel is very different.
Macha 3y ago
Cities Skylines has mods which can simulate parking in more detail.
- mbo 3y ago
  The upcoming sequel has a much more robust simulation of parking requirements too: https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/road-tools https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/...

lo_zamoyski 3y ago

The excess of cars in cities is bad enough, but I do wonder whether underground parking would at least help. It can be more expensive, especially for taller buildings, but it would eliminate the eyesore and recoup the valuable urban real estate and potentially free up the streets. Realistically, we have to accept that we've spent almost a century creating a situation that has enabled car dominance and that many people are dependent on them. You can't ignore that. There is nothing wrong with cars, even in cities, but the car-centrism that has wrecked the urban environment cannot be undone simply by enacting hostile legislation. We have to ease toward a situation where their negative impact is reduced. Underground parking in new construction seems like an option, especially in cities like NYC where there is no need fear of scaring off developers. And in the case of NYC, there is precedent that goes back to at least the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, where apartment buildings do, in fact, have underground parking for the building's residents. And I suspect the costs were not huge. In many cases, the "underground parking" is merely basement level or even the ground level.

bugglebeetle 3y ago
> but the car-centrism that has wrecked the urban environment cannot be undone simply by enacting hostile legislation. This is exactly what happened in the Netherlands, but the US is a wildly corrupt country with very little in the way of actual representative democracy, which is the primary reason why this (locally) correct. In many other places, it is in fact possible to achieve these outcomes through state power.
- yurishimo 3y ago
  It also took 40+ years. After WW2, NL was on a course to model American cities. There are some places that still harken back to that time. Dutch people also really like to drive, which nobody seems to talk about! But now the trains have been privatized, the ticket prices jacked up, and gas taxes are absolutely bonkers right now. If we’re lucky, maybe the trains can be brought back into more direct government control in the next decade but I doubt it. Good public transportation and city design is only enforceable through laws on the books. Dutch city planning in some ways is non-negotiable, but very fungible in others. We must stay vigilant if we want to see our small corner of the world continue to flourish and be a beacon of hope to North American and other western societies.

Tommah 3y ago

I played a lot of SimCity 3000, and as I recall, a lot of commercially zoned cells will end up being small parking lots. The game assigns whimsical names to properties, and the parking lots were named "They Paved Paradise."

mjevans 3y ago

Sim City's sort of on the correct solution track here. The REAL solution is going to look way more like Azimov's Caves of Steel style city. * High speed people mover beltway / sidewalks * No cost access to this transit * A Theme Park like utility corridor system Plus high speed (freeway like) bypass routes around / through the city which can exit into mega parking structures (much cheaper at large scale than wastefully cramming into a normal building's footprint) as external interface buffers between 'car land' / intercity transit, and 'pedestrian land' / intracity movement.