Archinect - News

SimCity's lasting impact on architects and city planners

2019-03-06T15:25:00-05:00

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," writes Jessica Roy for the Los Angeles Times.

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Gamespace Urbanism: understanding reality through simulation

2017-12-29T12:18:00-05:00

The following examples show how gamespace can become the stage for a social, political and ethical critique: from a nondescript city under the effect of gentrification, to a barren luxury estate and a set of playful and absurd buildings for London. These examples suggest that, rather than allowing architects to indulge Piranesi’s power-hungry ideal, games could work as a means of showing how dysfunctional reality really is.

In her essay Gamespace Urbanism: City-Building Games and Radical Simulations for Failed Architecture, Federica Buzzi looks at a new crop of indie city-planning computer games that promise fresh potential for simulation and exploration of radical urban scenarios — and subsequent social, political, and ethical critique: "Beyond critique and virtual entertainment, the question they open up is whether games can be used as reliable systems to study and solve actual and theoretical conflicts."

What SimCity 2000 teaches us about urban planning today

2016-06-15T13:58:00-04:00

Although the game was simulating an environment from 1989, urban planners these days still run into problems trying to get officials to think about their city in the long run. Climate change and sea level rise is a very crystalline example of the way city officials get in their own way and set themselves up for larger obstacles later on [...] Playing SimCity 2000 nowadays is a strange but wonderful way to realize what defines a city is not what it currently is, but what it could be.

More on simulations and gameplay for city planning:

SimCity and beyond: the history of city-building games

2015-10-16T13:28:00-04:00

Cities are everywhere. Billions of us live in them, and many of us think we could do a better job than the planners. But for the past 26 years dating back to the original SimCity, we've mostly been proving that idea false. [...] And now, here, I'm going to take you on a whirlwind tour through the history of the city-building genre—from its antecedents to the hot new thing.

Related on Archinect:

The issue of homelessness in SimCity

2015-02-09T19:19:00-05:00

The issue of homelessness in SimCity was recently taken on by an article at Vice News’s tech blog, Motherboard. The article focuses on Matteo Bittanti, a professor at Milan’s IULM University, who became increasingly interested in homelessness in the game. [...] Bittani was so interested in it that he began compiling quotes from SimCity users intent on dealing with the virtual homeless, ultimately publishing them in a 600 page, two volume mega-book called “How to get rid of the homeless”.

Three guiding principles for a fine fake metropolis

2013-03-27T11:56:00-04:00

The wizards at Electronic Arts seem to understand cities as market-driven algorithms. Input people, rules, and resources, and the results are stability, growth, and wealth...SimCity’s engineers have repeated the same mistake made by countless potentates, forgetting that cities are forged both by master builders and the people who hack their grand plans.

When Electronic Arts released the newest version of SimCity Justin Davidson decided to take the plunge and explore what the game could teach about urban planning and running a city. The effort helped him to identify three guiding principles for creating a successful SimCity ; 1) Money Equals Happiness, 2) Zoning Is Destiny, 3) Transit, Schmansit.