BrainMeld.org

Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 1
SimCity 4: Using simulations to learn principles of geometry and civil engineering
by Joel L Bleah September 2005
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 2
Table of Contents Part I -... 3
Why video games in the classroom?... 3 Overview of SimCity4.... 4 My Goals.... 4 Grade Level and Subject Area... 4 Applicable Content Standards... 5 Hardware Requirements.... 6

Part II.... 6

Before Lesson One.... 6 Lesson One Objectives.... 7 Lesson One Setup... 7 Lesson One Gameplay... 8 Lesson One Debrief.... 8 Lesson One Extension Activities... 9 Before Lesson Two.... 9 Lesson Two Objectives.... 9 Lesson Two Setup... 9 Lesson Two Gameplay... 10 Lesson Two Debrief... 10 Lesson Two Extension Activities.... 10

Part III.... 11

Teacher Resources.... 11 References.... 12 About the Author.... 13

Part IV.... 14

Appendix A.... 14 Problems.... 14 Appendix B.... 15 Solutions.... 15 Answers.... 15 Appendix C.... 16 How to Play.... 16
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 3
Part I Why video games in the classroom?
A few years ago I was a hard-core traditionalist when it came to the art of teaching. I was thoroughly baptized in the lecture approach to education and did not think that any other method was worth the try. But the developments of the last ten years have made me to take a new direction. Research has shown that it is games, not education that is teaching students to think. The digital natives, as this new generation is called, learn differently. They are more geared toward digital media as opposed to the traditional text. (I have had first-hand experience with my five-year-old son.) Somehow and in some way computer and video games have a way of getting to students in a non-threatening, engaging, and discovery-orienting manner. In the past century, learning grew out of an intense belief in text. As such, it required someone well versed in the text to expound on it, hence the traditional lecture in the classroom. Today things are vastly different. We have the Web and other digital media that support multiple forms of intelligence --abstract, textual, visual, musical, social, and kinesthetic. Evidence gathered on digital natives supports the notion that the underlining principles of video and computer games greatly foster student learning. Listed below are some observable outcomes of using video games in the classroom: Students are challenged to use creativity and imagination Students take control of what they learn and how they learn it Problem solving becomes a way of life in the classroom Critical and analytical thinking is nurtured Students are motivated to master the material they are learning Learning is student-centered, rather than teacher-centered
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 4

Overview of SimCity4

SimCity4 is a giant PC-based city simulator. As the name suggests, the objective of the game is to design and built a city from scratch replete with all the bells and whistles of a thriving metropolis: soaring skyscrapers, well-designed
and well-managed transportation systems, state-of-the-art school facilities, a strong and effective city administration, booming industries, and other critical aspects of urban life. Its graphic interface makes it easy enough for children to use. Its flexibility and modeling accuracy make it suitable for adults.

My Goals

My primary goal is to utilize the interactive and engaging nature of computer and video games to challenge and motivate students to accomplish their educational goals. Using this medium, we present complex information in a game format, which makes both teaching and learning more exciting. I also want to provide my fellow traditionalists with sound and well-researched reasons why they should get on board this wagon. I am also providing teachers who are on board with a practical application for the use of video games in the classroom.
Grade Level and Subject Area
The SimCity Teachers Guide has two main focuses: geometry and elementary civil engineering. It is designed to help middle school teachers teach geometry. Depending on the school and student ability, it can also be adapted to teaching geometry in the
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 5
ninth and tenth grades as well. Teachers in a post-secondary school setting can also use the guide. Vocational students aspiring to be civil engineering technologist or college freshmen majoring civil engineering can benefit from this guide as well.

Applicable Content Standards
SimCity4 is replete with opportunities that satisfy New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards (NJCCCS) in Mathematics and Technology. Under geometry and civil engineering and/or technology, the following standards are satisfied.

Standard 4.2

(Geometry and Measurement) all students will develop spatial sense and the ability to use geometric properties, relationships, and measurement to model, describe and analyze phenomena

Standard 8.1

(Computer and information literacy) all students will use computer applications to gather and organize information and to solve problems.

Standard 8.2

(Technology Education) all students will develop an understanding of the nature and impact of technology, engineering, technological design, and the designed world as they relate to the individual, society, and the environment.
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 6

Hardware Requirements

The following materials will be required in order to accomplish the goals of this guide. Each student is to have his or her own computer or laptop if possible. Otherwise, students can work in groups. This guide is designed to have each work student working independently. PC computer Laptop/Computer lab LCD projector Overhead projector and screen Software The SimCity4 System Requirements Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows MHz Intel Pentium III. Or AMD Athlon Processor 128 MB RAM for Windows 2000 and Windows 98; 256 MB RAM for Windows XP and ME 8x CD ROM/DVD-ROM Drive 1.6 GB free hard disk space plus room for saved games 32 MB Direct3D capable video card with DirectX 7.0 compatible driver DirectX 7.0 compatible sound card Keyboard, mouse

Part II

Before Lesson One
In order to take full advantage of the functionality of this guide the teacher must familiarize himself with the software. He must have at his finger tips parts of the software such as the terraforming tools, steps for incorporating a city, selecting a region for a city, transportation tools, and utilities tools. SimCity4 is fairly complicated software. Not all parts to the simulation are needed for this guide. For our purposes, the teacher must focus on the parts named above as they will be used to accomplish the goals and
BrainMeld.org objectives outlined in this guide.
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 7

Lesson One Objectives

Students will: Familiarize themselves with the SimCity4 controls, functions, tools, especially those that construct geometrical objects. Construct geometrical figures such as lines, circles, arcs, and angles Analyze properties of geometric figures constructed

Lesson One Setup

This lesson is design to help students gain a fuller understanding of the geometry of plane and solid figures by using the SimCity4 simulation. From the onset is very
important for the students to familiarize themselves with the software. Each student is assigned a computer. (In the event where there are more students than computers the teacher can assign two or three students to a computer). The students can then start the computer, open the SimCity program, and take a guided tour of SimCity4. Several or tutorials are available: terraforming tutorial, big city tutorial, and rush hour tutorial. For the purposes of this guide the students need to focus on the first two. The teacher
guides the students through the tutorials and explains what each icon or button does. At this point, the teacher can encourage experimentation by letting the students select some of the options available during the tutorial session. He can lead them through the steps to incorporate a city. Finally, teacher passes out copies of the instructions (see Appendix C) for the construction of streets, highways, interchanges, and buildings. Using a LCD projector, He demonstrates how streets are laid out by dragging the appropriate icon on a pristine landscape and shows how city structures such as bridges, overpasses, interchanges, and tunnels are put in place.
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 8

Lesson One Gameplay

By this time students should be familiar with the instructions for playing SimCity4. The steps outlined below assume the students have performed prerequisite actions such as terraforming their lands and incorporating their cities. Using the appropriate icons, the students should Construct streets crisscrossing at various angles Construct highways (elevated and ground), ramps, and interchanges Include a few railroad tracks (elevated and ground) Place buildings in different blocks of the city
Hint: To undo whatever you have done, use the bulldozer icon
Note: As these structures are put into place, the budget will decrease. The student does

not have to worry about complaints form the city council members. This lesson is about math, not social science. If the student runs out of cash, he simply saves this city and starts another one. It is a good thing, though, to spend carefully so that you dont have change cities.

Lesson One Debrief

The teacher engages the students in a discussion using though-provoking questions such as: How many sets of parallel lines (streets) can you identify in your city? What is the advantage of the streets intersecting at right angles? Can you identify objects that represent skew lines in your city? How are skew lines different from parallel lines? Some of the students can volunteer to have their work displayed on a screen via an LCD projector for the purpose of further discussion and peer review. The students should then discuss their successes and frustration while playing. During this time students can
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 9
give each other tips and tricks learned during the gameplay. This part of the lesson can culminate in a brief assessment of the type given in the Appendix A
Lesson One Extension Activities
Allow the students to get back on the computer. This time they are looking at area and volume. Students can try to fit a number of buildings in a certain block to see what happens and why. Can they give an estimate of the area of a block in their city? They can sketch a building on paper, use a ruler or scaled paper to measure the dimensions, and then calculate or estimate the volume.

Before Lesson Two

The teacher must make sure that the students know how to use SimCity4s transportation tools to construct bridges, elevated railways, ramps, and overpasses. Construction of bridges can be a tricky affair and requires a bit of practice.

Lesson Two Objectives

Create a freehand sketch of a building or bridge and identify the engineering components Write an analysis detailing the engineering components of the structure sketched

Lesson Two Setup

By now students should be quite familiar with SimCity4s transportation tools. The teacher should demonstrate as he did in lesson one how elevated highways and railways are constructed. He can also show students the trick of spanning a river with a bridge. Students should ask as many questions as possible as this part of the lesson is a little more challenging.
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 10

Lesson Two Gameplay

For this part of the lesson the students need to select a new city, preferably one that has a body of water. Using the appropriate icon the student can Construct a bridge over a body of water Place an elevated highway and rail system in the city

Lesson Two Debrief

A discussion follows which centers on the various components of an engineering structure. There are steel components, reinforce concrete components and wood components. The students should be made to grapple with the following questions: Which building or bridge had steel components and why? What type of loads were the steel components carrying? How do steel components compare with reinforced concrete components? Which buildings have wood components and why?
This session can end with the students making free-hand sketches of a structure they have chosen. They can write a 100-200 word essay detailing the engineering composition of the structure. The analysis should include the beams, columns, and girders that made up the structure. They should discuss what these elements support or how they are supported. It will be instructive to mention if the structure is made of steel, wood, reinforce concrete or a combination of two or more of these components.
Lesson Two Extension Activities
Students can research and write about the architectural aspect of structures and how it relates to civil engineering. The can do further research and report on the difference between civil engineering and architecture
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 11

Part III

Teacher Resources
Kuntz, Margy. Teachers Guide: An Educational Companion for SimCity 3000. http://spectrum1.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/ bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_24935_1 SimCity4 Manual, Deluxe Edition, (2005) Electronic Arts Inc.
The following websites will provide hints in understanding and playing SimCity4 as well as exploring practical applications for using SimCity4 in your classroom. http://www.SimCity4.com http://www.simcity4.co.uk/content/view/13/2/ http://simcity.ea.com/update/ http://www.gamespot.com/pc/driving/streetsofsimcity/review.html http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/review/565064.html
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 12

References

New Jersey Department of Education Mathematics and Technology Content Standards http://www.state.nj.us/njded/cccs/index.html Aldridge, C. (2004). Simulations and the Future of Learning. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer Elearningpost (2001). Exclusive interview with Marc Prensky. Retrieved from the internet on September 24, 2005 www.elearningpost.com/elthemes/prensky.asp

The Motivation of Gameplay, (2002) Article by Marc Prensky. Retrieved from the Internet September 24, 2005 http://spectrum1.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/ bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_24935_1
SimCity4 Reward Buildings http://compsimgames.about.com/library/files/simcity/blsimcity4_rewards.htm
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 13

About the Author

Joel Bleah is from the West African country of Liberia. For six years he taught math and physics at a rural school in his native country before coming to the United States for graduate studies in 1991. After graduating from Florida Tech in 1993, he joined the staff of a small Christian School in Somerset, NJ. During this time he got interested and experimented with educational software such as Geometers Sketchpad and Mathcad. Since September 2001, he has been a Trigonometry, Discrete math, and statistics teacher at University High School in Newark, NJ.
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 14

Part IV

Appendix A
Problems 1. A section of highway stretches for five miles, rounds into a semicircular arc with a radius of.5 mile, stretches again for another two miles and then rounds into another semicircular arc of radius 1 mi. What is the length of that section of the highway? 2. A city block measures 96 ft x 115 ft. Can four identical houses measuring 40 ft x 68 ft fit on this block? 3. What is the volume of a skyscraper measuring 43 ft x 43 ft x 1000 yds? 4. Four streets run north parallel to each other. Another street due northwest intersects the first of the four parallel streets at 68 degrees. At what angle will this street intersect the fourth street?
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 15

Appendix B

Solutions + ( ) 2 + 1 + blocksize = 96(115) = 11040 fourhouses = 4(40)(68) = 10880 = 160 V = lwh = 43* 43*1000*3 = 5547000 ft 3
Answers 1) Length of highway section is 7.9mi, 2) The four houses fit on the block since the area of the four houses is less than the area of the block 3) The volume of the building is 5547000 cubic feet 4) The northwest street is a transversal to the four parallel lines; therefore, it intersects all the lines at the same angle (68 degrees)
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 16

Appendix C

How to Play
The objective of SimCity4 is to design and built a city from scratch. You (the player) have the title of Mayor and are responsible to build a metropolis with all the bells and whistles: soaring skyscrapers, well-designed and well-managed transportation systems, state-ofthe-art school facilities, a strong and effective city administration, etc. You are given a certain amount of money to work with. It is your responsibility to manage this amount properly so that your city does not go broke. You have the choice of being a hardworking saint of a mayor, a corrupt mayor, or a despotic mayor who inflicts all the evils on his poor unsuspecting Sims (your subjects). The city-building sequence goes something like this. You (the Mayor) are given a track of land in its pristine condition. You have the option to terraform the landscape. By terraform we mean you raise mountains, add lakes and valleys, or create whatever landform you desire for your city. The would-be city is then incorporated and the fun begins. Follow the instructions below.

Allow SimCity4 to load. Go through the big city and the terraforming tutorials to familiarize yourself with the various icons and modes
Double click on the new city icon You may choose to cancel or reconcile the altitudes of your city. Choose the terraforming icon at the top Create the terrain effects that suit your city using the various icons When satisfied, click on the Mayor icon Type your name, name your city, choose the difficulty level (easy recommenced)
Bleah - SimCity4: Geometry and Civil Engineering 17
When finished, click to establish your city Click on the Mayor icon to access to the building options Click on each of the icons to see the various levels and what each does. To build a street, highway, tunnel, railway, or subway, click on the appropriate icon and drag the icon across the surface of the land
To span a body of water with a bridge, drag a highway completely across a body of water
To construct a building, click on the appropriate icon and set it wherever you desire

London School of Economics and Political Science CITIES PROGRAMME: ARCHITECTURE AND ENGINEERING Discussion Paper Series
A CITY IS NOT A TOY How SimCity Plays with Urbanism Daniel G. Lobo
DP 15/05 ISSN 1469 - 1922
A CITY IS NOT A TOY How SimCity Plays with Urbanism

Daniel G. Lobo

A preliminary version of some of this material appeared in The Next American City: Cities & Technology Issue 6, 2004. www.americancity.org
Daniel G. Lobo is a freelance urban designer and researcher living in Washington DC. Born in Madrid, after an early career in contemporary art he moved to England where he graduated in City Design and Social Science from the London School of Economics. He has been participating in planning and development initiatives in and around the United States capital for the past five years
Please, address any comments to: daniellobo99@yahoo.co.uk
Is it time to be Mayor? Do you have the empire-building skills to develop a metropolis of soaring skyscrapers or the aesthetic sensibilities to create a city that delights the eye? Do you enjoy tinkering with an entire world widening a river bed there, increasing a tax rate here to see the effects on the inhabitants under your sway? Or do you want to get down and dirty with The Sims in your streets, taking on missions that have you hurtling down highways in a tank? These are the welcome lines to SimCity 4 Deluxe, the last release of the most influential strategy game in the history of urban planning. While designing the game Raid on Bungeling Bay in 1984 Bill Wright, a Macintosh programmer, discovered that flying an attack helicopter over a swath of islands wasnt half as fun as designing the islands themselves. Out of a developing interest in city planning and computer modeling theory he conceived of a game that would let players build cities and watch them operate. The early popularity of the game would evolve into a family of related software of varied success: SimEarth, SimPark, Simtunes all based around the SimCity flagship. The idea of simulated people had been part of SimCity for years, and in the original game a prominent place was taken over by The Sims, first released in 2000, one of the most popular simulation games of the new century. The Sims became independent with a growing line of expansion packs, which moved away from the overall scope of city development to play the micro-managed development of individuals. After a four years hiatus, The Sims success encouraged the release of SimCity4, with added compatibility between the two. Would you like to see the reaction of one of the Sims you created in the last city of your invention? Now, it can be done. The history of the game and its multiple permutations has paralleled and even influenced the now omnipresent, if not always well-conceived, use of computer simulation in contemporary urban planning. This paper offers an overview of the games history and mechanisms in order to explore the impact of its use as an educational and professional tool. In particular, it aims to illustrate how it relates to the practice of studying the built environment and what might be the elements that make it relevant to the culture of cities.

A CITY IS NOT A TOY

GAME INFLUENCES Wright founded Maxis with Jeff Braun, out of what the company describes as a lifetime interest in emergent complex behavior from simple systems. More specifically, the games inspiration came from Jay Forrester, the founding father of systems dynamics, which analyzes how complex systems change over time. Forrester, an outsider to the field of planning, was an MIT Professor of Management. He laid the foundation for modern computer simulation in his 1969 book, Urban Dynamics. He tried to disprove popular conceptions about why cities deteriorate, demonstrating through a computer model of the relationships of industry, housing, and population that low-cost housing policies in Boston at the time were actually worsening unemployment. Instead of simple intuitions about urban policy that treated symptoms instead of causes of urban decay, his book advocated a multivariate assessment of existing conditions and how they might fluctuate with changes in job training, new enterprise, and low income housing. If his proposal was not entirely successful, it was because not all behavior could be modeled effectively and because of the proliferation of assumptions. Forresters model applied statistical data to the city as a whole rather than treating the more localized effects. For example, the model, if applied to policing, would look at the ratio of total crime to the number of police employed citywide instead of focusing on differences of police coverage and crime trends in particular neighborhoods. Early versions of SimCity used citywide measures as well, but SimCity 4 remedies this problem, at least to some extent. SimCity 4 producer Kevin Hogan said, We wanted location to matter, so that where you placed your schools made a difference. However, as will be described later, the game shows signs of overestimating the policy impact of location over specific physical aspects. Forrester also wrote World Dynamics in an attempt to model the entire planet, much like the later Maxis game SimEarth. Whether applied at the level of the neighborhood, or applied to the entire world, Forresters work reflects similar beliefs. Namely, we can best understand evolving systems by studying any relevant variable through the lens of free-market philosophy, that is, by figuring out how changing supply and demand of any desired good can bring about different outcomes. Forresters contribution was very significant during this period as part of the stream of work that is better remembered by the release of the Club of Romes Limits to Growth in 1972. This Malthusian report modeled the interaction of a growing population, industrial growth with the earth resources in a work that was criticized for not reflecting accurately the change that the world would undertake in the following years. The ongoing debate between critics and supporters, who argue that the model would come to completion in 2015, reflects one of the many obstacles that SimCity faces as a reliable tool to explore the built environment. Berkley architect and mathematician Christopher Alexander provided the second key influence for SimCity. His work in the 1960s and 1970s advocated an idealistic departure from then popular top-down modernist models towards what he called a universal way of design and development, based in the logic of human-city interrelations. In his essay A City is not a Tree, he denounced cities that fit a semi-lattice, where sections bleed into one another by virtue of overlapping functional systems. This research was the result of a mathematical model of interrelations and functions coexisting alongside an idealized interpretation of the basic elements of architecture. For instance in his books a Timeless Way of Building and A Pattern Language he supports using certain elements such as the circle, or light on two

sides of a room. Yet corridors are deemed inappropriate because they stop joining outside and inside, and, he suggests, are a sign of totalitarian governments. Alexander applied his planning theories to the basic elements of architecture, suggesting that universal principles could be found that are applicable from the organization of the entire countryside down to the construction of a home. The more abstract and timeless the set of principles, the more ways they could be reconfigured to create various and beautiful cities. His work, though ostensibly universal, emphasizes particular American qualities. The very notion of throwing off the fixed ideas of the Old World and searching for universal truths has been embedded in New World planning since the beginning of colonization. Witold Rybcyski, Professor of Urbanism at the University of Philadelphia, discusses other early colonial assumptions about cities that Wright more recently appears to have adopted. In his 1995 book City Life, Rybczynski argues that the American City is different from the European City because early planners were met with the sense of abundant open space and planned accordingly. They often allowed laissez-faire consumption of undeveloped land. The principles of freedom, equality, and respect, so the theory went, would arise naturally in a world with the social and physical space for individuals to vote with their actions and real estate purchases. Early planners also often envisioned continued growth. To the extent that planning happened, it was done in a way that provided for the possibility of expansion, often through a grid that could grow proportionately with the population. In addition, grid lots were favored as being easier to build on, divide up, and market.
SIMCITYS BLACK BOX The work of Forrester, Alexander and Rybcynski provides SimCitys black box foundational ingredients. The key elements are a highly sophisticated mathematical model, individual agency based on supply and demand, and a universal agreement on how life should be lived. When playing the game, players performances are rated according to whether all goods, from industrial land to public schools, are being supplied at levels that equal a computer-calculated model of demand. A basic element of a game like this is discovering where those levels lie. Primarily the player could use trial and error but a combination of playing with on-line forums and publications to help discover the rules is common among most gamers. Some components clearly defy reason and there does not even seem to be a humorous underpinning to it. For instance, cities dont need to invest in water supply until they reach a certain population. It is suggested that small towns may use wells. Agricultural land doesnt need water supply either. The assumption is that it is served by its own irrigation. You have a number of digital advisors who act as the employees of the mayor in different areas such as finance, utilities or the environment. A case can be made that their usefulness is questionable at best. Police coverage is not really required until certain size is reached, no matter how loud the security advisor may scream at you. Supply and demand is embedded in a sophisticated tax system with its own code. The default tax rate for any developer type is 7%. But, it is wise to raise all the taxes to 9% in order to succeed as soon as you establish your city. The neutral tax rate depends on population but does not change much for small cities. It begins at 9% and drops gradually to 8% after residential population grows to 2,250,000. The negative effect of raising taxes remains for several months after the mayor changes the policy and the taxes go back to a neutral rate. If taxes are raised they need to be raised gradually. In addition agricultural Sims do not pay taxes. Game instructions note how agriculture is not driven by business demand, but it offers free jobs, feeding residential demand while being fed by residential population. Second, the game allows numerous configurations of a limited number of building designs and zoning, which imposes a universal aesthetic on the cityscape. This aesthetic favors segregated zoning over mixed use, which, Hogan says allows the players to more easily visually analyze their creation, but also gives rise to homogeneous, class segregated neighborhoods. With new versions of SimCity styles have been expanded to provide an illusion of variety. Although these options embody a rather superficial approach to the physical implications of urban design, they do help to reveal some of the background assumptions. Todd Reamon, associate producer, explains that a players zoning will result in groups of buildings all of one particular styleso that an area has a nice cohesive appearance, while another area next to it zoned or developed at a later time has a different stylepromoting a nice feeling of separate neighborhoods, and visually varied development. The first three basic style sets are: Chicago, 1890 Reamon notes that it is a suitable time frame from which to start because it was not until then that steel infrastructure engineering advances allowed truly tall buildings to be built, a necessary component to SimCitys upper range of denser population/capacity buildings

and an expected verticality to a metropolis simulation. And nowhere in the world was urban architecture more exciting than in Chicago. The Chicago 1890 lower density residential buildings are primarily of the Victorian style and its subcategories [Second Empire, Stick, Queen Anne, Richardsonian Romanesque, Folk Victorian, etc]. New York, 1940 Reamon continues: The New York set aspires to greater heights, dramatically emphasized verticality, tempered with more modern, minimal or Art Deco detail. A Chicago building might be an elongated box, and a New York building would terrace up to a great tower. The lower density New York Residential buildings are represented by architectural styles common in the mid-Twentieth Century [Prairie, Shingle, Italian Renaissance, Art Deco, etc] Houston, 2000 This set is remarkable in so far as it is the only true contemporary reference. Houston is an American planning paradigm. It is the only major city in the country without a zoning ordinance. It offers the iconic representation of a SimCity of empty parking lots, disconnected business districts and segregated residential areas. Reamon argues that it represents the great postmodern glass and steel superstructures. For him, Houston is the ideal inspirational setting for this contemporary group of buildings, as many ultra-modern skyscrapers sprung up along its skyline during the prosperity there near the close of the 20th Century. The houses and mansions of the Houston set are markedly more modern, utilizing the same improved technology of materials that their larger compatriots showcase, but on an obviously smaller scale. Architect Richard Meier was a chief inspiration in the design of many of these modern houses. A fourth style has been added in the last version of the game: Euro-Contemporary That is it, no date or period in time but a generic stereotype and amalgam of European styles maybe required because Electronic Arts games are distributed worldwide and are now translated into 17 languages. In addition, industrial buildings are treated differently in the game, but they can also be divided into four major groups - Dirty, Manufacturing, High-tech and Agriculture. These are also separated by significant spans of time somewhat analogous to the three basic periods of the residential and commercial buildings. The first period/purpose of the Industrial buildings is that of the Dirty Industry equating to turn of the (20th) century heavy industry such as mills or refineries. The mid-century Industry buildings equate to the Manufacturing subset, which are predominately factories and manufacturing plants. The modern Industrial component would be the High-tech Industry set, green architecture serving such industries as aerospace, computer, defense or biotech. You can select how many of these styles will be in effect in your city at any time, and have them all develop at the same time or change the style every few years. A new feature allows the player to pick a specific building and check a box, thereby making the building Historical. PRIMAS Official Strategy Guide tells how this is a great way to preserve buildings that you find appealing but that this Historical designation will not protect a building from abandonment or

catastrophic events. The buildings inability to redevelop in the face of changing desirability might make it more prone to abandonment. Historic preservation, although available, offers no advantages, nor will any of the styles really affect the development of your city, other than defining the aesthetics of a neighborhood and providing a homogeneous town, or if you are skillful enough, a scramble of architectural trends. This leads to the third element: An inherited colonial view of land as an infinite supply. The game begins by allowing the player to settle an area of land devoid of other cities or inhabitants, favoring urban grid structures over organic development. Regions are divided into areas of different sizes where the new city will grow and will have the opportunity to expand to an adjoining area or create a number of business deals with its neighbors. Regional planning becomes a game of wits between cities trying to get rid of its agricultural production, to flourish as a commercial center or outsourcing its trash collection. Conditions that more often than not accurately reflect the North American landscape. The irrelevance of the specific form of the city, from styles to historic preservation, from streetscape to building heights, tends to suggest that the game may overestimate the policy impact of location over the physical implications. It might be agreed that gaming software needs to set to one side those aspects that although very relevant are difficult to control in urban scenarios of such complexity. However, recent versions of the game aim for a greater degree of complexity through the ability to look more closely at, and direct more specifically, the lives of particular Sim-Citizens. Whether the characters are created separately in any version of the Sims and then imported, or created directly in SimCity, these special citizens will offer an insight into the sociology of SimCity. Each My Sim has a wealth-level attached to him. Any My Sim takes on the attributes of the first house this citizen is placed in. If a house is of a low residential status, low education and health quotient, the Sims own attributes will reflect that and change in conjunction with the structure even if the character was an imported Sim of high wealth. Class mobility is somewhat idealized and segregated, once a Sim enters the game his wealth level can increase but never drop. In situations of crisis, the residents will only endure the conditions for about 6 SimCity months, after this period if things have not improved or regained the former status the people will flee town, for imaginary suburbs or competing cities. Nobody who has moved up the social ladder will go down in SimCity. In this respect there is a strong relationship between criminality and wealth-level. If you focus your money on the wealthy the education quotient may be increased faster but crime will increase scaring the rich Sims out of town. Without inexpensive alternatives to reduce crime, universal education is the best option. Alongside wealth and unemployment, the base criminality levels are influenced by education and class, leading to the conclusion that the lower the wealth level the higher percentage of criminal activity. Moreover, landmark and special service buildings carry their own positive and negative effects. For instance a convention center or a state fair would increase wealth but will also pump up criminality rates counteracting any police protection activities. The black box of the game hides several other assumptions, among them the emphasis on the power of the mayor. The only way that SimCity will eject a mayor from office is if the city budget goes in the red beyond 100,000 Simoleons. Other than that, the mayor will not have to face the council questionings, campaign for re-elections, nor undergo the pressure of any

other democratic process. And what does SimCity tell you once you have lost the game? Try an easier job. Run for senator. The player begins to play in what is called God Mode, creating mountains, rivers, and wildlife, with gestures of biblical proportions. Once this god is pleased with the land, he will create the city and take human form. As mayor, the player continues to operate in a god mode of sorts, only the ability to modify the terrain, or create landscape free of charge has been lost. He maintains absolute power to build, demolish, tax and spend. Unwieldy growth and megalomaniacal, destructive behavior are the two poles of city operation and the players most likely courses of action. Thus the heart of the game is much less a universal vision of city design than it is a reflection of the most extremes tendencies of development in America found in the few areas in which one person has total control over a large parcel of landwhether a powerful mayor pursuing an urban renewal project, or a developer creating a massive planned community in the middle of dessert or farmlands. But the many parts of urban planning and development that do not reflect this model of total control over virgin territory get short shrift. SimCitys narrow lens only tells half of the story of urban development. But aspiring and practicing educators and planning professionals have been looking through this lens for fifteen years, with influential results.
NOT JUST A GAME The early utopian beginning of SimCity stressed a desire to influence policy, have an educational role, and illustrate how cities should ideally develop. No other game has been used so widely in schools to help understand the different elements of local government. And although SimCity is now looking to the crossroads of simulation and action games, like the missions of the new Rush Hour expansion pack, the games developers still consider the educational market as one of its key audiences. Lucy Bradshaw, Maxis General Manager, expressed the firms plans to continue teachers guides for SimCity, school licenses, and a series of Sim kids products during the Markle Forum on Children and Media in 2002. In her view, the success of the game also had to be tied to special contacts outside the gaming industry, like university partnerships. David Lublin, a professor in the Department of Governance at American University , used SimCity to teach 20th Century local government. The students had to write a paper after creating a SimCity of their own and analyzing the underlying principles. A fundamental aspect of the paper was to stress how SimCity reflected real world conditions, and what aspects were ignored or sent to a second plane, he said. Because of the widespread use of SimCity in schools and homes, it is easy to make the case, as did Paul Starr, founder of the American Prospect, that SimCity in 1995 was a more influential introduction to city planning than any book. His view is still valid today, and it should be a cause for some concern. Although remaining significant, the differences between SimCity and a real city seem to be narrowing. The game has evolved to consider more sophisticated real-life issues. Maxis producer Hogan notes that based on feedback from users, the game designers added such features as development on hilly terrain, regional planning, and bedroom communities to resemble features of real-life urbanism. But more importantly, real world planning increasingly resembles SimCity because of the growing use of related technology, often in support of a SimCity-like top-down model of local government. Bradshaw also pointed to the opportunity for a heavy SimCity presence in the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) market. The GIS phenomenon is a consequence of the maturity of data integration with visual representation. Around 1990, GIS replaced paper maps as the main medium of geographic analysis in government agencies across the nation. GIS integrates different sets of geographic data on computer screens by, in effect, allowing a user to overlay transparencies of different data sets. This system can then show, for example, which homes are within a five-minute drive of a fire station. While its early roots were in evaluating how environmental conditions limited potential developable land, many planning departments now use GIS to evaluate social elements of city life. For instance, many departments overlay Census data to make zoning decisions relative to income, class, education levels, and development desirability. SimCity has the same basic analytic mechanisms as GIS; consequently, when schools use SimCity to teach urban planning and politics, they teach the framework of analyzing environmental and social relations via GIS. The arena of education provides a very useful insight into the shift from SimCity to GIS. There have been several studies to evaluate the impact and usefulness of GIS as a valid classroom tool. One of the most relevant is the pilot project led by TERC, a nonprofit education research

game is a process of demystification: One succeeds by discovering how the software is put together: One could defend the position that playing software like this effectively has to start by constructing simple general assumptions, that is, something that resembles a stereotype. This would be a perfectly legitimate defense of the game. But it comes very short not only for something that has an influence in education and the profession but, I will argue, a biased element of the culture of cities. Planning can hardly be a game and the use of technology in its development should not be taken lightly. Yet planner sometimes get overwhelmed with the technology and forget that GIS by itself cannot address issues like gentrification, race inequality, immigration or the effect of market flows in urban regions. GIS can tell planners what a policys likely effects will be (for example, how many existing residents might be displaced as a result of a new redevelopment project) but it cannot ultimately say whether those effects are desirable. Edward Soja, Professor of Urban Planning at the University of California, calls it part of a reconstitution of our realities when cities are reshaped according to analysis that tell only part of the story with little public scrutiny. Unfortunately, gambling on policies and investments is a situation that occurs both onscreen, and in the real world. Soja notes the painful example that was the management of Orange County, California. In the early 1990s, facing strict limits on property tax increases, county tax collector Robert Citron modeled, and then implemented, a plan for investing the countys tax revenue in the financial markets. For a short time, it seemed an extraordinary success. He was highly praised, and under virtually no scrutiny, until the systems crashed. His gamble, to invest on short-term interest rates and bet they remain relatively low compared with medium-term interest rates, failed after the Federal Reserve Bank began to raise US interest rates in 1994. Citrons intriguing idea, divorced from the reality of possible decline in financial markets and bereft of oversight from people who could say no to playing the market with taxpayer money, left Orange County $1.64 billion debt. And, as Soja points out, Citrons game could not be rebooted and played again. SimCity-like data analysis may also blind city leaders to the problems that lie out of its geopolitical scope. For example, Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams policies sound like a case study right out of a SimCity scenario. DC cannot tax 66% of the local income, 11% of real property is tax exempt and the Federal Government owns 42% of the real property. So what is there to do with a budget that is in deficit by nature? According to Mayor Williams, a key element is to attract 100,000 new, wealthy workers who would provide high taxes. In the meantime, for instance the sewage overflows into the Anacostia River when it rains, and even if the infrastructure could get fixed 60% of the contamination comes from the Maryland watershed. The first thing SimCity teaches is to put your pollution at the border of the region so that it goes to your neighbor, not you. Much like SimCity, the USAs capital is using advanced GIS and data systems with questionable effects. According to Suzanne Peck, the Districts chief technology officer, No other U.S. city has a digital mapping database so rich with data or so robust with commercial quality search and mapping functions. But unlike SimCity, people in the District have a right to examine the assumptions in the policy model of the Mayor. Nevertheless, the resemblance between city life and that of the game is painfully close. One of the main problems that the software InterSCOPE faced when it was presented to a professional audience is that it was perceived to be a caricature of city life. IT Spatial

is a technology company specialized in interactive 3D visualization for decision support systems based in McLean, Virginia. One of its main projects is the integration of GIS data, with three-dimensional representation and animation. They have used their InterSCOPE with mixed results. In 2002 as part of a Washington DC downtown revitalization program they had the opportunity to represent several development scenarios. Ultimately, this was a tool that should ease the introduction of new urban proposals to community members and residents, who supposedly lack the training to appreciate them. But at the time, it never made it to a community meeting. The software had all the downfalls of SimCity and none of the advantages. It couldnt test the evolution of similar scenarios in real time and at best it offered a frozen three-dimensional representation where the user could either fly over the development or take the viewpoint of a car driver. The programmer made a presentation for a large audience of planning professionals, developers and city officials behind closed doors. The animation seemed to be in the hands of someone driving under the influence of alcohol in a landscape of barren, dark streets and frightening architecture. After he left the room, there was consensus for once: It looked like a game. More than a development proposal it looked like Zombie City Escape from DC. Of course the failure could be due to the lack of appropriate rendering or to a prejudice against this representation. Many community activists and professionals prefer to show sketches that give the impression of an idea in transformation, rather than sophisticated computer renderings that may lead one to believe that decisions have already being taken. But I do not really think that this was the reason. This attempt failed to integrate in any useful manner the data, graphic and otherwise, which represented existing conditions with alternatives. With this in mind, I am inclined to believe that a pitfall awaits if we swallow the bait of the dynamics of a game instead of taking a careful look at our complex realities. But relying on the game is precisely what many professionals wish to see happen. William Miller, director of educational services at ESRI the leading firm in GIS software education services- at his 1998 keynote presentation at the Tools for Community Design and Decision Making Conference said: Simulation-based decision support systems need to be developed to model both our natural and urban environments, as well as the interaction between those environments I should say, especially the interaction between those environments. This is different from what-if modeling, which looks a predetermined set of alternatives. Simulations allows us to look at those undetermined alternatives, or probable consequences, of what might happen based on a set of assumptions. What we need here is a SimCity approach to GIS that allows us to study the interactive behavior of multiple environments over time. The next major breakthrough in GIS will come when we can build valid time-dependent simulation models of our landscape

POWER-TRIP PLANNING In the previous pages I aimed to illustrate three key aspects of the game. These were, first, the internal premise and background of the game, second, a description of some of its fundamental elements, and third the educational and professional influence in urban studies. In all three counts, I aimed to shed some light on why it cannot be used successfully as a reliable testing tool. The explanations range from the secretive nature of a computer game and its predisposition not to unveil its mechanisms to the bias of its founding background. Its downfalls include serious limitations as an educational tool, since it is constrained to test fantasy scenarios. And the technological ramifications explain how geographic information systems lack the ability to run a scenario in real time like SimCity thus stopping us from using one of its most engaging features. It would be foolish and irresponsible to deny in any way the importance and potential of GIS. But its use and evolution are aspects that deserve separate attention. There are worrying parallels with certain policy practices, which may or may not ultimately stem out of SimCity but that nevertheless belong to similar mechanisms of rationalizing the city. However, the question remains as to why this game is something that we should be concerned about if it is not that important, if it cannot really be used reliably in any of these settings. I have also been hinting at another key aspect throughout this paper that tries to answer that question. This is what I would call the cultural use of SimCity. We could look at why the XVIII century paintings of the Venice canals by Canaletto are important to understand that city. These pictures represent well know scenes of the Venetian urban landscape at an extraordinarily high level. It is well documented that Canaletto composed creatively an image not from a straight forward representation of reality but from an interpretation, which included forcing views that otherwise would not be accessible to the naked eye. We would have to agree that the significance lies more appropriately in the cultural impact and not whether his paintings are a useful tool to analyze and test the morphology of the Venice canal. It is useful as a very sophisticated representation, an interpretation, of a city and its elements in a particular moment in time. What is really interesting about this work for me is to begin to answer the question of what is the array of representations of Venice that constitute the perceived images, real or imagined, of that city and in what way they have been influential. Similarly, I am of the view that a key interest and value of SimCity lies in its cultural and social use. Like other scenario games it enables the player to fantasize about the physical world of the city. Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues persuasively that this is a way to connect the player to the world. Enforcing the creation of stereotypes would be troubling if this were the only reality that the player receives. However, more often than not, I do not think this is the case. The immediate follow up question to this essay lies in the need to explore gaming as an educational tool and if stereotyping occurs as a result of playing. At the introduction of this analysis I mentioned how one of the most important elements of SimCity is an interest in emergent complex behavior from simple systems. This is a perfectly reasonable area of investigation, and probably it makest sense to construct highly

sophisticated games from this premise. SimCity and the Sims are not ordinary games and I would still defend that they are worthy of praise and attention. But when we face the question of the city we already encounter one of the most complex systems that displays complex behavior. Analysis by simplification through this game is something that we cannot do lightly. SimCity constitutes a challenging stimulus to talk about cities and question its operation. But can we currently really test real world alternatives with this software? The SimCity game, if not as widespread through the population as pop music, is certainly entering common language and producing observations from the layperson to the scholar. Tourist returning from Bangkok use SimCity to compare the brutality of the ruthless public infrastructure found there. Martin Kbler, a social activist now working in Dubai, mentioned how this location seems to him like SimCity par excellence: Most major decisions seem to be made in the spur of a moment by the Sheikh - for example, first there was only one artificial island in the shape of a palm tree. It was very popular with investors and thus it came that, when the Sheikh came to visit the building site, he decreed that there should be a second one. Building works started a few weeks later. Now that the second one is well under way, and equally popular, the Sheikh ordered a third one to be build on the other side of the town. His request was published in the newspapers on one day; bulldozers started to roll about a week later. Countless references can be found on-line developing similar comparisons. For instance, PghUSA on the Urban Planet message board posts: That whole country is like the worlds best SimCity player come to life. What 25 years of oil money can do (Houston and Dallas expanded this rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s too). Ultimately we will have to respond to these views and assess their accuracy regarding Dubai and other cities. But in any case, SimCity is used as the currency to explain and compare urban phenomenon and to illustrate diverse opinions. Kbler hints at a critique of the politics of Dubai and PghUSA praises its development model. Should we wish to understand systematically what makes these views converge on SimCity we would need to look at the political and economic models encouraged by the game and how these are reflected in reality. In this example, common points are the perception of rapid growth, a wealth of resources and a straightforward decision making process. The current cultural position of the game is far from encouraging to use it thoroughly in educating or training professionals. Forgetting the irony and playfulness of SimCity in the classroom would equal to teaching civic behavior with fighting games such as Mortal Kombat, Quake or Tekten IV. Sinjin Bain, Executive Producer of the Sims expansion pack URBZ: Sims in the City, says that the URBZ is a parody of urban life much like the Sims is a parody of suburban life. I find easy to think of SimCity as parody of city development. The family of Sim games always had subtle ironic undertones that compounded experience with a witty sense of humor. As Hogan notes, it is a game we tend to pick and choose the stuff that makes for good game play. In fact Bill Wright speaking about his creation says that, all games are designed to allow people to be destructive, but players have to realize that the true challenge is a constructive one. The trick for prospering in the games lies with learning about the underlying model. But, it looks like new versions of the game are making some moves

away from its founding sense of nonviolence and open ends. They add power-trip possibilities that would give a city planner a God complex-fine for a fun simulation, troubling for a game used as an educational tool in the real world. The latest expansion pack does more than over emphasize transportation and car dependence. In a return to Wrights original helicopter attack game, not only can players now demolish buildings from a tank, but they can also run vehicle missions, which are available depending on existing development, funding situation and a desire to create or destroy. You want to run a mission to drive a toxic waste truck through the city safely? Or even help a group of robbers escape the police? Criminal actions by the mayor may hurt popularity rating, but if the mission is successful the money goes to the city treasury, offering greater possibilities to boost ratings. The mayor can drive his limousine to an area of low mayor rating, which might be under a strike or a revolt. Hold the space bar, et voila, the mayor is throwing bills from the limo that the Sims pick on the fly. The mayors rating is restored. In some cities, of course, that scenario reflects reality. But shouldnt a game with so much influence on future planners and citizens not just teach power accumulation, but at least attempt to instill a sense of what government can and should do-some sense of values transcending simple supply and demand that underlie planning? Not only the game does not dwell successfully in the complex but intrinsic elements of an open society and some of its pressing problemscitizen participation, voting, councils, legislation, homelessness, corruption or accountabilitybut it avoids entirely the increasing element of gaming interaction and simultaneous participation. At many levels the consolidation of the World Wide Web and the new technologies associated with it have enabled those with access an unprecedented level of connectivity and dialogue. On-line gaming provides users the possibility of sharing the same session with other users and shape the fiction as an outcome of group decisions. In the case of SimCity while it has developed an impressive following and many peripheral fan sites devoted to the game it has remained behind as far as multi-player interaction goes. Currently it only offers one option that limits the opportunity to develop team scenarios of collaborating or even opposing forces. A city can be shared on-line by passing it from user to user, from mayor to mayor, for a limited period of time. That is, borrow a city, see where it is at, push its development in a direction of your choosing and leave it when your term expires. This literal interpretation of mayoral terms is a far cry from allowing users to share a common project and test particular scenarios. This development, in addition to an access to the black box, would open new ways to explore conceptual city scenarios that, with the right framework, could start at SimCity helping us to understand urban environments better. So, going back to the starting question, Is it time to be Mayor? Yep, lets be mayor After I get elected, of course. SimElections anyone?

SIMCITY BASIC CHRONOLOGY: 1959 - Waldo Tobler outlines a simple model called MIMO (map in-map out) for applying the computer to cartography. 1964 Richard Duke designs the simulation game Metropolis for the City Council in Lansing, Michigan 1965 - Event description SYMAP (Synagraphic Mapping System) - a pioneering automated computer mapping application developed by Howard Fisher at the Northwestern Technology Institute and completed in the Harvard Lab 1969 Jay Forrester publishes Urban Dynamics pointing to data modeling in order to challenge urban policy practices. Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) is founded by Jack & Laura Dangermond. 1972 The Club of Rome publishes The Limits to Growth 1984 Bill Wright creates his first game: Raid on Bungeling Bay. 1987 Bill Wright and Jeff Braun found Maxis 1989 Maxis SimCity is published for the PC and Mac. 1990 Geographic Information Systems (GIS) replace paper maps as the primary medium of map analysis 1990 Sid Meier releases Civilization inspired on SimCity. Maxis produces SimEarth (1990) followed by SimAnt (1991) 1993 SimCity 2000 is released. Spends the first half of the year at number 1, selling 300,000 copies in the first 4 months alone. SimFarm also released. 1995 Maxis goes public. Witold Rybczynski publishes City Life. 1996 Maxis releases SimCopter, SimTunes, SimPark, Full Tilt Pinball 1997 Maxis is acquired by Electronic Arts Inc 1999 SimCity 3000 is released. 2000 The Sims is released in February. The first expansion pack The Sims Living Large is released in August 2001 The Sims House Party expansion pack is released in March. November sees the Hot Date expansion pack. Maxis also produces SimCoaster and SimGolf. 2002 Two expansion packs for the Sims are released this year: The Sims Vacation and The Sims Unleashed. The Sims Online is also released. 2003 Maxis publishes SimCity4 in January. The expansion pack SimCity4 Rush Hour is released in September. Both are also repackaged as SimCity4 Deluxe Edition. The Sims is re-launched for console including the console expansion pack Busting Out. PC Sims expansion packs released are The Sims Superstar and The Sims Making Magic 2004 The Sims2 is released in September. In its first 10 days, the $49.99 game sold more than a million copies worldwide, more than 50% in Europe. The expansion pack Urbz: Sims in the City is released in October. 2005- The expansion pack Sims 2 University is released in February.
SIMCITY BASIC BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES Alexander, Christopher. A City is not a Tree Architectural Forum Vol. 122, No1, April 1965 (Part I) and Vol. 122, No 2, May 1965 (Part II) Alexander, Christopher. The Timeless Way of Building Oxford University Press - 1979 New York. Alexander, Christopher. A Pattern Language Oxford University Press - 1977 New York. Bomford, D. and Finaldi, G., Venice through Canalettos Eyes London: National Gallery, and New Haven and London, Yale University Press 1998 Boss, Nathan. What do Game Designers know about Scaffolding? Borrowing SimCity Design Principles for Education http://www-personal.si.umich.edu/~serp/ ork/SimCity.pdf 2000 Cassell, Justine and Jenkins, Henry, Editors. From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games MIT Press; 2000 Ferr Albert et al. Verb, Architecture Boogazine: Connection Actar, 2004 Barcelona. Friedman, Ted. The Semiotics of SimCity First Monday Volume 4 Number 4 April 5th 1999 http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_4/friedman/index.html Forrester, Jay W., Urban Dynamics Wright Allen Pr, February 1969 Forrester, Jay W. World Dynamics, Pegasus Communications 1971 Gulf News Staff, Dubai to transform industrial sector into growth engine, Gulf News Report November 25th 2004 http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/print2.asp?ArticleID=141220 ITspatial, Inc. http://www.itspatial.com/company.html Kramer, Greg. SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition: Primas Official Strategy Guide Prima Games-Random House Inc. 2003 Roseville, CA Jenkins, Henry, From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Further Reflections presented at Playing By The Rules: The Cultural Policy Challenges of Video Games, U.Chicago, October 2001. http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/confz2001/papers/jenkins.html McWilliams, Harold and Rooney, Paul. Mapping Our City: A Progress Report on GIS as a Tool in Urban Education. 1996. http://mapcity.terc.edu/edgis/p131.html Meadows, Donella & Others. The Limits to Growth, Signet Books, Chicago 1972 Miller, William. Place-Based Community Planning: Philosophies, Trends, and Technologies Keynote presentation at the Tools for Community Design and Decision Making Conference, Chattanooga, Tennessee. 1998 http://sustainable.state.fl.us/fdi/edesign/news/9903/miller.htm Reamon, Todd. The Architecture of SimCity 4. http://simcity.ea.com/about/inside_scoop/architecture1.php Rybczynski, Witold, City Life Touchstone-Simon & Schuster, 1995 New York Sieberg, Daniel, The World According to Will, Salon February 17, 2000. http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/17/wrigth/index.html Soja, Edward W. Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions Blackwell Publishers 2000 Oxford. Starr, Paul. Seductions of Sim: Policy as Simulation Game, The American Prospect Volume 5, Issue 17. March Thompson, Bob. Original Sims: Guys and Digital Dolls, The Washington Post Magazine April 14, 2002 Vargas, Jose Antonio. Hes Got Games: Bing Gordon Knows What Plays in the Interactive Video World Washington Post, October 13 2004, Page C01 Various Authors. SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition, EA Games Maxis 2003, Redwood City, CA

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. To view a copy of this license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ or send a letter to: Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
Cover image Electronic Arts Inc.