computer games

Let’s Start Building

Urban Planning

Maxis have announced that SimCity 5 will be released in 2013, marking their return to the franchise they invented, and making it official that the awful (non-Maxis developed) SimCity Societies should not be thought of as the fifth instalment in the series. The trailer is below, and there’s some good information at the official website. A good article on the underlying game engine is here.

I’ve said my piece on the qualities of SimCity, and its importance to the urban planning profession, here. I genuinely feel its important that one or more good city builder games are out there, although I should add that this view has in the past had me labelled a “drooling, mouth-breathing moron.”

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All Planners Have Thought This

Urban Planning

Some real posts should follow shortly, but as a filler here’s an image expressing a thought every planner has had while playing Sim City. (From Cracked’s “If Video Games Were Realistic.”)

I looked more seriously at the game vs reality of Sim City here.

Job Opportunities in the Virtual City: Planners and SimCity

Urban Planning

When it comes to the pop-culture representation of various professions, doctors, lawyers and the police have traditionally been the most heavily represented on television. Yet urban planners can claim a disproportionate prominence in the area of computer games: since 1989, one of the most persistent game genres has been city-builder games, most famously epitomised by the SimCity series. It’s possible that SimCity has done more than any other single source to disseminate information about what urban planners do, especially amongst younger sections of the population. But what do SimCity and other city-builder games say – and teach – about our profession?

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