I'm Not A City Planner, But I Play One in Video Games

[waterloowarrior]

Funny, Sim City did the same for me, and I just finished my undergrad in planning. Now if only Sim City could get me a job too!

Me too!

 

[highlife]

IBM CityOne - I wanna it now!! LOL

I credit simcity2000 and another urban forum in sparking my interest in urban planning and economics. I didn't major in urban studies but i definitely took elective courses to feed my curiosity

 

[Second_in_pie]

Not sure if I can attribute my interest in urban planning to Sim City, but I sure loved those games. I remember playing it for the first time and having no idea how to keep my money, just restarting as I started to go into debt. Eventually, I realized that transportation is an important part of any growing city, and that sims need to be able to get to work. And going further, I realized that some pollution is necessary for my city (rather untrue in this day and age, and only in my cities for a short amount of time.) I'm going to have to break out that disk again...

All that said, it wasn't without it's flaws. The AI was kind of slow, with only the last SimCity 4 expansion actually introducing traffic patterns, and still no way to address certain issues. You couldn't decide how your trains operated, and transportation was still awkward in general, and the land value and urban form system kind of arbitrary. I'm hoping that this CityOne fixes all the problems that Sim City had. I think that "solving today's urban problems" would involve basically all of that. Hoping it'll be a good one

 

[W. K. Lis]

From americancity.org:

Last week marked the launch of CityOne, a “serious game†developed by technology giant IBM. Part of the Big Blue’s broader “Smarter blank†initiatives – which include Smarter Cities, Smarter Planet and Smarter Buildings, among others – the game is intended to help business and civic leaders (or indeed anyone with a flash enabled browser) gain a better understanding of some of the challenges that are facing modern day urban areas, and how technology might play a role in addressing them.

While comparisons have been made to SimCity, unlike the popular Maxis title, the object isn’t to build a city. Rather, players are faced with a series of problem scenarios related to four sectors – energy, water, banking and retail – and ask to choose a solution that can help make things work better (or should I say, smarter). Once players complete 10 rounds, the game provides an assessment of your performance, and classifies you as one of five types of leaders – pragmatic, conservative, short-term oriented, futurist or evasive (if you happen to “ignore the problem†too many times). There’s also high score board and map showing players from all over the world.

According to IBM’s press release, CityOne requires players to “balance the city’s financial, environmental and sociological interests†while “attaining revenue and profit goals, increasing customers’ and citizens’ satisfaction, and making the environment greener†– all with a limited budget. While that description certainly captures some of the challenges of managing a real city, playing the actual game feels a little like running a city like a management consultant. For every situation, it seems that there’s a technology or process improvement that is waiting in the wings that gives everyone more information, increases profits and customer satisfaction, and improves the environment in one fell swoop (and hey, is cheaper to boot!).

Obviously, investing in smart and customer focused technology and processes is probably going to be a good thing for many cities – as it has been for many businesses. But for all the media hype (and the undoubted brain power of IBM), CityOne seems a bit too simplistic. Playing the game, the budget rarely seems to be a problem. Issues like transportation, education, or food have been left out in favor of banking and retail – which aren’t exactly in the realm of city leaders. And there are too many obvious choices (i.e: to protect water supplies from terrorists, should you a) create an advisory board; b) test the water more regularly; or c) invest in “advanced smart water monitoring†– with choice “c†being the cheapest. Duh!).

You might say I can’t really fault IBM. Naturally one of the company’s main goals with CityOne is to explain and market solutions for improving systems to the public (hence the lengthy registration process designed to harvest contact information). Based on that criterion, CityOne does a great job. As technology doesn’t provide an answer for many of the tough urban policy choices (like raising transit fares and cutting service versus implementing congestion pricing), maybe that’s all it can do. Still, I’d be more excited if CityOne tried a bit harder to explore some tougher issues (like choosing between local organic produce versus industrialized agriculture after comparing yields, prices and environmental costs, or maybe the costs and advantages of rail versus bus rapid transit). Perhaps in version 2.0.

 

[sodapop]

this looks amazing! i'm getting it as soon as i can which i guess is soon since it says its coming out in fall

 

[afransen]

Seems like a silly game to me. This is basically a really fancy brochure for IBM services.

 

[Cyber98]

Cities Skylines 2 just released and I was watching a video of it and I noticed they added the Cn tower, L tower and One Bloor east into the base game. Its cool to see Toronto has really made a name for itself and has been featured in a big game like this! Video