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- In October of 1994, Maxis held a contest among SimCity 2000 users to create
- the best city they could come up with. Cities of all kinds were submitted,
- some had immense populations, some looked like great places to live, and some
- just plain looked neat. Of the over 100 cities submitted, we sat down with
- mouse in hand and picked what we thought were the best 20 or so. Here they
- are, each with a little description written by each author about his city.
- (It should be known that the people responsible for judging these cities wish
- to remain anonymous, but can be easily spotted by the pizza in their teeth
- and nice white coats.)
-
-
-
- CITY: Bayview
- Submitter: Brian Poff
-
- I am submitting this city (Bayview) for the SimCity 2000 CD Contest.
-
- I think it is one of the most beautiful cities I've seen. It also
- has several special features:
-
- 1. BayView Overlook - Forested mountain overlooking the entire city,
- with a winding road that goes all the way to the
- top. There is a small park at the top for
- picnicing.
- 2. BayView Prison - Entirely self-contained prison on an island.
- The prison has it's own power generators and
- it's own water supply. It's only accessible
- via a drawbridge.
- 3. Airport Tunnel - Tunnel going from one island to the next that
- runs under the airport, then curves around the
- hill to connect to the airport.
-
- I think I used my initials for the mayor (because I don't want to see my
- name everytime I start the game). You may change it to my real name
- "Brian Poff". I'd do it myself, but I don't know how.
-
- ------
- CITY: Cape Wells
- Submitter: Ken Wells
-
- A beautiful Sim City complete with Natural Forests, Islands, Valleys, and a
- very healthy economy.
-
- ------
- CITY: Centerville
- Submitter: Loren J. Howell
-
- Several points of interest:
- 1. A balanced budget, with a very high city services-to-tax ratio.
- 2. A crime rate of 1%.
- 3. No subway or rails.
- 4. A fairly high education quotient, and an across-the-board A+ education
- rating.
- 5. No arcologies, although the city was designed wth arcologies in mind.
- 6. Industries are all near the edges of the city to keep pollution to a
- minimum.
- 7. Entirely powered by hydroelectric, although the dams make it look
- "unnatural."
- 8. A highly structured and symmetric layout.
- Also, the schools are named for Presidents ( really imaginative, huh? ) and
- the hospitals are named after dead musicians ( Elvis, John Lennon, etc.).
- This city would be an excellent "example" city for trying out different
- budget and city service settings, to see how every little change affects
- everything else, since it is so delicately balanced.
- ------
- CITY: Ceres Garden City
- Submitter: Keith Plunkett
-
- It was built for desirability rather than population, and is set over many
- levels from the sea at the front over the mountains behind. From the graphs
- and other information, it has the following statistics:-
-
- Year : 2441 (started in 2000)
- Population : 88k
- Traffic : 9
- Pollution : 13/14
- Value : 219
- Crime : 9
- Health : 87
- EQ : 127
- Unemployment : 0
- Mayor's Rating : 89%
-
- None of the "cheats" were used to build this city.
-
- ------
- CITY: Egypt Falls
- Submitter:Andrew Ashbaugh
-
- Egypt Falls is a relatively young city. It was built and
- financed by Joeseph Forester, one in a long line of rich city builders.
- The Foresters built many of the cities in SimIllinois with money out of
- their own pockets! And when they die, it's a tradition to leave so much
- money to each of their cities general funds. To Egypt Falls, Joeseph
- left $2.1 billion. He did this for many reasons, mainly because Egypt
- Falls, being his first city, was his favorite city. It has been the
- capitol of SimIllinois ever since Simfield was devestated in 2055.
- Egypt Falls was founded in the year 2019. It grew up fast!
-
- Egypt Falls didn't have much purpose behind it. Except that
- Joeseph didn't want HIS city to have the problems so many do, such as
- crime, traffic, water shortages, and low popularity rates. He had more
- money than other mayors, so he used it for this purpose.
-
- Egypt Falls is in a rather isolated spot. Actually, Acurac,
- the southern and largest neighbor of Egypt Falls is the biggest
- benefactor of its growth. They are totally dependent on each other.
- Acurac needs Egypt falls to have an economy, and Egypt Falls needs
- Acurac so people can enter and exit Egypt Falls. Most of Egypt Falls
- intertown roads lead to Acurac. The reason, of corse, for this
- isolation is the terrain. Egypt Falls is built on a huge plateu that
- rises 3,000+ feet above sea level. The reservoir in the city is a
- wonder in itself! It apparently has no sorce of water! There are
- waterfalls on both sides that drain it. Scientists have studied this
- for years. The waterfalls that the city is named after are a huge
- tourist attraction, bringing people from miles around. And the can be
- viewed at sea level for Egypt Falls' only airport, a small one that
- doesn't connect by road to the city!
-
- Egypt Falls plays an important part in SimNation, however. It
- has several good colleges, and many well educated sims. This, and the
- low tax rates have made it the electronics capitol of SimNation! A few
- computing companies have their headquarters in it, and just about all
- of them have a branch of some kind there. There is a good amount of
- media there as well, with many big TV and radio stations. There isn't
- much unemployment, a rarity for a city set up to house residents first,
- commerce second, and industry third. This might be because of its size,
-
- it has a popualtion of around 40,000 sims in all. There is extremely
- low rates of crime and polution. Almost giving you the feel of a town
- of 2,000 people in a fairly large city. Egypt Falls has many zoos,
- marinas, museums, and parks to have fun at too. It isn't hard to see
- why their main attraction is tourism after all.
-
- ------
- CITY: Four Cities
- Submitter: Bing Chen
- This is a city with four little cities within it. I thought
- it might be a good idea to see how Sim Citizens interact
- with one another within their city. The major forms of
- transportation between cities are airports, subways,
- freeways and the occasional cruise in the sail boat. Each
- city has its own unique landmarks but they are all filled
- with parks and trees. Police and fire protection are
- adequate...if not excellent! Land value varies but tends to
- be on the valuable side.
-
- Hope you have fun with this city.
-
- ------
- CITY: Helena Point
- Submitter: William Liao
-
- If New Monroe Bay is the Beverly Hills of SimNation, then Halena Point must be
- the Bel Air of SimNation. These two cities share some common traits: low
- population density, full of trees, high EQ, good subway, popular mayor, and
- low unemployment. But Halena Point has much higher land value compared to New
- Monroe Bay: $310K+ vs $260K+. Halena Point also has a much lower population,
- 70K+ vs 500K+. In addition, when I designed the terrain for Halena Point, I
- actually tried to model the Sepulveda Pass area of Los Angeles. The freeway
- is Interstate 405. The flat land between the moutains is San Fernando Valley
- (Van Nuys, Sepulveda, Reseda, and Northridge.) The mountains are Santa Monica
- Mountains. One side has Bel Air Estates, Sherman Oaks, Studio City and
- Universal City. The other side has Encino, Tarzana, Woodland Hills, and
- Calabasas. Of course the result looks nothing like the original because of
- space constraints and feasibility. (A coast gives the industries that extra
- edge.)
-
- Improvements I like to see:
-
- Due to the small population, the city has low income. But to keep the sims
- happy, it has to spend a lot. The budget barely balances every 50 years. The
- fusion power plant will use up any savings over the years. (The $3 million is
- accumulated when the city was developing. It had very dense population and
- low spending. Over 2000 years city was very stingy and built nothing new.
- Good thing they don't understand democracy.)
-
- I want to build an arco, but it's not available to me.
- ------
- CITY: Hawaii
- Submitter: Michael Juneau
-
- Hawaii with all the islands! Has a master Subway that
- conects all the islands. The power system is kinda weird
- put it works.
- ------
- CITY: Herman Mallville
- Submitter: Durant Imboden
- Here's an entry for your SimCity 2000 CD-ROM Contest.
-
- The city is called "Herman Mallville" and was loosely
- inspired by the novel
- MOBY-DICK.
-
- ------
- CITY: Hi-Loh2o
- Submitter: Joseph Reeder
-
- A neat split-level city for Sims who enjoy roller coaster like subways,
- trains, and roads.
-
- ------
- CITY: La Isla
- Submitter: Santiago MUNNE-BLANCO (Pronounced 'Munay')
- LA ISLA (by Santiago Munne)
-
- This was created in six days, and I rested on
- the seventh. It is not really an island, because I left the contact to the
- mainland in place. It represents an early effort by the Munne-Tomkin team to
- produce a complete island, and occurred after a fortuitous "make", which I
- then fully developed. Later attempts to reproduce something similar failed,
- which is why "Glorioso" was later built from the sea-bottom upwards.
-
-
-
- ------
- CITY: New Monroe Bay
- Submitter: William Liao
- New Monroe Bay is the Beverly Hills of SimNation. When clicking on "land
- value" in the map window, you will find most of the land colored dark gray or
- black. Clicking on the "value" button in the graph window will tell you that
- the average city block is worth $260K+, much higher than any of the cities
- I've downloaded from here. The city is full of green, has low crime rate and
- limited pollution. There are seven launch arcos where most of the population
- resides, and "the rich and famous" sims have built luxury homes, condos, and
- apartments all over the city. The industries are heavy on aerospace and
- electronics. The subway is excellent. The EQ is 110+. And the mayor's
- rating is high 80% and sometimes 90+%. The city has only about 500K sims,
- because high density lowers property values.
-
- Improvements I like to see:
-
- Since only a small portion of the population lives outside the arcos, it is
- difficult to change from an industry based city to a commerce based city.
-
- To maintane everything, the city spends a lot of its income. It's net income
- is only $3K.
-
- It took me until year 8000 before I could get it right. I had to swap
- residential and industrial zones a couple of times. Since no cheat was used,
- sometimes I just had to wait and save up the money.
-
- ------
- CITY: NYC
- Submitter: Matthew Singleton
-
- Tri state area (New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey),
- $5,000,000 in funds, but only a population of 80,000 people,
- very healthy, educated sims. (download simcity.bak with this
- file too you will need it to load this game).
-
- ------
- CITY: Retreat
- Submitter: Kathy Nave
-
- My city is my initials. It has a low crime rate, an unusal design and it grew
- even though there are no bridges to connect the two land masses. The approval
- rating is very high and the entire city is built with hydro electric power
- which took up no valuable land space.
-
- ------
- CITY: River5
- Submitter: Brad Smull
-
- This city was started on easy level in 1900. No cheats have
- ever been implemented in the game unless you consider turning
- disasters off a cheat (I don't :)
-
- The city is by no means complete (by my standards anyway), but
- the deadline is here, so I must submit it as is. The only
- really outstanding feature that I could see was the small
- university campus that I put into the city. Also, I consider
- the city itself to be a very aesthetically pleasing city, if
- not the best overall layout. I just hope that you agree.
-
- Thank you for taking the time to view this city. I hope it
- made some kind of good impression on you.
-
- P.S. any names in this city relating to actual, real-life,
- places or people is entirely involuntary and I apologize
- for any inconvenience this may have caused.
- ------
- CITY: Spiralopolis
- Submitter: Jerry Moore
-
- Spiralopolis is a thriving city with a population of 9,342,726 healthy,
- educated sims. The city has a single road that starts in the town center and
- winds out in the form of a spiral.
-
- wdr
-
- ------
- CITY: St. Christopher
- Submitter: Christopher Pierce
-
- In my city, size was not the goal. My goal was to create a beautiful city in
- which I would like to live.
-
- ------
- CITY: SymCity
- Submitter: Craig Lichetenstein
-
- This city is pretty Symmetrical. I'm sure there may be a flaw but it's a great
- city with a great budget and cool buildings.
-
- ------
- CITY: The Bahamas
- Submitter: David
-
- This city is made of many island, has 2 billion in
- budget,high EQ, LE about 77, all zones are low density,
- large seaport and airport, many retreational areas, high
- land values, little crime, many bus stations and one island
- has a subsystem,pollution not a big problem ,and excellent
- water system. population about 11 thousand.
-
- ------
- CITY: Glorioso
- Submitter: Giles Tomkin
- The place I would like to live! There's a good chance that most people would
- know each other, or know of each other's families at least.
-
- Presentation
- format -
- A set of files saved during the stages of development (TOMG-B1 thru 4
- = 'B-efore start')of the real estate and another set during development of the
- island city state (TOMG-C1 thru 4 = 'C-ity').
- Heavy accent on airport and
- seaport. Low accent on industry. Heavy accent on wonderful residential areas
- and public services - schooling, hospitals, marinas, etc..
-
- Names -
- All names
- used are from real places around the Glorioso Island Group - which is a real
- place - currently uninhabited. But you'll have to find where it is for
- yourselves - shouldn't be too hard!
-
- Surprises -
- During development some
- surprises occurred - When I opened the airport, it immediately jammed itself
- full after building four huge runways. Population at the time was around
- 18,000. The same happened with the seaport - instant satisfaction, apparently
- out of all proportion with the population's needs. Very
- gratifying.
-
- Development -
- Lots of work on the landscaping before opening the
- city ("done"). The land shapes were planned to avoid the confusion of bridge
- and road building from level to another (Is this a bug??).
-
- The special
- feature of Glorioso is endless water supplies conveniently flowing from hill &
- mountain tops, to provide limitless everlasting hydropower and water to the
- islanders. It may have been total cheating, but it sure makes Glorioso a
- wonderful place to live. Melanoma is the citizens biggest enemy, just the way
- it should be (That's one name I could have added for a beach front someplace -
- it fits with the others very easily!)
-
- The "land bridge" was used only during
- development, and was removed ('lower terrain') once the population passed
- 30,000.
- The north-east island peninsula was developed first, with accent on
- industry, to promote early growth near the 'connection' to the nearest city.
- (Bug - The signposts to neighbouring cities - and therby these cities - cannot
- be renamed)
- Next the North Island was developed, balancing industrial-
- commercial- residential. After the money started to roll, I developed the
- south island ("Analalava") - first with the port, and later with schools,
- colleges, libraries and museums; all with a minimum of low-density everything,
- and a maximum of police, fire stations, hospitals, marinas and parks,
- including the Analalava National Park, Glorioso's pride and joy.
-
- The prison
- island has its own piece of subway - if prisoners manage to get to the
- mainland via the subway, they may only emerge at this one point.
-
- Plenty of
- small detail is left for finishing touches & re-arranging - like all works of
- art (Hey- SimCity as art?), one has to draw a line somewhere - in this case
- your deadline of Oct 14th for the finished item!
-
- By October 8th, the money is
- coming in so fast that I can't spend it all, and have therefore lowered taxes
- to the minimum in the finished submitted version.
-
- ------
- CITY: VirtualVille
- Submitter: Greg Gerke
-
- Features:
- - Drive Crazy Mountain - Mountain full of tunnels and sharp turns.
- - Wilderness Park - Plenty of trees, water, and other forms of
- entertainment.
- - Dark Park - Commune of Draco arcologies.
-
- ------
- CITY: Eaven Moore
- Submitter: Christopher Osborne
-
- Eaven Moore was created with the FUND cheat, which I hope doesn't disqualify
- it. I used all the money to plan the WHOLE city form the ground up, which I
- found to be more difficult than it sounds. The overall aim of Eaven Moore was
- to use the fund money to design a city that was both beautiful conceptually,
- and a nice place to live.
-
- The main feature of the city is the canal that stretches for one side of the
- city to the other. In the middle of the map, the canal splits in two to
- surround an island that forms the heart of the main commercial district and
- the heart of the city itself. At the very centre of the map, on an artificial
- raised hill, is the Eaven Moore Space Needle (aka a Llama Dome). This cental
- area also feature some exclusive water from appartment blocks and four marinas.
-
- Another dominant feature of the city plan is the "green belt". This is an
- almost complete ring of lanscaped open space to ensure all resident of Eaven
- more are close to openspace. Roads in the green belt pass through tunnels to
- ensure landscape in not spoilt by cars. The green belts feature lots of trees
- and water and four more marinas to take advantage of it.
-
- All the industry is located on the edge of the map to minimise the effects of
- pollution, and is separated from adjacent residential areas by a barrier of
- trees.In addition to the main central commercial district, there are fore more
- "suburban" commercial districts surrounded by low density housing.
-
- Many of the services are grouped together to simulate the large institution
- that befit a great city such as Eaven Moore. There is a university made up
- from four colleges, a general hospital made up form 10 individual hospitals.
- The cities water is provided by two large water works at the north and south
- ends of the canal. Large air and seaports are also provided.
-
- Close attention has been paid to making the city an good place to live. Crime
- is low, an extenisive bus system has been provided to keep traffic down,
- schools, libraries and museums are well provided for, and, iaddition to the
- lanscaped green belts, there are plenty of parks.
-
- Although the use of the fund cheat has brought in lot of money (the -1533% has
- now been paid back however), a tax rate has been set that still brings in a
- small ammount of money each year, just to show that this city could survive
- financially
-
-
-