Classic Games for OS/2 Warp/Classic Games for OS2 Warp (1995)(IBM).iso/simcity/manual.txt

Text File | 1995-07-12 | 105KB | 2,120 lines

Introduction to SimCity for OS/2


Foreword

Enter SimCity and take control.  Be the undisputed ruler of a sophisticated
real-time City Simulation.  Become the master of existing cities such as San
Francisco, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro, or create your own dream city (or
nightmare slum) from the ground up.  Whether you take over an existing city
or build your own, you are the Mayor and City Planner with complete
authority.

Your city is populated by Sims - Simulated Citizens.  Like their human
counterparts, they build houses, condos, churches, stores and factories.
And, also like humans, they complain about things like taxes, mayors, taxes,
city planners, and taxes.  If they g et unhappy, they move out; you collect
fewer taxes, the city deteriorates.

The next few sections will explain the overall concept of SimCity and give
information that will help you win Scenarios and design and build better
cities.


About System Simulations

SimCity is the first of a new type of entertainment/educational software,
called System Simulations.  We provide you with a set of Rules and Tools that
describe, create and control a system.  In the case of SimCity the system is
a city.

The challenge of playing a System Simulation game is to figure out how the
system works and take control of it.  As master of the system, you are free
to use the Tools to create and control an unlimited number of systems (in
this case, cities) within the f ramework and limits provided by the Rules.


Rules

In SimCity, the Rules to learn are based on city planning and management,
including:  * Human Factors

Residential space and amenities, availability of jobs, and quality of life.
* Economic Factors

Land value, industrial and commercial space, unemployment, internal and
external markets, electric power, taxation, and funding for city services.  *
Survival Factors

Strategies for dealing with disasters, crime, and pollution.  * Political
Factors

Public opinion, zoning, and keeping residents and businesses satisfied with
your city and your performance.


Tools

The Tools provide you with the ability to plan, lay out, zone, build,
bulldoze, re-zone, and manage a city.


Plan Mapping systems give physical and demographic overviews of the entire
city.


Layout Design living and working areas, road and transit systems, and
recreational areas.


Zone Set zoning boundaries for parks, residential, commercial and industrial
areas.


Build Place roads, rails, airports, seaports, fire and police stations,
sports stadiums, and power plants.


Bulldoze Clear forests for city growth, build landfill along waterways, clear
and re-zone developed areas.


Manage

Using the mapping and graphing systems, gather up-to-date information on
traffic density, population trends, power grid status, pollution, crime, land
value, police and fire department efficiency, and cash flow.  Set the tax
rate and funding levels for cit y services.

But the most important Tool of all is the Simulator itself.  Test your plans
and ideas as you watch the city grow or shrink through the immigration and
emigration of industrious Simulated Citizens.  Sims will move in and build
homes, hospitals, churches, st ores and factories in the zones you provide,
or move out in search of jobs or a better life elsewhere.  The success of the
city is based on the quality of the city you design and manage.


Simulator Reaction Time

The simulator is a very complex multi-tasking piece of software.  It is
constantly performing many checks, calculations, and updates, as well as
keeping watch on the mouse and keyboard to respond to your demands.  When you
load in a city, give the simulator some time to compile its data and update
the maps, graphs, population levels, etc.  Some of the other times when the
simulator lags behind you are when powering zones and updating the city
services map after installing police and fire stations.


The Goals of SimCity

There are many goals to be pursued and reached in SimCity.


Scenarios

Each of the eight included scenarios is actually a game in itself, with an
unlimited number of ways to win - or lose.  Each Scenario is a city which is
either the victim of horrible planning or about to be the victim of a natural
disaster.

After you load in a Scenario, you will have a limited amount of time to
correct or repair the problems.  If you are successful, you will be given the
key to the city.  If not, you may be ridden out of town on a rail.  If one
strategy doesn't work, try another.  There are a million stories in each
city, and you write them.


Your Dream City

Perhaps the main goal of SimCity is for you to design, manage and maintain
the city of your dreams.  Your ideal place to live may be a bustling
megalopolis, lots of people, lots of cars, tall buildings:  high-energy, high
density living.  Or it may be a small rural community, or a linked group of
small communities providing slow-paced country living.  As long as your city
can provide places for people to live, work, shop and play, it will attract
residents.  And as long as traffic, pollution, overcrowding, crime or taxes
don't drive them away, your city will live.


Getting Started



SimCity Features

On-Line Help You can get help on the SimCity user interface, by pointing the
mouse at anything mysterious and pressing the "Help" key.  The Help window
will pop up, giving instructions and useful hints on how to use the controls.

HyperLook Help Window

Multiple Views It's possible to display several animated views of the city on
the screen at once.  You can even zoom in and out, to magnify or shrink the
graphics!  The animation is slower when a view is scaled, but you can still
scroll around and edit your city as usual, at any size.

Animated City Views Open Look HyperLook is integrated with The NeWS Toolkit
(TNT), to implement the Open Look user interface.  SimCity uses Open Look
buttons, menus, sliders, settings, text and numeric fields.  They help to
make the interface familiar and easy to use.



Starting Up SimCity

To start up SimCity, go to the SimCity directory and <type> Simcity.


The Introduction Screen Once SimCity is loaded, the Introduction Screen will
go away and be replaced by a Welcome Notice, and a Startup Window with a
bunch of buttons for cities and scenarios.


The Welcome Notice


The Startup Window In case you wonder about any of the buttons or graphics,
you can get help on anything by pointing at it and pressing the "Help" key.

Generating a New City Now click the left mouse button on the "New City"
button.  The Welcome Notice will turn into a control panel for setting up a
New City, and the Startup Screen will turn into a Terrain Generator with a
map and some buttons.


The Terrain Generator

City Name You can set the name of your city by clicking the left button on
the "City Name" text field, and typing the name.  The delete key erases the
last character, and Control-U erases to the beginning of the line.  You can
double or triple click on the name to se lect it, and it will be deleted when
you type a new name.

Game Level The three exclusive settings let you select the Game Level.
Choose "Easy" for now, by clicking the left mouse button.  If you're just
starting out, you can certainly use the extra money!

Generate New Terrain If you're not satisfied with the terrain map you see,
just press "Generate New Terrain", and you will get a new map.You can do this
as many times as you like, until you get a nice map.


Randomly Generated Terrain Maps

Use This Map When you are happy with the terrain map, press the "Use This
Map" button, and the game will begin!

You're now playing SimCity!  The Edit Window, which is the main window used
for controlling SimCity, will be displayed:


The Edit Window

The Edit Window is where you will do the actual building and zoning.  In the
middle of the Edit Window is a detailed map showing part of the terrain.
Around the edges are controls and fields displaying information about the
city.  Along the top edge of the window is the City Name, where the name of
your city or the scenario you selected is displayed.  Clicking on it brings
the window to the front.

In the upper left corner is a picture of the City Simulator, from Maxis.  If
you click on that, the Introduction Screen will be displayed to show the
credits, version, and copyrights.  Click on the Introduction Screen to
dismiss it.

On the left edge, below the City Simulator, is a Close Box.  Clicking the
left button on the Close Box closes the Edit Window into a small icon, a
miniature version of the window.  Thanks to the way HyperLook is designed,
when a window is iconified, it cont inues to animate.  You can double click
on an icon to open it back up to a full sized window.

There is a row of Menu Buttons below the title, to the right of the Close
Box.  Pressing the right mouse button down over any of these buttons pops up
a menu, from which you can select using the right mouse button.  Clicking the
left mouse button over a Men u Button selects the menu's default item,
without displaying the menu.  The default menu item has a black ring or
rectangle around it.  You can set the default by pressing the Control key
when the menu is up.

There are three fields below the Menu Buttons, that display your Current
Funds (in dollars), the Current Date (the year and month), and important
Messages (one at a time).  Clicking on them just brings the window to the
front.

Along the left edge of the window are two columns of colorful Tool Icons,
used for choosing the city editing mode.  Click the mouse over an icon to
select an editing tool.  The currently selected tool is highlighted in
yellow.  The Tool Cost field along the bottom edge of the window tells you
the name of the selected tool, and how many dollars it costs to use.

You can use the selected tool by pressing the left mouse button over the map
in the middle of the Edit Window.  Also, you can pop up a Pie Menu to quickly
switch between editing tools, by clicking the right mouse button over the
map.  You can easily scroll the map by pressing the middle mouse button down
over the map and dragging the view around.

The Demand Indicator shows the demand levels for Residential (green),
Commercial (blue), and Industrial zones (yellow), and can be helpful in
planning your city.

The main portion of the map is land.  Your available land is made up of three
types of terrain.  The brown areas are Clear Land, the green areas are
forests and Trees, and the blue areas are Water.  You can build only on Clear
Land.  You can clear forest and extend coastlines with your bulldozer.  You
can run roads, rails, and power lines straight across the Water.


The Map Window

The other window that's shown when you start the game is the Map Window,
which displays an overview of your entire city map.  You can see different
demographic views of the city, chosen by the icons on the left.  The type of
map is shown along the top edge of the window, to the right of the Close
Box.There is a yellow rectangle in the Map Window that shows the location of
the detailed city view.  (There may be more than one yellow rectangles, if
multiple views are visible.)  Press the mouse button down over t he yellow
rectangle, and drag it around the map, to scroll the view.


Building a City

To begin a city, we need:  places for Sims to live, places for Sims to work,
and power.  You can only build on Clear Land, so use the Bulldozer to clear
away some trees.  Click the left mouse button on the Bulldozer Icon.  Move
the cursor over to land.  It now points to a small square, outlining the area
that will be bulldozed when you click the left button.  The Trees under your
pointer are now Clear Land.  Now, hold the left button down and drag the
pointer across the Trees.  Mass destruction.  Clear a large area of land to
prepare for building.

Click the Residential Icon, then move back to your terrain.  Your cursor will
now point to a large square outline.  This outline indicates how much clear
space you will need to create a Residential Zone - a place for Sims to live.
Clicking the left mouse button in Clear Land will "zone" that area.  The "R"
in the zone center indicates that it is a Residential Zone.  The flashing
lightning symbol means that the zone has no power.  Place a few more
Residential Zones next to the first one.


Several New Residential Zones

Now decide where to position a Power Plant in your city.  Point to the Power
Plant Icon, and press and hold the left mouse button.  A menu will appear,
giving you the option of choosing a Coal or Nuclear plant.  For now, release
the button over "Coal".  The outline for a Power Plant is even larger than
for a Residential Zone.  Place the Power Plant in some open space near your
Residential Zones.  If your Power Plant is not directly adjacent to a
Residential Zone, you'll need to run a Power Line from your Power Plant to
the Residential Zones.

To do this, click the left mouse button over the Power Line Icon.  By
pointing your cursor and pressing the button, lay Power Lines from your Power
Plant to your Residential Zones.  Adjacent Power Line sections will
automatically connect to each other.  Road and Rail lines connect in the same
manner.

In a moment, the flashing symbols in the Residential Zones will disappear,
indicating that your zones have been powered.  Any zones that are adjacent to
a powered zone do not need separate Power Lines run to them.  Soon you will
see small houses start to appear.  The Sims have started to move in!


Here Comes the Neighborhood!  Once there are a few Residential Zones, where
Sims can live, you need to make it possible for your new residents to find
jobs.  They can't all work at the power plant!


Residential, Commercial, and Industrial Zones

Now you're ready for Commercial and Industrial areas; places for Sims to
work, shop, and transact business.  Select the Commercial Icon and place a
few Commercial Zones near your Residential ones.  Then select the Industrial
Icon and place some Industrial Zones.  Connect all necessary Power Lines.

Notice that as you select different Tool Icons, the icon's description and
its associated cost will be displayed in the Tool Cost field near the lower
left corner of the Edit Window.  The Current Funds field near the top of the
window displays your total funds available.

Now click the left button on the Road Icon and add Roads from your
Residential housing to the Commercial and Industrial areas to allow the Sims
to commute to work.  Road sections connect themselves like Power Line
sections.  Once you have Roads, traffic will be generated.


Roads with Traffic

Now move the cursor to the Menu Button labelled "Windows", and press the
right mouse button down.  The Windows Menu will pop up below the cursor.
Drag the cursor to the menu item labelled "Budget", and release the right
button.  This brings up the Budget Window, which lets you set the level of
funding for your fire, police, and transportation departments.


The Budget Window

Click the left mouse button on the up and down arrows, or drag the sliders to
change the funding levels.  You can also adjust the current tax rate.  If you
have no police or fire departments, you can't fund them.  You cannot fund
more than 100%.  Since your city is so new, you can't do much here now, but
come back later.  Click the left mouse button on the "Go With These Figures"
button to make the window go away when you're done.  If the hour glass runs
out, the window will go away automatically.  You can click on the hourglass
to keep that from happening.Now look at the Map Window.  You can get an idea
of the size of your city, and how much room you have left.  Try the different
map views by clicking the left mouse button on the icons along the left edge
of the Map Window.  You will need this information to build and adjust
conditions in your city.  For example, you can pinpoint the areas with the
highest crime to determine locations for new police stations.


The Map Window

Additional information can be gained through the available Graphs.  Unlike
the Maps, which only show the current state of your city, the Graphs give you
a record of the past so you can gauge trends and cycles.  You can display the
Graph Window by selecting the item labelled "Graph" from the Window Menu.


The Graph Window

You can toggle the various graph displays on and off, and switch between 10
year and 120 year graphs, by clicking on the icons at the left of the Graph
Window.  Another way to gather information about your city is by using the
Query Tool.  To use this, select the Tool Icon with the magnifying glass and
question mark, or hold down the "Q" key, then press the left mouse button
over the map in the Edit Window.  You will be shown a window filled with
information about the zone under the cursor.


The Zone Status Window

Now, let's Save the city to disk.  Use the File Menu to select "Save City
as...".  You'll see the Save File dialog.  Near the top of the window is a
text field labelled "File:".  You can select a directory by typing its name
into the text field, or by double clicking in the scrolling list.  Then you
can type in a name for your city, ending with the ".city" extension, and
press return.  Your city will be saved to disk, so you can load it later to
get back to where you are now.


Save File Dialog

To load a city, use the File Menu and select the item labelled "Load
City...".  The Open File dialog looks and works almost like the Save File
dialog.  It will start out in a directory named "Cities", which contains some
interesting cities included with SimCity.  You can load and play any of them,
or navigate to the directory where you saved your city, and load that again.


Open File Dialog

This is all the basic information you need to run SimCity, but we suggest
reading on.  The User Reference section explains in detail how to use each
program function.  Inside SimCity explains the inner workings of the
simulator, and gives some brief hints and tips for using it.  There is also
an essay on The History of Cities and City Planning, and a Bibliography for
serious City Planners.

Have Fun Playing SimCity!



USER REFERENCE

Controlling SimCity

Managing Windows

A big part of controlling SimCity is controlling its windows.  You can select
which windows are displayed.  Windows can be moved around the screen.  They
can be brought to the front, hidden, or closed into small icons.


The Close Box Menu

To move a SimCity window around, just press the mouse button down on its Drag
Edge, the thick beveled border, and drag the outline to where you want it.
When you release the button, the window will move there.  Some windows can be
resized, by pressing the mouse button down on the Resize Corner, and dragging
the outline to where you want it.  The opposite corner will stay in the same
place, and the window will stretch so the corner is where you've put it
(however, windows won't stretch smaller than their minimum size).  Click the
mouse button on a window's Drag Edge, Resize Corner, or its title, to bring
it to the top.

The windows have a Close Box in the upper or lower right corner, that you can
click the left mouse button on to close the window to an icon or hide it.
Press the right mouse button down over the Close Box to pop up a Close Box
Menu of window management functions, described below.  Clicking the left
mouse button on the Close Box actually selects the menu's Default Item, which
is "Close" or "Hide" as appropriate.  You can press the "Front" key to bring
the window under the cursor to the front, or to push it to the back if it's
already in front.  The "Open" key closes a window to an icon or opens an icon
to a window.  Double clicking on an icon also opens it.


Getting Help

If you wonder about a control or graphic in SimCity, you can point at it with
the cursor, and press the "Help" key, to bring up a help window describing
it.


Using the Mouse

In SimCity, you will primarily use the left mouse button.  The main function
of the right mouse button is to select from menus.  The middle button is used
to scroll the view in the Edit Window.  But in most places, the right and
middle buttons do the same thing as the left button.

Clicking a mouse button means to press and release it without moving.
Dragging means to press and hold the button, move the mouse, then release.


Open Look Menus

To bring up an Open Look menu, press and hold the right mouse button down
over a menu button.  (Or click the right button without moving.)  Drag over
to the menu item you want to select, then release the button (or click it
again).

When an Open Look menu is popped up, you can set the Default Item to the
currently highlighted item, by pressing and releasing the Control key.  The
default item is has a black ring or a rectangle around it.  Pressing the left
mouse button on a Menu Button will select the associated menu's Default Item,
without popping up the menu.  You can pin an Open Look menu by selecting its
push-pin.  It will stay on the screen, and you can use it without it popping
down.  You can move a pinned menu around by dragging its border with the left
button.  To get rid of a pinned menu, just click on the push-pin.


Options Menu

The Options Menu contains nonexclusive settings, any of which you may toggle
on or off by selecting.  * Auto Budget - Keeps your budget at the same level
(or fully funded) without asking for approval every year.  If there isn't
enough money to meet the budget, then funds will be allocated first to the
Transit system, then to the Fire Department, then to the Police.  If your
city runs out of money, the budget window comes up at the end of the year
anyway, and Auto Budget is turned off.  * Auto Goto - Automatically brings up
the Surveyor Window, showing another view of the scene of disasters and
events.


The Surveyor Window

* Auto Bulldoze - Allows you to place zones, roadways, etc., directly on top
of trees, shoreline, power lines, and rubble, without manually bulldozing
first.  You will be charged the same amount as for manual bulldozing.  *
Disasters - Enables or disables random disasters.  If disasters are disabled,
you can still select them manually from the Disasters Menu.  * Sound -
Toggles the city sounds on and off.  Preserves the sanity and good will of
those who have to work in the same room.


Disasters Menu

The Disasters Menu allows you to set natural (and unnatural) disasters loose
on your city.  Use these disasters to test your ability to deal with
emergencies in your city or just to release some aggression.  More
information on disasters, their causes, and dealing with them is presented
later.  * Monster - Sets a monster loose on your city.  * Fire - Starts a
fire somewhere on the map.  * Flood - Causes a flood to occur near the water.
* Air Crash - Causes a plane to crash.  If there are no planes in the air,
one will be generated.  * Tornado - Causes a tornado to appear somewhere on
the map.  * Earthquake - Causes a MAJOR earthquake.  * Meltdown - If there's
a nuclear power plant, this spills Irn-Bru in the control room, causing a
meltdown.


Time Menu

The Time Menu contains exclusive settings that control the speed that time
passes in the simulation.  The faster time passes, the less frequently the
screen updates.  * Pause - Stops the passage of time entirely.  * Slow -
Months pass slowly, with smooth animation.  * Medium - Months pass by, with
smooth animation.  * Fast - Months pass fast, with smooth animation.  *
Faster - Months pass faster, and animation updates every other pass through
the simulator.


Windows Menu

The Windows Menu opens up the various SimCity windows, bringing them to the
front.  * Budget - Open the Budget Window.  The simulation is paused as long
as the budget window is open.  * Evaluation - Open the Evaluation Window.  *
Graph - Open the Graph Window.  * Map - Opens the Map Window.  * Editor -
Opens the Edit Window.


The Edit Window

This is where all actual zoning and building takes place.


Terrain There are three types of terrain in the Edit Window:  Open Land,
Trees, and Water.

Open Land is where you can zone and build.  It is shown as brown with dark
brown speckles.

Trees and Forests are shown as green, with dark green speckles.  You cannot
zone or build on trees.  You may bulldoze trees and forests to turn them into
clear land.  While some bulldozing is necessary, clearing away too much green
area will result in lower property values.

Water is shown as blue, with dark blue speckles.  You cannot zone or build on
water.  You must bulldoze coastlines to create landfills before you can build
or zone there.


Edit Window Gadgets

The Edit Window is where you will do the actual building and zoning.  In the
middle of the Edit Window is a detailed map showing part of the terrain.
Around the edges are controls and fields displaying information about the
city.

There are three fields below the Menu Buttons, that display your Current
Funds (in dollars), the Current Date (the year and month), and important
Messages (one at a time).  Clicking on them just brings the window to the
front.  Along the left edge of the window are two columns of colorful Tool
Icons, used for choosing the city editing mode.  Click the mouse over an icon
to select an editing tool.  The currently selected tool is highlighted in
yellow.  The Tool Cost field along the bottom edge of the window tells you
the name of the selected tool, and how many dollars it costs to use.

You can use the selected tool by pressing the left mouse button over the map
in the middle of the Edit Window.  Also, you can pop up a Pie Menu to quickly
switch between editing tools, by clicking the right mouse button over the
map.  You can easily scroll the map by pressing the middle mouse button down
over the map and dragging the view around.

The Demand Indicator shows the demand levels for Residential (green),
Commercial (blue), and Industrial zones (yellow), and can be helpful in
planning your city.

The Zoom Control changes the magnification of the map.  You can zoom in or
out to make the graphics larger or smaller, or press the Zoom Reset button to
zoom back to normal.  The animation is fastest at the normal size.


Edit Window Icons

You can select an icon from the Tool Icon pallet to use a city editing tool.
When an icon is selected, a rectangle will accompany the cursor when it's
over the map, to indicate the area the tool will affect.


The Edit Tool Icons

Query shows the Zone Status Window, describing the population density, value,
crime rate, pollution, and growth rate of the zone under the cursor.  It
doesn't cost anything to use.


The Zone Status Window

Bulldozer clears trees and forests, creates landfill along the water, and
levels developed, existing zones and clears rubble caused by disasters.  The
Auto Bulldoze option works on natural terrain, power lines and rubble, but
not on zones, roads and rails.

It costs $1 for each square tile bulldozed.  Knocking down a 3x3 zone costs
$9 since it's made up of nine tiles.  You're automatically charged $1 for
each non-empty tile that you Auto Bulldoze.


Bulldozing Zones

Roads connect developed areas.  Intersections and turns are automatically
created.  Lay continuous roads by pressing the left mouse button and dragging
your cursor.  Be careful - if you accidentally lay a road in the wrong place
you will have to pay for bulldozing and rebuilding.

Roads may not be placed over zoned areas.  They may be placed over trees,
shrubbery, and shoreline only after bulldozing or activating the Auto
Bulldoze function from the Options Menu.  Roads can cross over power lines
and rails only at right angles.

Holding down the Control key while laying roads will constrain them to a
straight line.  Laying roads across water creates a bridge.  Bridges can only
be built in a straight line - no curves, turns or intersections.  Shorelines
must be bulldozed prior to building a bridge, unless the Auto Bulldoze
function from the Options Menu is active.

Roadways are maintained by the transit budget, and wear out if there is a
lack of funding.  The amount of yearly funding requested by the
transportation department is $1 for each section of road, $4 for each section
of bridge.

It costs $10 to lay one section of road and $50 to lay one section of bridge.


Roads and Bridges

Power Lines carry power from power plants to zoned land and between zones.
All developed land needs power to function.  Power is conducted through
adjacent zones.  Unpowered zones display the flashing lightning bolt symbol.
There is a delay between the time you connect power to a zone and when the
flashing symbol disappears.  The delay grows longer as the city grows larger.

Power lines cannot cross zoned land.  They can be built over trees,
shrubbery, and shoreline only after bulldozing, or activating the Auto
Bulldoze function from the Options Menu.  Junctions and corners are
automatically created.  Lay continuous power lines by pressing the left mouse
button down and dragging your cursor.  Power lines across water must be
horizontal or vertical - no turn, curves or intersections.  Power lines
consume some power due to transmission inefficiencies.

Holding down the Control key while laying power lines will constrain them to
a straight line.  It costs $5 to lay one section of power line on land, $25
on water.


Power Lines Connecting Zones

Transit Lines create a railway system for intra-city mass transit.  Place
tracks in heavy traffic areas to help alleviate congestion.  Intersections
and turns are created automatically.  Lay continuous transit lines by
pressing the left mouse button down and dragging with your cursor.  Tracks
laid under rivers will appear as dashed lines.  These are underwater tunnels,
and must be vertical or horizontal - no turns, curves or intersections.

Holding down the Control key while laying tracks will constrain them to a
straight line.  Transit lines are maintained by the transit budget.  The
level of funding affects the efficiency of the system.  The amount of yearly
funding requested by the transportation department is $4 for each section of
rail, and $10 for each section of tunnel.  It costs $20 per section of track
laid on land, $100 per section under water.  Train Tracks Provide Mass
Transit

Parks can be placed on clear land.  Parks, like forests and water, raise the
land value of surrounding zones.  Parks can be bulldozed as fire breaks or
reserve space for later mass transit expansion.  Holding down the Control key
while building parks will constrain them to a straight line.  It costs $10 to
zone one park.  Parks Improve the Quality of Life


Residential Zone Evolution

Residential Zones are where the Sims live, build houses, apartments and
community facilities like hospitals and churches.  Most residential zones
develop into one of four classes:  lower, middle, upper, and high.  They can
range in population density from single-family homes to high-rise apartments
and condominiums.  Some residential zones will automatically develop into
churches and hospitals.

Factors influencing residential value and growth are pollution, traffic
density, population density, surrounding terrain, roadway access, parks and
utilities.  It costs $100 to zone one plot of land as residential.


Commercial Zone Evolution

Commercial Zones are used for many things, including retail stores, office
buildings, parking garages and gas stations.  There are four values for
commercial property, and five levels of growth, from the small general store
to tall skyscrapers.  Factors influencing the value and growth of commercial
areas include internal markets, pollution, traffic density, residential
access, labor supply, airports, crime rates, transit access and utilities.
It costs $100 to zone one plot of land as commercial.


Industrial Zone Evolution

Industrial Zones are for heavy manufacturing and industrial services.  There
are four levels of industrial growth, from small pumping stations and
warehouses to large factories.  Factors influencing industrial growth are
external markets, seaports, transit access, residential access, labor supply
and utilities.  It costs $100 to zone one plot of land as industrial.


Police Station

Police Departments lower the crime rate in the surrounding area.  This in
turn raises property values.  Place these in high-density crime areas, as
defined by your Crime Rate Map.  The efficiency of a station depends on the
level of police department funding and transit access.  It costs $500 to
build a police station.  Full yearly maintenance of each Police Station is
$100.


Fire Station

Fire Departments make surrounding areas less susceptible to fires.  When
fires do occur, they are put out sooner and do less damage if a station is
near.  The effectiveness of fire containment depends on the level of fire
department funding and transit access.  It costs $500 to build a fire
station.  Full yearly maintenance of each fire station is $100.


Athletic Stadium

Stadiums encourage residential growth, once a city has become fairly large.
You may build a stadium in a smaller city without negative (or positive)
effect.  Stadiums indirectly generate a lot of revenue, but create a lot of
traffic.  Properly maintaining a stadium requires a good road and transit
network.  It costs $3000 to build a stadium.


Coal and Nuclear Power Plants

Power Plants can be Coal or Nuclear, chosen from a sub-menu provided when you
press the left mouse button over the power plant icon.  The nuclear plant is
more powerful but carries a slight risk of meltdown.  The coal plant is less
expensive, but less powerful and it pollutes.  All zoned land needs power to
develop and grow.  When developed land loses power, it will degenerate to an
undeveloped zone unless power is restored.  Connecting too many zones to a
power plant causes brownouts.Coal power plants cost $3000 to build, and
supply enough energy for about 50 zones.  Nuclear power plants cost $5000 and
supply electricity for about 150 zones.


A Seaport and a Ship

Seaports increase the potential for industrial growth.  They have little
effect in a small city, but contribute a lot to industrialization in a large
city.  Seaports should be placed on a shoreline.  The shoreline must be
bulldozed prior to zoning a Seaport, unless Auto Bulldoze is active.  Once
the port is operational you may see ships in the water.It costs $5000 to zone
land for use as a seaport.


An Airport

Airports increase the growth potential of your commercial markets.  Once a
city starts getting large, commercial growth will level off without an
airport.  Airports are large and expensive and should not be built unless
your city can afford one.  Position airports to keep flight paths over water
whenever possible, lessening the impact of air disasters.  Once you build an
airport you will see planes flying above your city to and from the airport.
There is also a traffic helicopter that alerts you to heavy traffic areas.
It costs $10,000 to zone land for use as an airport.


The Budget Window

When your first taxes are collected in a new city, and each year after, the
Budget Window will appear (unless you select the Auto Budget option).  You
will be asked to set the funding levels for the fire, police, and
transportation departments, and to set the property tax rate.

The Budget Window can be opened from the Windows Menu.  When Auto Budget is
active, all the funding levels will remain at full funding, or your last
setting.  If there is not enough money to completely fund the budget, money
will go first to the Transit Department, then the Fire Department, then the
Police Department.


An Open Look Numeric Field and Slider

You can raise and lower budget levels by clicking on the little arrows or
dragging the sliders that correspond to each category.  A numeric field will
display the level of funding that will be maintained if you turn on the Auto
Budget function.  You may also adjust your tax rate by clicking on the arrows
or dragging the slider next to the tax rate indicator.  Press the button
labeled "Go With These Figures" to make the Budget Window disappear.When the
Budget Window opens up, the hour glass in the upper right corner starts
running.  When it runs out, the Budget Window automatically goes with the
currently selected figures and disappears.  You can click on the hour glass
to make it go away, and the Budget Window will stay up for as long as you
like.


Tax Rate

The maximum tax rate you can set is 20%.  The minimum tax rate you can set is
0%.  The optimum tax rate for fast growth is between 5% and 7%.  To slow city
growth without actually shrinking, set the tax rate to 8% or 9%.  The tax
collected from each zone is based on the following formula:  The scaling
constant changes with the difficulty level of the game.


Funding Levels

The amount of yearly funding requested for the fire and police departments is
$100 per station that you have placed.  Until you actually build fire or
police stations, you cannot fund them.  You cannot allocate more than 100% of
the requested funding for fire and police departments.  SimCity police
officers and fire inspectors are honest and will not accept your bribes.
Allocating less than the requested amount will decrease the effective
coverage of the police or fire stations.  The amount of yearly funding
requested for the transportation department is $1 for each section of road,
$4 for each section of bridge (roads over water), $4 for each section of
rail, and $10 for each section of tunnel (underwater rails).  You cannot
allocate more than 100% of the requested funds.


Transportation maintenance funding slightly below 100% will cause slow, minor
deterioration of the transit system - an occasional pothole or bad track
section.  Funding between 90% and 75% will cause noticeable damage - many
sections of road and rail will be unusable.  Funding below 75% will cause
rapid deterioration of your transit system.


Cash Flow

The cash flow is calculated as follows:  It will be a negative number if your
yearly maintenance costs are greater than your yearly tax intake.A major
difference between SimCity and a real city is that SimCity does not allow
budget deficits.  If you don't have the money, you can't spend it.  Try not
to let your city run with a negative cash flow.


The Map Window

The Map Window shows the entire area of your city.  It has a pallet of icons
down the left edge, for selecting between different map types.  The maps show
demographic information to help you comprehend the state of your city.You can
select between various views by pressing the left mouse button over any of
the icons.  Some of the icons have submenus, that pop up when you hold the
button down, so you can select different aspects of the view.

One or more yellow rectangular outlines overlay the map, showing the location
of the Edit Window and Surveyor Window views of the city.  You can drag the
rectangles around the map to pan the other views.  You can also "throw" the
view, by dragging with the left mouse button, and releasing the button while
moving the mouse.  The view keeps on panning and bounces off the edges of the
map!  Click on a moving rectangle to make it sit still, or on the map to stop
all the bouncing rectangles.  Use the middle button to avoid such behavior.


Using the Maps

The Map Window should be constantly referred to in all stages of city
planning, building and managing.

Before you build, use the map before beginning a new city to plan:  * Where
you want your city center.  * Where you want the high-class waterfront
residential areas.  * Where you will cross water with bridges, power lines
and tunnels.  * Where to place power plants.  * Where to place large
industrial sections away from the residential sections.  * The general layout
of your city.

Printing the map and sketching in your plan with pencil or pen can save a lot
of bulldozing and re-zoning and rebuilding.

During city growth:  * Use the map to guide your city's growth around forest
areas, to preserve the trees and improve property values.  * Use the
Transportation Map along with the Traffic Density map to plan traffic control
and expansion.  * Use the City Form Maps to make sure you have the proper
ratio of residential to commercial to industrial zones.  * Use the Pollution
Map to detect problem areas, and disperse the industrial zones and/or replace
roads with rails.  * Printing out the map in various stages of development
and doing some preliminary expansion planning with pencil can be useful.
Printouts can also be used for city historical records.

During city maintenance:  * Use the Power Grid Map to locate zones that have
lost power.  * Use the City Services Maps to evaluate the effective coverage
of your police and fire departments.  * Use the Crime Rate Map to locate
problem areas that need more police protection.  * Use the Pollution Map to
locate problem areas.  * Use the Transportation and Traffic Density Maps to
determine where to replace roads with rails.  * Use the Land Value Map to
locate depressed areas for improvement or replacement.  * Use the City Form
Maps to maintain the proper ratio of residential to commercial to industrial
zones.


Graph Window

The Graph Window gives you time-based graphs of various city data.  It can be
opened through the Windows Menu.Unlike the maps, which only show the current
state of your city, the Graphs give you a record of the past so you can gauge
trends and cycles.

You may view graphs for time periods of either the last 10 years or the last
120 years by clicking on the "10 YRS."  or "120 YRS."  button.

10 and 120 Year Graph Windows * The Residential Population Graph shows the
total population in residential zones.  * The Commercial Population Graph
shows the total population in commercial zones.  * The Industrial Population
Graph shows the total population in industrial zones.  * The Cash Flow Graph
shows your city's cash flow:  money collected in taxes minus money it took to
maintain your city.  The center of the Cash Flow Graph represents a cash flow
of zero.  Do not build more infrastructure (roads, rails, police departments,
fire stations) than you can support with tax revenues.  * The Crime Rate
Graph shows the overall crime rate of the entire city.  * The Pollution Graph
shows the overall average pollution reading of the entire city.


Using the Graphs

The Graphs give information on many of the same factors as the maps, but show
the information over time.  Graphs are for locating trends in city life that
won't be noticeable in a map.  If you look at a map, for example the Crime
Rate Map, a very slight rise in the crime rate will not be noticeable.  But
on the Crime Rate Graph, you would easily locate the upward trend in crime
because you will be viewing the levels for a number of years at the same
time.

Residential, commercial and industrial population growth and/or decline can
be tracked and displayed.  If you notice a downward trend in any of these,
refer to the User Reference Card to locate potential problems and solutions.
Use the Cash Flow Graph to track your city's efficiency as it grows.  If your
maintenance costs are higher than your tax revenues, you will have a negative
cash flow.

The Crime Rate Graph can be displayed, revealing slight but consistent upward
or downward trends.  Use the Pollution Graph to catch rising levels of
pollution before they reach a problem level.


Evaluation Window

The Evaluation Window gives you a performance rating.  You can access it
through the Windows Menu.  Public Opinion is presented in poll form, rating
your overall job as Mayor and listing what the public regards as the city's
most pressing problems.  You are advised to keep your residents happy or they
might migrate away, and you will be left with a "ghost town."

In general, if more than 55% of the populace thinks you are doing a good job,
then you can feel secure of keeping your job.

If 10% or less of the people think something is a problem, then it's not too
bad.  These are most of the problems that citizens complain about, and how to
correct them:  * Traffic - Replace dense sections of roads with rails.  *
Crime - Add police stations and/or raise property values.  * Pollution -
Replace roads with rails, disperse industrial zones.  * Housing - Zone more
residences.  * Housing Costs - Zone more residences in low property value
areas.  * Fires - Build more fire departments.  * Taxes - Lower taxes (if you
can).  Or lie through your lips.  * Unemployment - Zone more commercial and
industrial areas.

Statistics on Population, Net Migration, and Assessed Value are displayed,
along with the city's Game Level and the Overall City Score.  This data is
calculated once a year at budget time.

Population is the number of residents in your city.  The Net Migration
statistic provides a rating of the desirability of your city.  If people are
leaving in droves, then you know something is rotten in SimCity.

The Assessed Value is the combined value of all city-owned property:  roads,
rails, power plants, police and fire stations, airports, seaports, parks,
etc.  It does not include residential, commercial and industrial zones.  The
Categories are defined by population as follows:  * Village 0 to 1,999 * Town
2,000 to 9,999 * City 10,000 to 49,999 * Capital 50,000 to 99,999 *
Metropolis 100,000 to 499,999 * Megalopolis 500,000 and above Overall City
Score is a composite score based on the following factors (some positive,
some negative):  *Major Factors Crime, pollution, housing costs, taxes,
traffic, unemployment, fire protection, unpowered zones, city growth rate.  *
Minor Factors

Stadium needed (but not built), seaport needed (but not built), airport
needed (but not built), road funding, police funding, fire department
funding, and fires.

A large population is not necessarily a sign of a successful city.
Population size does not affect the overall city score, since low population
could indicate a new or growing city.  Since city growth rate does affect the
overall city score, a city in which growth has been intentionally stopped for
environmental or aesthetic reasons will have a slightly lower score.


Game Level

When you first start a new city, you must pick a Game Level.  Once a city is
started, you cannot change the Game Level; it remains at your initial setting
for the life of the city.  The current Game Level is displayed in the
evaluation window.This level - Easy, Medium, or Hard - adjusts the simulation
to your current abilities by altering several factors.  A harder setting will
increase the chance of disasters, make residents more intolerant of taxation,
cause maintenance costs to grow, etc.


Disasters

Disasters will randomly occur as you play SimCity.  At higher game levels the
disasters will happen more often.  Most disasters can be activated from the
Disasters Menu.  Random disasters can be eliminated by turing off the
Disasters setting of the Options Menu.


Shipwreck

Shipwrecks can occur once you have an operating seaport.  They can cause
fires where the ship crashes into a shore or bridge.  Shipwrecks are not
available on the Disasters Menu.


Monster Attack

Monster Attacks are provoked by high levels of pollution.  A monster destroys
everything in its path, starts fires, and causes planes, helicopters, trains,
and ships to crash.


Fire

Fires can start anywhere in the city.  Fires spread fairly rapidly through
forests and buildings, somewhat slower over roadways.  Fire will not cross
water or clear land.

The effectiveness of the fire department (which can be viewed in the Map
Window) is based on how close it is to the fire, its funding level, and its
transit access.  Fires inside this effective radius will be extinguished
automatically.  If you have no operational fire departments in the area you
can try to control the fire yourself.  Since fire will not spread across
clear terrain, you can build fire breaks with the bulldozer.  Just surround
the fire with clear areas and it will stop spreading and eventually burn
itself out.  You cannot directly bulldoze a fire.


Flood

Flooding occurs near the water.  Floods gradually spread and destroy
buildings and utilities.  After a while the flood waters recede, leaving
behind cleared terrain.


Air Crash

Air Crashes can happen anywhere in the city if an airport is operational.
This happens whenever aircraft collide with things, such as tornados or
another aircraft.  When a crash occurs, a fire will start, unless the crash
is on water.  A good strategy is to locate the airport away from the central
city to minimize the fire damage.


Tornado

Tornados can occur anywhere on the map at any time.  Very fast and
unpredictable, they can appear and disappear at a moment's notice.  Tornados
destroy everything in their path, and can cause planes, helicopters, trains,
and ships to crash.


Earthquake

Earthquakes are the most devastating disaster.  This is a Major earthquake -
between 8.0 and 9.0 on the Richter Scale.  It will destroy buildings and
start fires.  The initial damage will vary with the severity of the
earthquake, and the eventual fire damage depends on your fire-control
efforts.  When an Earthquake occurs, the Edit Window will shake for a while.
When it stops you will have to take charge and control the scattered fires.
Use the bulldozer to contain the largest fires first and work your way down
to the smaller ones.


Meltdown

Meltdowns are only possible if you are using a nuclear power plant.  If a
meltdown occurs, your nuclear plant will explode into flames.  The
surrounding area will be unusable for the remainder of the simulation due to
radioactive contamination.


Scenarios

The Scenarios provide both real and hypothetical problems for you to deal
with in seven famous (and one not-so-famous) cities.  They present various
levels of difficulty.  Some problems are in the form of disasters which will
occur some time after you start.  Other problems are more long-term, such as
crime.

Your task is to deal with the problem at hand as well as possible under the
circumstances.  After a certain amount of time the city residents will rate
your performance in a special election.  If you do very well you may be given
the key to the city.  However, if you do poorly, they just might run you out
of town.


The Scenario Screen

Dullsville, USA 1900 - Boredom

Things haven't changed much around here in the last hundred years and the
residents are beginning to get bored.  They think Dullsville could be the
next great city with the right leader.  It is your job to attract new growth
and development, turning Dullsville into a Metropolis by the 21st century.  *
Difficulty:  Easy * Time Limit:  30 years * Win Condition:  Metropolis


San Francisco, CA 1906 - 8.0 Earthquake

Damage from the earthquake was minor compared to that of the ensuing fires,
which took days to control.  1500 people died.  Controlling the fires should
be your initial concern here.  Afterwards, clearing the remaining rubble will
allow the city to start rebuilding.  * Difficulty:  Very difficult * Time
Limit:  5 years * Win Condition:  Metropolis


Hamburg, Germany 1944 - Fire

Allied fire-bombing of German cities in WWII caused tremendous damage and
loss of life.  People living in the inner cities were at greatest risk.  You
must control the firestorms during the bombing and then rebuild the city
after the war.  * Difficulty:  Very difficult * Time Limit:  5 years * Win
Condition:  Metropolis


Bern, Switzerland 1965 - Traffic

The roads here are becoming more congested every day, and the residents are
upset.  They demand that you do something about it.  Some have suggested a
mass transit system as the answer, but this would require major rezoning in
the downtown area.  * Difficulty:  Easy * Time Limit:  10 years * Win
Condition:  Low Average Traffic Density


Tokyo, Japan 1957 - Monster Attack

A large reptilian creature has been spotted heading for Tokyo bay.  It seems
to be attracted to the heavy levels of industrial pollution there.  Try to
control the fires, then rebuild the industrial center.  * Difficulty:
Moderately difficult * Time Limit:  5 years * Win Condition:  City Score
above 500


Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 2047 - Flood

In the mid-21st century, the greenhouse effect raised global temperatures 6
degrees F. Polar ice caps melted and raised sea levels worldwide.  Coastal
areas were devastated by flood and erosion.  Unfortunately, some of the
largest cities in the world are located on the coast.
    Difficulty:    Moderately difficult     Time Limit:    10 years     Win Condition:    City
Score above 500


Boston, MA 2010 - Nuclear Meltdown

A major meltdown is about to occur at one of the new downtown nuclear
reactors.  The area in the vicinity of the reactor will be severely
contaminated by radiation, forcing you to restructure the city around it.
    Difficulty:    Very difficult     Time Limit:    5 years     Win Condition:    City Score
above 500


Detroit, MI 1927 - Crime

By 1970, competition from overseas and other economic factors pushed the once
"automobile capital of the world" into recession.  Plummeting land values and
unemployment then increased crime in the inner-city to chronic levels.  You
have just been elected after promising to reduce crime and rebuild the
industrial base of the city.      Difficulty:    Moderately difficult     Time
Limit:    10 years     Win Condition:    Low Average Crime Density


Growing a City

While growing a city, refer often to the User Reference Card.  It provides a
chart of City Dynamics; how all factors of city life and growth are related.

The main points to keep in mind while growing a city are:      * Grow slowly.
Watch your money.      * All zones must be powered to develop.      * Zones must be
developed to generate tax money.      * Roads or rails must provide access to
and from each zone for it to fully develop.      * There is a yearly maintenance
cost for each section of road, rail, bridge and tunnel.

This can add up.  Don't build too many roads and rails and generate high
maintenance costs before your city can generate enough tax revenues to
support them.      * Extra power plants and redundant power lines are expensive,
but can keep zones from losing power during a disaster or emergency and
deteriorating.      * Rails can carry much more traffic than roads.  While
building and zoning an area that you predict will generate heavy traffic,
install rails instead of roads in the early stages of development.      * If you
get a lot of heavy traffic warnings, replace roads with rails.  You can build
an entirely roadless city, even if you're not a train spotter!      * Grouping
zones together, four of five in a row touching each other, can eliminate a
lot of power line segments.      * Airports, seaports and stadiums won't help a
small city grow - so save your money until the city gets larger.

The Sims will tell you when they need these things.      * Place zones, roads,
etc.  carefully - they cannot be moved, and you will have to pay to bulldoze
them and rebuild.      * As a rule of thumb, the number of residential zones
should be approximately equal to the sum of commercial and industrial zones.
When your city is small, you will need more industrial zones than commercial,
and when your city gets larger, you will need more commercial zones than
industrial.      * Separate the residential areas from the industrial areas.      *
Proximity to forests, parks, and water increases land value, which increases
the taxes collected.  Don't bulldoze any more forest than you must.  Natural
shoreline increases property values more than landfill shoreline.      * Keep in
mind that proximity to downtown raises property values.  The simulator
defines the downtown areas as "the center of mass of the population density."
It calculates the average geographical center of the population.      * A
bigger, more populous city is not necessarily better.  Having a
self-supporting, profitable city with pleasant surroundings is better than a
huge city that is always broke and has no forest or shoreline.      * Use the
various maps and graphs to plan city growth, locate problems, and track your
progress.  Look for areas that need police and fire coverage as you go, so
you don't have to go back and bulldoze developed zones to make room for
police and fire stations.      * Save your city to disk before trying any major
new policy so you can go back if your plan doesn't work.      * Print out your
city in different stages of evolution to track and plan growth.      * Check the
Evaluation Window often.  The Sims will let you know how you are doing.  Also
the statistics can be useful; if your population is shrinking, don't go
zoning new areas that may never develop.  Look for problems in the existing
zoned areas, and spend your time and money solving them.      * Save your city
to disk often!!!


Inside The Simulator:

How the Simulator Works and Strategies for Using It


Many factors influence the chance of your city`s prospering or floundering:
both internal factors (the structure and efficiency of your city) and
external factors (the regional economy, disasters, etc.).


Zones

Your city is divided up into three primary zones:  residential, commercial
and industrial.  These zones symbolize the three basic pillars upon which a
city is based:  population, industry, and commerce.  All three are necessary
for your city to grow and thrive.      * Residential Zones are where the Sims
live.  Here they build houses, apartments and community facilities such as
churches and schools.  Sims are the work force for your city's commercial and
industrial zones.      * Industrial Zones are used to site warehouses,
factories, and other unsightly and polluting structures which have a negative
impact on surrounding zones.  One of the major goals of planning is to
separate these "nuisances" from the areas where people live.  In this
simulation, industrial zones represent the "basic" production of your city.
Things produced here are sold outside the city to an "external market,"
bringing money into the city for future growth.      * Commercial Zones
represent the retail stores and services in your city, including gas
stations, grocery stores, banks, and offices.  Commercial areas are mainly
dedicated to producing goods and services needed within your city.  This is
called "non-basic" production or production for the "internal market."


Population - Residential

The major factors controlling residential population are birthrate,
availability of jobs and housing, unemployment, and quality of life within
the city.  Birthrate as used here, is actually a combination of the birthrate
(positive) and the deathrate (negative).  Within SimCity there is always a
positive birthrate.  Availability of jobs (the employment rate) is a ratio of
the current commercial and industrial populations to the total residential
population.  As a rule of thumb, the number of commercial and industrial
zones together should roughly equal the number of r


Residential zones.

If there are more jobs in your city than residents, new settlers will be
attracted.  If the job market declines during a local recession, your people
will migrate away in search of jobs.  Housing for your residents is built in
the residential zones.  These zones must be powered and connected to the
places of employment by roads.  The structures built in residential zones are
influenced by land value and population density.  Quality of life is a
measure of relative "attractiveness" assigned to different zone locations.
It is affected by negative factors such as pollution and crime, and positive
factors such as parks and accessibility.


External Market - Industrial

There are thousands of variables that influence your city.  All these
variables can be influenced by your actions with the exception of one.  The
external market (the economic conditions that exist outside of your city) is
controlled by the simulation - there is nothing you can do to change it.  In
many ways, this external market is the original source of all city growth.
Towns frequently begin as production centers (steel towns, refineries, etc.)
that service a demand in the surrounding region.  As time passes, the
external market grows to reflect the regional growth going on around your
city.

The industry in your city will attempt to grow as the external market grows.
For this to happen there must be room for expansion (more industrial zones)
and an adequate labor supply (more residential zones).


Internal Market - Commercial

The internal market is completely influenced by the conditions within your
city.  Internal production, created in the commercial zones, represents all
the things which are purchased and consumed within the city.  Food stores,
gas stations, retail stores, financial services, medical care, etc.  - all
depend on a nearby population to service.  Within SimCity, the size of the
internal market determines the rate at which commercial zones will prosper.
Commercial zones need enough zoned land to build on and an existent,
sufficient work force to employ.  The structures built in commercial zones
are mainly influenced by land value and population density.

Commercial zones grow and develop to serve the expanding internal market.
Commercial growth will usually be slow at first, when the population is small
and needs very little.  As your city grows, commercial growth will accelerate
and the internal market will become a much larger consumer of your total city
production.  This accelerating effect, when the external/industrial
production is overtaken by the accelerating internal/commercial sector, can
turn a sleepy little town of 50,000 into a thriving capital of 200,000 in a
few short years.


Tax Rate

The tax rate you set controls the amount of income generated by your city.
As taxes are collected each year (simulation time), the Budget Window will
appear, giving you the fiscal details of your city and a chance to adjust
rates.  The simulation determines the amount of revenue collected by
assessing each zone an amount based on its land value, current level of
development and the current tax rate.

The tax rate has a global affect on your city's growth rate.  If you set it
low (0%-4%), growth will be brisk but the city income will be low.  If you
set it high (10%-20%), you will collect a lot in the short run but in the
long run tax income will decrease along with the population.  You must keep
tax income high enough to invest in new development, but low enough not to
scare off residents and businesses.  A high tax rate is one way to control
city growth, should you want to experiment with "growth control measures."


Budgeting

City budgeting affects the way your city grows.  City infrastructure cost is
represented by three departments:  police, fire, and transportation.  You may
set the funding levels separately for each.  All three departments will
request a certain level of funding each year.  You may supply all or part of
the requested funds, in the attempt to balance safety needs and budgetary
concerns.


Police Department

Police stations lower the crime rate around a territory.  The effective
radius of your police station is related to the amount of funding allocated
to the police department.  Police stations cost $100 per year to fund.


Fire Department

Fire stations prevent and extinguish fires.  The level of funding determines
the effective radius of a fire station.  Fire stations put out fires within
this radius much sooner than outside it, and decrease the chance that they
will start in the first place.  Fire stations cost $100 per year to fund.


Transportation Department

When you build roads and rail systems you are charged for construction and
yearly maintenance.  The larger your transportation network, the more it will
cost for upkeep.  If you decide not to or are unable to pay this maintenance
cost, roads will slowly deteriorate and become unusable.  The maintenance
cost for each piece is:  Road - $1, Bridge - $4, Rail - $4, Rail tunnel -
$10.


Power

Electrical power makes modern cities possible.  Efficient and reliable power
transmission to all zones is the goal of good "power management."

The entire power grid of your city is periodically checked in the simulation
for links to power.  If a zone is connected (by other zones or power lines)
to a power plant, the zone is considered powered.  Zones must be powered for
development to occur.  Many things (such as fires, tornadoes, earthquakes and
bulldozers) can knock down power lines and cause blackouts in parts of your
city.  Development will stop in unpowered zones, and if power is not quickly
restored, the zone will decline back to its original state of emptiness.

Redundant power plants and power connections can make your power grid more
reliable, but running more line adds construction costs.


Transportation - Traffic

One of the most important elements of city structure is the transportation
network.  It moves Sims and good throughout your city.  Roads typically
occupy as much as 25%-40% of the land in urban areas.  Traffic along these
roads indicates which sections of your road system are used the most.

Traffic levels are simulated by a process known as "Trip Generation."  Over
time, each populated zone in the city will generate a number of trips,
depending on the population.  Each generated trip starts at the origin zone,
travels down the road, and if a "proper destination" is reached, ends at the
destination zone - otherwise, the trip fails.  Trip failure indicates
inaccessibility of a zone and limits its growth.

The majority of generated trips represent people commuting to and from work.
Additional traffic is generated by residents traveling to shopping,
recreation, etc.  When analyzing traffic, the simulator tests the following
traffic routes:


Traffic Patterns     From Origin Zone:    To Destination Zone:
    Residential    Commercial and Industrial.      Commercial    Residential and
Industrial.      Industrial    Residential.

When Sims drive away from an origin zone, they have a limited "trip range" in
which to find a destination zone.  Heavy traffic decreases the trip range.
If the destination zone is too far away, the trip is unsuccessful.  Repeated
unsuccessful trips will cause the Sims to move out of the origin zone.

Each road has a limited capacity for traffic.  When this capacity is exceeded
traffic jams will form.  Traffic jams drastically lower the capacity of a
road, compounding the problem and frustrating drivers.  Traffic conditions
fluctuate quickly.  Avoid traffic problems by providing several routes for
the traffic to take.

A road must be adjacent to a zone for the zone to be connected to the traffic
pattern.  Zones do not conduct traffic the way they conduct power.


Pollution

Pollution levels are tracked in all areas of your city.  This is a general
"nuisance level" that includes air and water pollution, noise pollution,
toxic wastes, etc.  Pollution has a negative impact on the growth of
residential areas.The primary cause of pollution is industrialized zones.
The level of pollution created by an industrial zone increases with its level
of growth.

Traffic is another cause of pollution.  There are limited means of combating
the pollution level.  Lowering traffic density, limiting industrial
development, and separating the pollution from the residential areas will
help.


Crime

Crime rates are influenced by population density, local law enforcement, and
land values.  As population density increases in an area, the number of
crimes committed increases.  Crime will also increase in areas of low land
value.  The most effective way to deal with high crime rates is to introduce
a police station into the area.  Based on its level of funding, the police
station will reduce the rate of crime in its sphere of influence.  A
long-term approach to lowering crime is to raise the land value of the area.
One way to do this is to demolish and rezone (urban renewal).


Land Value

Land value is one of the most fundamental aspects of urban structure.  The
land value of an area affects how that area is used.  In this simulation the
land value of an area is based on terrain, accessibility, pollution, and
distance to downtown.  The farther the residents have to go to work, the
lower the land value where they live, due in part to transportation costs.
The value of commercial zones depends greatly on accessibility by the
populace.

Land value is also affected by surrounding terrain.  If land is closer to
water, trees, agricultural areas, or parks, its value will rise.  Creative
placement of zones within the terrain, with little bulldozing, can make good
use of this natural advantage.  Land value and crime rate have a feedback
effect on each other.  Lower land values cause crime rates to rise.  Higher
crime rates cause land values to drop, and can cause "transition areas" near
your central city to rapidly decline in value.


History Of Cities And City Planning By Cliff Ellis


Introduction

The building of cities has a long and complex history.  Although city
planning as an organized profession has existed for less than a century, all
cities display various degrees of forethought and conscious design in their
layout and functioning.Early humans led a nomadic existence, relying on
hunting and gathering for sustenance.  Between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago,
systematic cultivation of plants and the domestication of animals allowed for
more permanent settlements.  During the fourth millennium B.C., the
requirements for the "urban revolution" were finally met:  the production of
a surplus of storable food, a system of writing, a more complex social
organization, and technological advances such as the plough, potter's wheel,
loom, and metallurgy.

Cities exist for many reasons, and the diversity of urban forms can be traced
to the complex functions that cities perform.  Cities serve as centers of
storage, trade, and manufacture.  The agricultural surplus from the
surrounding countryside is processed and distributed in cities.  Cities also
grew up around marketplaces, where goods from distant places could be
exchanged for local products.  Throughout history, cities have been founded
at the intersections of transportation routes, or at points where goods must
shift from one mode of transportation to another, as at river and ocean
ports.

Religious elements have been crucial throughout urban history.  Ancient
peoples had sacred places, often associated with cemeteries or shrines,
around which cities grew.  Ancient cities usually had large temple precincts
with monumental religious buildings.  Many medieval cities were built near
monasteries and cathedrals.  Cities often provide protection in a precarious
world.  During attacks, the rural populace could flee behind city walls,
where defence forces assembled to repel the enemy.  The wall served this
purpose for millennia, until the invention of heavy artillery rendered walls
useless in warfare.  With the advent of modern aerial warfare, cities have
become prime targets for destruction rather than safe havens.

Cities serve as centers of government.  In particular, the emergence of the
great nation-states of Europe between 1400 and 1800 led to the creation of
new capital cities or the investing of existing cities with expanded
governmental functions.  Washington, D.C., for example, displays the
monumental buildings, radial street pattern, and large public spaces typical
of capital cities.

Cities, with their concentration of talent, mixture of peoples, and economic
surplus, have provided a fertile ground for the evolution of human culture:
the arts, scientific research, and technical innovation.  They serve as
centers of communication, where new ideas and information are spread to the
surrounding territory and to foreign lands.

Constraints on City Form Cities are physical artifacts inserted into a
preexisting natural world, and natural constraints must be respected if a
settlement is to survive and prosper.  Cities must conform to the landscape
in which they are located, although technologies have gradually been
developed to reorganize the land to suit human purposes.  Moderately sloping
land provides the best urban site, but spectacular effects have been achieved
on hilly sites such as San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, and Athens.  Climate
influences city form.  For example, streets have been aligned to take
advantage of cooling breezes, and arcades designed to shield pedestrians from
sun and rain.  The architecture of individual buildings often reflects
adaptations to temperature, rainfall, snow, wind and other climatic
characteristics.

Cities must have a healthy water supply, and locations along rivers and
streams, or near underground watercourses, have always been favored.  Many
large modern cities have outgrown their local water supplies and rely upon
distant water sources diverted by elaborate systems of pipes and canals.

City location and internal structure have been profoundly influenced by
natural transportation routes.  Cities have often been sited near natural
harbors, on navigable rivers, or along land routes determined by regional
topography.  Finally, cities have had to survive periodic natural disasters
such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, and floods.  The San Francisco
earthquake of 1906 demonstrated how natural forces can undo decades of human
labor in a very short time.


Elements of Urban Structure

City planners must weave a complex, ever-changing array of elements into a
working whole:  that is the perennial challenge of city planning.  The
physical elements of the city can be divided into three categories:
networks, buildings, and open spaces.  Many alternative arrangements of these
components have been tried throughout history, but no ideal city form has
ever been agreed upon.  Lively debates about the best way to arrange urban
anatomies continue to rage, and show no signs of abating.


Networks

Every modern city contains an amazing array of pathways to carry flows of
people, goods, water, energy, and information.  Transportation networks are
the largest and most visible of these.  Ancient cities relied on streets,
most of them quite narrow by modern standards, to carry foot traffic and
carts.  The modern city contains a complex hierarchy of transportation
channels, ranging from ten-lane freeways to sidewalks.  In the United States,
the bulk of trips are carried by the private automobile, with mass transit a
distant second.  American cities display the low-density sprawl
characteristic of auto-centered urban development.  In contrast, many
European cities have the high densities necessary to support rail transit.

Modern cities rely on complex networks of utilities.  When cities were small,
obtaining pure water and disposing of wastes was not a major problem, but
cities with large populations and high densities require expensive public
infrastructure.  During the nineteenth century, rapid urban growth and
industrialization caused overcrowding, pollution, and disease in urban areas.
After the connection between impure water and disease was established,
American and European cities began to install adequate sewer and water
systems.  Since the late nineteenth century, cities have also been laced with
wires and conduits carrying electricity, gas, and communications signals.


Buildings

Buildings are the most visible elements of the city, the features that give
each city its unique character.  Residential structures occupy almost half of
all urban land, with the building types ranging from scattered single-family
homes to dense high-rise apartments.  Commercial buildings are clustered
downtown and at various subcenters, with skyscrapers packed into the central
business district and low-rise structures prevailing elsewhere, although tall
buildings are becoming more common in the suburbs.  Industrial buildings come
in many forms ranging from large factory complexes in industrial districts to
small workshops.

City planners engage in a constant search for the proper arrangement of these
different types of land use, paying particular attention to the compatibility
of different activities, population densities, traffic generation, economic
efficiency, social relationships, and the height and bulk of buildings.


Open Spaces

Open space is sometimes treated as a leftover, but it contributes greatly to
the quality of urban life.  "Hard" spaces such as plazas, malls, and
courtyards provide settings for public activities of all kinds.  "Soft"
spaces such as parks, gardens, lawns, and nature preserves provide essential
relief from harsh urban conditions and serve as space for recreational
activities.  These "amenities" increasingly influence which cities will be
perceived as desirable places to live.


Evolution of Urban Form

The first true urban settlements appeared around 3,000 B.C.  in ancient
Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley.  Ancient cities displayed both
"organic" and "planned" types of urban form.  These societies had elaborate
religious, political, and military hierarchies.  Precincts devoted to the
activities of the elite were often highly planned and regular in form.  In
contrast, residential areas often grew by a slow process of accretion,
producing complex, irregular patterns that we term "organic."  Two typical
features of the ancient city are the wall and the citadel:  the wall for
defense in regions periodically swept by conquering armies, and the citadel -
a large, elevated precinct within the city - devoted to religious and state
functions.

Greek cities did not follow a single pattern.  Cities growing slowly from old
villages often had an irregular, organic form, adapting gradually to the
accidents of topography and history.  Colonial cities, however, were planned
prior to settlement using the grid system.  The grid is easy to lay out, easy
to comprehend, and divides urban land into uniform rectangular lots suitable
for development.

The Romans engaged in extensive city-building activities as they consolidated
their empire.  Rome itself displayed the informal complexity created by
centuries of organic growth, although particular temple and public districts
were highly planned.  In contrast, the Roman military and colonial towns were
laid out in a variation of the grid.  Many European cities, like London and
Paris, sprang from these Roman origins.

We usually associate medieval cities with narrow winding streets converging
on a market square with a cathedral and city hall.  Many cities of this
period display this pattern, the product of thousands of incremental
additions to the urban fabric.  However, new towns seeded throughout
undeveloped regions of Europe were based upon the familiar grid.  In either
case, large encircling walls were built for defense against marauding armies;
new walls enclosing more land were built as the city expanded and outgrew its
former container.

During the Renaissance, architects began to systematically study the shaping
of urban space, as though the city itself were a piece of architecture that
could be given an aesthetically pleasing and functional order.  Many of the
great public spaces of Rome and other Italian cities date from this era.
Parts of old cities were rebuilt to create elegant squares, long street
vistas, and symmetrical building arrangements.  Responding to advances in
firearms during the fifteenth century, new city walls were designed with
large earthworks to deflect artillery, and star-shaped points to provide
defenders with sweeping lines of fire.  Spanish colonial cities in the New
World were built according to rules codified in the Laws of the Indies of
1573, specifying an orderly grid of streets with a central plaza, defensive
wall, and uniform building style.

We associate the baroque city with the emergence of great nation-states
between 1600 and 1750.  Ambitious monarchs constructed new palaces, courts,
and bureaucratic offices.  The grand scale was sought in urban public spaces:
long avenues, radial street networks, monumental squares, geometric parks and
gardens.  Versailles is a clear expression of this city-building model;
Washington, D.C.  is an example from the United States.  Baroque principles
of urban design were used by Baron Haussmann in his celebrated restructuring
of Paris between 1853 and 1870.  Haussmann carved broad new thoroughfares
through the tangled web of old Parisian streets, linking major subcenters of
the city with one another in a pattern which has served as a model for many
other modernization plans.

Toward the latter half of the eighteenth century, particularly in America,
the city as a setting for commerce assumed primacy.  The buildings of the
bourgeoisie expand along with their owners' prosperity:  banks, office
buildings, warehouses, hotels, and small factories.  New towns founded during
this period were conceived as commercial enterprises, and the neutral grid
was the most effective means to divide land up into parcels for sale.  The
city became a checkerboard on which players speculated on shifting land
values.  No longer would religious, political, and cultural imperatives shape
urban development; rather, the market would be allowed to determine the
pattern of urban growth.  New York, Philadelphia, and Boston around 1920
exemplify the commercial city of this era, with their bustling, mixed-use
waterfront districts.


Transition to the Industrial City

Cities have changed more since the Industrial Revolution than in all the
previous centuries of their existence.  New York had a population of about
313,000 in 1840 but had reached 4,767,000 in 1910.  Chicago exploded from
4.000 to 2,185,000 during the same period.  Millions of rural dwellers no
longer needed on farms flocked to the cities, where new factories churned out
products for the new markets made accessible by railroads and steamships.  In
the United States, millions of immigrants from Europe swelled the urban
populations.  Increasingly, urban economies were being woven more rightly
into the national and international economies.

Technological innovations poured forth, many with profound impacts on urban
form.  Railroad tracks were driven into the heart of the city.  Internal rail
transportation systems greatly expanded the radius of urban settlement:
horsecars beginning in the 1830s, cable cars in the 1870s, and electric
trolleys in the 1880s.  In the 1880s, the first central power plants began
providing electrical power to urban areas.  The rapid communication provided
by the telegraph and the telephone allowed formerly concentrated urban
activities to disperse across a wider field.

The industrial city still focused on the city center, which contained both
the central business district, defined by large office buildings, and
substantial numbers of factory and warehouse structures.  Both trolleys and
railroad systems converged on the center of the city, which boasted the
premier entertainment and shopping establishments.  The working class lived
in crowded districts close to the city center, near their place of
employment.  Early American factories were located outside of major cities
along rivers which provided water power for machinery.  After steam power
became widely available in the 1930s, factories could be located within the
city in proximity to port facilities, rail lines, and the urban labor force.
Large manufacturing zones emerged within the major northeastern and
midwestern cities such as Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Cleveland.  But by the
late nineteenth century, factory decentralization had already begun, as
manufacturers sought larger parcels of land away from the congestion of the
city.  Gary, Indiana, for example, was founded in 1906 on the southern shore
of Lake Michigan by the United States Steel Company.

The increasing crowding, pollution, and disease in the central city produced
a growing desire to escape to a healthier environment in the suburbs.  The
upper classes had always been able to retreat to homes in the countryside.
Beginning in the 1830s, commuter railroads enabled the upper middle class to
commute in to the city center.  Horsecar lines were built in many cities
between the 1830s and 1880s, allowing the middle class to move out from the
central cities into more spacious suburbs.  Finally, during the 1890s
electric trolleys and elevated rapid transit lines proliferated, providing
cheap urban transportation for the majority of the population.

The central business district of the city underwent a radical transformation
with the development of the skyscraper etween 1870 and 1900.  These tall
buildings were not technically feasible until the invention of the elevator
and steel-frame construction methods.  Skyscrapers reflect the dynamics of
the real estate market; the tall building extracts the maximum economic value
from a limited parcel of land.  These office buildings housed the growing
numbers of white-collar employees in banking, finance, management, and
business services, all manifestations of the shift from an economy of small
firms to one of large corporations.

The Form of the Modern City in the Age of the Automobile.

The city of today may be divided into two parts:      * An inner zone,
coextensive with the boundaries of the old industrial city.      * Suburban
areas, dating from the 1920s, which have been designed for the automobile
from the beginning.

The central business districts of American cities have become centers of
information processing, finance, and administration rather than
manufacturing.  White-collar employees in these economic sectors commute in
from the suburbs on a network of urban freeways built during the 1950s and
1960s; this "hub-and-wheel" freeway pattern can be observed on many city
maps.  New bridges have spanned rivers and bays, as in New York and San
Francisco, linking together formerly separate cities into vast urbanized
regions.

Waves of demolition and rebuilding have produced "Manhattanized" downtowns
across the land.  During the 1950s and 1960s, urban renewal programs cleared
away large areas of the old city, releasing the land for new office
buildings, convention centers, hotels, and sports complexes.  Building surges
have converted the downtowns of American cities into forests of tall office
buildings.  More recently, office functions not requiring a downtown location
have been moved to huge office parks in the suburbs.

Surrounding the central business area lies a large band of old mixed-use and
residential buildings which hose the urban poor.  High crime, low income,
deteriorating services, inadequate housing, and intractable social problems
plague these neglected areas of urban America.  The manufacturing jobs
formerly available to inner city residents are no longer there, and resources
have not been committed to replace them.

These inner city areas have been left behind by a massive migration to the
suburbs, which began in the late nineteenth century but accelerated in the
1920s with the spread of the automobile.  Freeway building after World War II
opened up even larger areas of suburban land, which were quickly filled by
people fleeing central city decline.  Today, more people live in suburbs than
in cities proper.  Manufacturers have also moved their production facilities
to suburban locations which have freeway and rail accessibility.

Indeed, we have reached a new stage of urbanization beyond the metropolis.
Most major cities are no longer focused exclusively on the traditional
downtown.  New subcenters have arisen round the periphery, and these
subcenters supply most of the daily needs of their adjacent populations.  The
old metropolis has become a multi-centered urban region.  In turn, many of
these urban regions have expanded to the point where they have coalesced into
vast belts of urbanization - what the geographer Jean Gottman termed
"megalopolis."  The prime example is the eastern seaboard of the United
States from Boston to Washington.  The planner C.A.  Doxiadis has speculated
that similar vast corridors of urbanization will appear throughout the world
during the next century.  Thus far, American planners have not had much
success in imposing a rational form on this process.  However, New Town and
greenbelt programs in Britain and the Scandinavian countries have, to some
extent, prevented formless sprawl from engulfing the countryside.


The Economics of Urban Areas

Since the 1950s, city planners have increasingly paid attention to the
economics of urban areas.  When many American cities experienced fiscal
crises during the 1970s, urban financial management assumed even greater
importance.  Today, planners routinely assess the economic consequences of
all major changes in the form of the city.  Several basic concepts underlie
urban and regional economic analysis.  First, cities cannot grow if their
residents simply provide services for one another.  The city must create
products which can be sold to an external purchaser, bringing in money which
can be reinvested in new production facilities and raw materials.  This
"economic base" of production for external markets is crucial.  Without it,
the economic engine of the city grinds to a halt.

Once the economic base is established, an elaborate internal market can
evolve.  This market includes the production of goods and services for
businesses and residents within the city.  Obviously, a large part of the
city's physical plant is devoted to facilities for internal transactions:
retail stores of all kinds, restaurants, local professional services, and so
on.

Modern cities are increasingly engaged in competition for economic resources
such as industrial plants, corporate headquarters, high-technology firms, and
government facilities.  Cities try to lure investment with an array of
features:  low tax rates, improved transportation and utility infrastructure,
cheap land, and skilled labor force.  Amenities such as climate, proximity to
recreation, parks, elegant architecture, and cultural activities influence
the location decisions of businesses and individuals.  Many older cities have
difficulty surviving in this new economic game.  Abandoned by traditional
industries, they're now trying to create a new economic base involving growth
sectors such as high technology.

Today, cities no longer compete in mere regional or national markets:  the
market is an international one.  Multinational firms close plants in Chicago
or Detroit and build replacements in Asia or Latin America.  Foreign products
dominate whole sectors of the American consumer goods market.  Huge sums of
money shift around the globe in instantaneous electronic transactions.
Cities must struggle for survival in a volatile environment in which the
rules are always changing.  This makes city planning even more challenging
than before.


Modern City Planning

Modern city planning can be divided into two distinct but related types of
planning.  visionary city planning proposes radical changes in the form of
the city, often in conjunction with sweeping changes in the social and
economic order.  Institutionalized city planning is lodged within the
existing structures of government, and modifies urban growth processes in
moderate, pragmatic ways.  It is constrained by the prevailing alignment of
political and economic forces within the city.


Visionary or Utopian City Planning

People have imagined ideal cities for millennia.  Plato's Republic was an
ideal city, although lacking in the spatial detail of later schemes.
Renaissance architects designed numerous geometric cities, and ever since
architects have been the chief source of imaginative urban proposals.  In the
twentieth century, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Paolo Soleri, and dozens
of other architects have designed cities on paper.  Although few have been
realized in pure form, they have influenced the layout of many new towns and
urban redevelopment projects.

In his "Contemporary City for Three Million People" of 1922 and "Radiant
City" of 1935, Le Corbusier advocated a high-density urban alternative, with
skyscraper office buildings and mid-rise apartments placed within park-like
open spaces.  Different land uses were located in separate districts, forming
a rigid geometric pattern with a sophisticated system of superhighways and
rail transit.

Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned a decentralized low-density city in keeping
with his distaste for large cities and belief in frontier individualism.  The
Broadacre City plan of 1935 is a large grid of arterials spread across the
countryside, with most of the internal space devoted to single-family homes
on large lots.  Areas are also carefully set aside for small farms, light
industry, orchards, recreation areas, and other urban facilities.  A network
of superhighways knits the region together, so spatially dispersed facilities
are actually very close in terms of travel time.  In many ways, Wright's
Broadacre City resembles American suburban and exurban developments of the
post-WWII period.

Many other utopian plans could be catalogued, but the point is that planners
and architects have generated a complex array of urban patterns from which to
draw ideas and inspiration.  Most city planners, however, do not work on a
blank canvas; they can only make incremental changes to an urban scene
already shaped by a complicated historical process.  Institutionalized City
Planning

The form of the city is determined primarily by thousands of private
decisions to construct buildings, within a framework of public infrastructure
and regulations administered by the city, state, and federal governments.
City planning actions can have enormous impacts on land values.  From the
point of view of land economics, the city is an enormous playing field on
which thousands of competitors struggle to capture value by constructing or
trading land and buildings.  The goal of city planning is to intervene in
this game in order to protect widely shared public values such as health,
safety, environmental quality, social equality, and aesthetics.

The roots of American city planning lie in an array of reform efforts of the
late nineteenth century:  the Parks movement, the City Beautiful movement,
campaigns for housing regulations, the Progressive movement for government
reform, and efforts to improve public health through the provision of
sanitary sewers and clean water supplies.  The First National Conference on
City Planning occurred in 1909, the same year as Daniel Burnham's famous Plan
of Chicago.  That date may be used to mark the inauguration of the new
profession.  The early city planners actually came from diverse backgrounds
such as architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, and law, but they
shared a common desire to produce a more orderly urban pattern.

The zoning of land became, and still is, the most potent instrument available
to American city planners for controlling urban development.  Zoning is
basically the dividing of the city into discrete areas within which only
certain land uses and types of buildings can be constructed.  The rationale
is that certain activities of building types don't mix well; factories and
homes, for example.  Illogical mixtures create nuisances for the parties
involved and lower land values.  After several decades of gradual
development, land-use zoning received legal approval from the Supreme Court
in 1926.

Zoning isn't the same as planning:  it is a legal tool for the implementation
of plans.  Zoning should be closely integrated with a Master Plan or
Comprehensive Plan that spells out a logical path for the city's future in
areas such as land use, transportation, parks and recreation, environmental
quality, and public works construction.  In the early days of zoning this was
often neglected, but this lack of coordination between zoning and planning is
less common now.  The other important elements of existing city planning are
subdivision regulations and environmental regulations.

Subdivision regulations require that land being subdivided for development be
provided with adequate street, sewers, water, schools, utilities, and various
design features.  The goal is to prevent shabby, deficient developments that
produce headaches for both their residents and the city.  Since the late
1960s, environmental regulations have exerted a stronger influence on
patterns of urban growth by restricting development in floodplains, on
unstable slopes, on earthquake faults, or near sensitive natural areas.
Businesses have been forced to reduce smoke emissions and the disposal of
wastes has been more closely monitored.  Overall, the pace of environmental
degradation has been slowed, but certainly not stopped, and a dismaying
backlog of environmental hazards remains to be cleaned up.  City planners
have plenty of work to do as we move into the twenty-first century.


Conclusion:  Good City Form

What is the good city?  We are unlikely to arrive at an unequivocal answer;
the diversity of human needs and tastes frustrates all attempts to provide
recipes or instruction manuals for the building of cities.  However, we can
identify the crucial dimensions of city performance, and specify the many
ways in which cities can achieve success along these dimensions.

A most useful guide in this enterprise is Kevin Lynch's A Theory of Good City
Form (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1981).  Lynch offers five basic dimensions of
city performance:  vitality, sense, fit, access, and control.  To these he
adds two "meta-criteria," efficiency and justice.

For Lynch, a vital city successfully fulfils the biological needs of its
inhabitants, and provides a safe environment for their activities.  A
sensible city is organized so that its residents can perceive and understand
the city's form and function.  A city with good fit provides the buildings,
spaces, and networks required for its residents to pursue their projects
successfully.  An accessible city allows people of all ages and background to
gain the activities, resources, services, and information that they need.  A
city with good control is arranged so that its citizens have a say in the
management of the spaces in which they work and reside.

Finally, an efficient city achieves the goals listed above at the least cost,
and balances the achievement of the goals with one another.  They cannot all
be maximized at the same time.  And a just city distributes benefits among
its citizens according to some fair standard.  Clearly, these two
meta-criteria raise difficult issues which will continue to spark debates for
the foreseeable future.

These criteria tell aspiring city builders where to aim, while acknowledging
the diverse ways of achieving good city form.  Cities are endlessly
fascinating because each is unique, the product of decades, centuries, or
even millennia of historical evolution.  As we walk through city streets, we
walk through time, encountering the city-building legacy of past generations.
Paris, Venice, Rome, New York, Chicago, San Francisco - each has its glories
and its failures.  In theory, we should be able to learn the lessons of
history and build cities that our descendants will admire and wish to
preserve.  That remains a constant challenge for all those who undertake the
task of city planning.


Bibliography City Planning Bibliography

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Callenbach, Ernest.  Ecotopia.  Berkeley:  Banyan Tree Books, 1975.  Choay,
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Clark, David.  Urban Geography.  Baltimore:  The Johns Hopkins University
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Clay, Grady.  Close-Up, How to Read the American City.  Chicago:  The
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Gallion, A., and S. Eisner.  The Urban Pattern.  New York:  Van Nostrand
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Greenburg, M., D. Krueckeberg, and C. Michaelson.  Local population and
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Jacobs, Jane.  The Death and Life of Great American Cities.  New York:  John
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Le Corbusier.  The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning.  New York:  Dover
Publications, Inc., 1987.

Lynch, Kevin.  A Theory of Good City Form.  Cambridge:  MIT Press, 1981.

Register, Richard.  Ecocity Berkeley.  Berkeley:  North Atlantic Books, 1987

Planning - The magazine of the American Planning Association.  1313 E. 60th
St.  Chicago, IL 60637


Related Reading for Children Fiction

Burton, Virginia Lee.  The Little House.  Boston:  Houghton Mifflin, 1942
(reissued 1969).

Murphy, Shirley, and Murphy, Pat.  Mrs.  Tortino's Return to the Sun.
Shepard Books, 1980.

Dr.  Seuss.  The Lorax.  New Youk:  Random House, 1971.


Nonfiction

Barker, Albert.  From Settlement to City.  New York:  Julian Messner, 1978.

Eichner, James A. The First Book of Local Government.  New York:  Franklin
Watts, 1976.

Macaulay, David.  City:  A Story of Roman Planning and Construction.  Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1974.

Macaulay, David.  Underground.  Boston:  Houghton Mifflin, 1976.

Monroe, Roxie.  Artchitects Make Zigzags:  Looking at Architecture from A to
Z. Washington D.C.:  National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1986.

Rhodes, Dorthy.  How to Read a City Map.  Chicago:  Elk Grove Press, 1967.

For information on city planning and related subjects, contact:

American Planning Association Planners Bookstore 1313 E. 60th St.  Chicago,
IL 60637 [phone]


The User Reference Card

Included in the SimCity box is the User Reference Card, which includes the
System Information and Reference Card, the Keyboard Reference Chart, the Zone
Evolution Chart, and the City Dynamics Chart.  They're reproduced on the
following pages of this manual for reference, just in case somebody's nicked
the card.

The System Information and Reference Card gives hardware and software
requirements particular to this version of SimCity.

The Keyboard Reference Chart gives a summary of all the keyboard controlled
functions and shortcuts.

The Zone Evolution Chart shows the various levels of development and decline
of residential, commercial and industrial zones.  The level of development
depends on the land value and population density.  Use this chart along with
the Query function to identi fy and gather information on individual zones.

The City Dynamics Chart lists the factors of city life and growth and shows
how they interrelate.  Use this chart to guide you in designing your city.
It will help you find solutions to the Sims' complaints, and to problems you
discover from the maps and g raphs.


System Info and Reference Card Hardware Required

Trademarks and Logos