One City, Pre–127 Rebuild

I’ve never done this, but after stumbling on some City Journals a couple of nights ago while looking for SimCity 4 stuff, I thought I’d share my city. This won’t be a regular thing, but more like something that I’ll do when I feel like it.

Anyway, this is my city, called One City. It’s been 127 years, 3 months and 5 days since initial establishment, and the city has grown into what you see here: a prosperous city with a population of 500k, give or take a few thousand. North is the near–edge of the picture.

In the middle is Central Pit, the central business district, with all its gleaming office towers and upper class residents. Somewhere in there is Museum Park, named so because there’s a park with the city’s first museum in it.

Further north are some more residential areas, but four decades or so before this picture was taken this area was full of industry, and used to be the place where you could find six oil–fired power plants. This is the reason why the two avenues — which you can just about see as two extra–thick black lines near–ish the shore — are called Industry Central and Industry West, and the area is now called Old Industry. (There could’ve been an Industry East, but the need never arose.) Industry Central connects to the neighbouring city Owl.

To the east of Central Pit is the still–expanding Modena, where you can find the city’s Convention Centre near the shore. It’s also the first part of the city to have a monorail system, because that’s where the edge of the city was when the original airport was built — it’s on the east edge of town, just out–of–frame — when a quick form of transport was needed to take travellers to Central Pit. A long, three–section avenue that begins just before the Convention Centre and ends a little short of Museum Park connects Modena to Central Pit, each section simply called Lower Avenue, Middle Avenue, and Upper Avenue, with Upper nearest Museum Park. (Lower Avenue is the thick black line in the picture running east to west in front of the Convention Centre, meeting the north–south Middle Avenue at the John Hancock Centre, before making a turn into the hidden–from–view Upper Avenue.)

New Industry is to the south on the — as yet unnamed — plateau, or the top edge of the picture. That area is now mostly occupied by high–tech corporations with some manufacturing industries mixed in. It is also where the main power source of the city — a hydrogen power station — resides. A relatively new highway runs round the outer edge of the area, all the way down to the edge of Modena, to help relieve the roads of the massive amount of freight traffic.

On the eastern and western edges of the plateau are communities that mainly work in New Industry, though quite a few do travel down to Central Pit and Modena daily. The country club is right on the edge of the eastern cliff overlooking the airport. Some solar plants and wind turbines are next to it, originally built as a band–aid reaction to the gradual degradation of the original hydrogen power station because a new plant was, at the time, just a little bit beyond the means of the local government. (The city is currently on its second hydrogen plant.)

Anyway that’s an overview of town. Because of the sprawling size of the city, residences are experiencing fairly long commutes to and from work — game data says it’s close to 60 minutes — despite a massive extension of the monorail into Old Industry, looping round the back of Central Pit, and rejoining the original monorail system at Modena. I’m thinking of demolishing parts of Central Pit in the hope of making some of the big businesses move to Old Industry and moving some residences into Central Pit. Mix it up a little, y’know. Should also give me a chance to fix the traffic problems — I’ve currently got a lot of very congested roads in Central Pit.

P.S. I don’t use any mods or cheats. This is the stock Rush Hour game.

P.P.S. Yes, I do realise SimCity 4 is four years old, but I never had a chance to play it before because my TiBook and the MacBook both had graphics that were too weak.