Pay to Click Get Rich Quick Urbanism and the Ideal SimCity

Magnasanti

I came across the video below a while ago and just rediscovered it in my drafts folder. It charts the construction of Magnasanti, an example of a kind of extreme urbanism and what it perhaps the perfect SimCity, or at the very least the most densely populated SimCity to date.

Magnasanti, built in SimCity3 has a resident population of 6,000,000 and an itinerant workforce of 2,523,000 workers in the commercial sector and 644,173 blue collar workers in the industrial districts. That’s 9,172,000 people in total. There is 0% crime, but an average life expectancy of 50 years.

According to the author, it is the absolute maximum population achievable in SImCity without employing any cheats, and its foundation on a 12×12 grid cannot be beaten.

The video shows the city best, so:
(pro tip: mute the sound…)

[youtube]NTJQTc-TqpU[/youtube]

This is the kind of archiporn that I am a sucker for; gamespace urbanism exploited to its extreme condition. Can you ‘win’ urbanism? Is this even urbanism? If not, can we take anything from its construction? The primary move that the city makes is to remove cars altogether and base transport purely on subways. I suspect this is a method to exploit the space otherwise taken up by roads for real estate allowing for an increased population per tile, however, it is a strategy that many cities—Sydney included—are seriously looking into. Remove motor vehicles, increase public transport. Seems like a sound idea. But Ultimately, Magnasanti has little to do with urban design and everything to do with gaming systems for maximum reward.

Trawling through one of the user forums discussing the city, we find the kind of encoded conversation that is at once alien and familiar to real world discussions of architecture and urbanism, only this time I am on the other side of the fence:

I can’t see the industry from here, but by the EQ I take it you went with clean? You realize you could squeeze in 2 more workers per tile with dirty? And you got them to behave with rail-to-subway stations? Good stuff.

Are all your residential and commercial zones low land value, high density? That’s the best for max pop. I assume they’re all historical?

Delving a little deeper we find that the author of this city, Imperar, is heavily invested in Click to Pay schemes and blogging their attempt to make a million dollars online through . A scan through their blog “Imperar’s Millionaire Experiment; Using the Scientific Method to Maximizing Passive Online Income Streams” reveals someone that is concentrated on the task of optimising systems for gain no matter how minute the return on an investment. It makes sense that a mind honed to the task of optimising repetitive tasks would see the challenge of finishing SimCity as an achievable goal.

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Following are some highlights from the Magnasanti’s development:

Pocket park with duelling Ferris Wheels:

Magnasanti

Casino district on the precipice:

Magnasanti

Planning Controls:

Magnasanti
Magnasanti
Magnasanti

“Micromanagement for Absolute Perfection”

Magnasanti

“Magnasanti has ZERO Abandoned Buildings”

Magnasanti

“100% of All Zoned Structures are Historical”

Magnasanti

“The Superior 12×12 Grid Employed in Magnasanti Cannot be Beaten >:]”

Magnasanti

“City form influenced by the ‘Kowloon Walled City’.”

Magnasanti

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4 responses to “Pay to Click Get Rich Quick Urbanism and the Ideal SimCity”

  1. Alex Gore Avatar

    What an interesting experiment. Thought provoking.

  2. is-group Avatar

    Interesting take on the topic. I think the idea of ‘simCity’ is fast becoming extremely thought provoking.

  3. Drafter Avatar

    What an amazingly fun project. How to beat the unbeatable? What’s astounding is that it took so long to complete. I wonder why the author didn’t use the latest SimCity in his experiment.

  4. archaalto Avatar

    a very intriguing exercise, but i end up asking myself what the ultimate goal is?
    it seems less about exploring the patterns of human behavior as it pertains to a lifelike urban environment, and more about “beating the game” with maximum efficiency. While the software may provide ratings for the achievements within itself, I still have a hard time seeing how this applies to the human condition. While discussions about which type of transport is “better” may still apply, I don’t see how it is relevant when in the context of a computer game [yet].

    An analysis of the similarities and differences between the games rules/limitations and the patterns of real cities sounds much more thought provoking to me. The achievement here is impressive, especially with the amount of work shown in the post–it just feels like this is merely the first half of a research project, and not the entire thing. IE–how does this discovery apply to real urban strategies?

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