#SIMCITY BUILDIT LAYOUT PLANNER PROFESSIONAL#

“That is a damning indictment, less of the game and more of urban planning,” said Aaron Brown, a community organizer and transportation activist based in Portland, Ore., who credits his early enthusiasm for transit to “SimCity.”

The lead designer of the 2013 version, Stone Librande, lent some insight in an article in the Atlantic: Parking lots are ugly and boring. No iteration of “SimCity” has ever accurately depicted the staggering amount of a city’s square footage that’s spent on parking lots. (In other words, the ubiquitous mid-rise apartment building with ground-floor commercial space currently taking America’s cities by storm does not exist.) There are no bike lanes. The game has never allowed mixed-use space. Like most video games based on real-world jobs, “SimCity” oversimplifies some of the more mundane elements of urban planning. In 2000, the Redwood City studio released “The Sims,” which became one of the bestselling video games of all time. The company was valued at $125 million by the time it was acquired by EA in 1997. Maxis capitalized on the game’s success, publishing “SimAnt,” “SimFarm,” “SimEarth,” “SimTower,” “SimLife,” “SimIsle” and “SimHealth” in its first decade, along with a handful of less popular non-simulation titles.

It popularized the simulation game genre and turned Maxis - a start-up launched in Orinda, Calif., by Wright and Jeff Braun - into an industry titan. But the first version wound up selling more than 1 million copies and changing the nature of gaming. Will Wright, the creator of “SimCity,” imagined when he designed the game that it would be interesting only to architects and city planners. I wouldn’t be where I am today without ‘SimCity.’ They got satisfaction from building pristine cities so efficient they could run themselves. Like Baker, many of the players who went on to become planners generally said they didn’t like to activate the game’s built-in “disaster” mode, which unleashes earthquakes, hurricanes or Godzilla on cities. The fact that no one likes to live near a landfill.

The ability to see how transit, livability and the economy are all connected.

#SIMCITY BUILDIT LAYOUT PLANNER PROFESSIONAL#

In more than a dozen interviews for this article, people who went from “SimCity” enthusiasts to professional planners talked about what they liked about the game: The way you can visualize how a single change affects a whole city. “That’s what really got me thinking about urban planning and ‘SimCity,’ where you put in trains, where you help people move,” said Trinh, now acting senior transportation planner for Caltrans in downtown L.A. Years later, after getting his undergraduate degree, he wanted to travel but because he was under 25, he had to rule out cities where he would need to rent a car to get around. Cuong Trinh played “SimCity” in a summer school class in junior high.

Simcity buildit layout planner