Welcome to Crayland! Crayland is a massive city with loads of uniqueness, fun, and pleasure upon living and touring. This city is very attractive and appeals to a fast lifestyle with everything being in walking distance. The city is very safe and has some of the best education in the country. Feel free to explore all 9 districts of the city, including, Downtown Crayland, Kareem, Usher, Don, Leonard, Andrew, Love, Megan, and Esselburn!
Crayland has evolved rapidly within its 40 years of existence. The city was founded in 2021. It’s economy is driven by the heavy happiness of its population that’s been maintained ever since it was founded. The economy is currently at its highest peak in it’s history, generating $50,000 of raw profit every day, and the city hasn’t borrowed a loan in 39 years. Despite overcoming a water crisis in 2039, the average drinking water pollution is currently 0%! Education, healthcare, fire safety, and crime safety has maintained its strong effectiveness since 2021. With education levels currently at it’s peak, and a low crime rate of 6%, Crayland is one of the most educated and safest cities in the country.
Crayland currently has a population of 106,230 residents. The first time the city has reached 10,000 residents was in 2031. Since then, the city sped it’s growth rate to gaining 10,000 residents every 2-4 years. The city is currently gaining 390 residents per day, and gains on average 200 residents per day.
Built Environment
Goal:
Raise the citizen’s happiness to 90%.
Strength:
- High Office Happiness of 93%
Weakness:
- Declining Commercial Happiness at 68%
Opportunity:
- An increasing industry demand to increase goods to sell.
Threat:
- Abandoned commercial zones
Possible Actions:
- Reduce traffic to fluctuate the goods being sent into the city for commercial buildings.
Housing
Goal:
Increase Average Land value up to $65/m^2.
Strength:
- High Average Land Value ( %59/m^2)
Weakness:
- 2986 Unoccupied homes/Low demand
Opportunity:
- Lots of extra space for housing
Threat:
- Limited Land availability.
Possible Actions:
- Zone more residential areas.
- Add more parks and leisure to districts and residential areas.
Economic Development
Goal:
Stay over a $15,000 income gap over expenses.
Strength:
- $280,000 and increasing income from residential areas
Weakness:
- Declining commercial income
Opportunity:
- $280,000 of loans can be taken out when needed
Threat:
- Decrease in all taxes would tank the economy dramatically.
Possible Actions:
- Cut unneeded costs and lower budgets.
- Increased sales policy after goods are sent to the commercial areas.
Transportation
Goal:
Increase Transportation income by 50%.
Strength:
Weakness:
- Cost of Transportation is $38,000 over income.
Opportunity:
- Increased activity and profit off of tourism and leisure.
Threat:
- Costs of transportation could serve as a catalyst for bankruptcy in economic crisis.
Possible actions:
- More transportation to more tourist buildings.
- Removing certain unneeded lines or buildings.
Community Services and Activity
Goal:
Decrease traffic by 50%.
Strength:
- 0.2% of population is uneducated
Weakness:
Opportunity:
- The Medical Center monument can eliminate healthcare issues.
Threat:
- Traffic issue could cause transportation issues among all places in the city.
Possible Actions:
- Upgrade main roads.
- Change intersections from residential areas to stop signs.
Parks and Recreation
Goal:
Improve leisure within the city in local neighborhoods.
Strength:
- Lots of leisure in Downtown and commercial areas
Weakness:
- Low number of parks in neighborhoods.
Opportunity:
- Lots of open space to install a park.
Threat:
- Citizens could move out with low leisure.
Possible Actions:
- Install Parks in residential area space.
- Unlock more unique buildings.
Natural Environment
Goal:
Create an alternative water source off of the lake for more sewage treatment.
Strength:
- 100% solar renewable resource usage.
Weakness:
- The only lake in the city is completely brown.
Opportunity:
- River space is the best source of unlimited fresh drinking water
Threat:
- The river space is the next available space after the lake space is fully occupied.
Possible Actions:
- Install water treatment plants downstream from pumping stations.
- Build a canal downstream from the lake to the river.
- Build Trees to reduce noise polution
Future Land Use Plan
Goal:
Connect the industry zone to a highway to export goods.
Strength:
- Most available land is already occupied.
Weakness:
- Effective transportation fixes involve tearing down residential areas.
Opportunity:
- Lots of land free to use for extracting natural resources like oil.
Threat:
- Large dip in the economy and population if residential areas are destroyed.
Possible Actions:
- Tear down residential areas and commercial areas to build new highway.
- Upgrade roads to reduce traffic to the highway.
- Empty Landfills to free up space.
Implementation Strategy
The biggest issue that I must deal with at this time is traffic. Traffic is very bad along the highway exits, main streets, and garbage and industry across the lake. As a result, many services reliant on transport take longer to operate, which becomes the problems with land use, community service, transferred goods, and transportation. I will solve this issue by building more entrances and exits on the highway, examine and switch certain intersection types, and build needed road shortcuts. I will also free up space from arbitrary or space consuming utilities such as landfills. This way I could add more space for residential neighborhoods and plazas.
Simulation V. Reality
In the simulation, following the comprehensive planning process is ultimately key to creating a well developed and rich city. One of the first challenges the simulation would throw at you is the unlocking of hospital, and the second challenge is the police and fire station. If these elements of health and public safety aren’t met in your city as soon as possible, citizens would die and move out of the city, which would heavily affect the public welfare, economy, and fiscal progress of the city as a whole, causing bankruptcy. There would be many issues you would have to think to solve, and you would have to use all of the elements of the comprehensive plan to solve them. For example, when I was first dealing with the water crisis, I implemented and formulated a possible solution to stopping citizens from getting sick. My first plan was to change the piping out of polluted areas and relocate them around them. I reviewed that plan and easily observed that the plan did little help in stopping the water crisis. I then updated this plan by changing the location of the pumping stations away from drain pipes. I saw that this plan was effective in stopping the water crisis, however there was another issue rising out of the drain pipes, as they were draining sewage into the river at high rate and turning the river brown. I updated this plan by investing in water treatment plants instead of drain pipes because they drain less pollution into the river. While there was significantly less pollution in the river, the treatment plants still left pollution in the river, which was flowing downstream. This led to my final decision to move all of the treatment plants into the lake and leave the pumping stations in the river where the water wouldn’t be polluted anymore.
However, this simulation has many things missing from reality. One huge element missing is eminent domain. There were many instances where I’ve tore down houses and businesses to add parks, leisure, community service, and utilities. In this simulation, I wouldn’t lose much money for just one house, however in reality, I could be sued for a million dollars for one house for those actions. The city is also missing history and it’s impact on what can be put into the city. There’s no forms of scientific and societal norms, which impacts the progress of certain buildings and behaviors of the people. There aren’t any catastrophes or global pandemics to impact the economy and the people, who don’t have any personality or ideologies. The sense of personality is touched with Chirper, a Twitter inspired social media, however they don’t give deep insight of what the people truly thinks. They only give the same repetitive complements or complaints of certain few decisions made with the addition of a building or lack there of. Overall, the game does a decent job at simulating some of the most important elements of city planning like healthcare, crime, pollution, and zoning.