- INTRODUCTION:
Hello everyone, and welcome to my city! I was initially having a hard time figuring out a name for the city, and definitely overthinking it, so I chose to just use a random name generator, which led me to calling it Talbott Bay.
- BACKGROUND:
As I am not native to playing Cities: Skylines, the game was initially quite hard for me to get the hang of. I had to start over on multiple occasions, for all different reasons. One of the first issues I stumbled into was just simply making the city too large to begin with, and from there, I started finding issues with what little thought I put into organizing the structures and zones (residential, commercial, industrial). I also found an issue when placing industrial zones too close to the residential areas, which contributed to the noise factor. All of these issues were tough to tackle, but I think that my city is now at a much better point than the original city I built. As I play the game and my knowledge expands further, I hope to construct a beautifully designed and thriving city.
- POPULATION
Getting the population of my city up was difficult to tackle. For a while, I only managed to have about 700 residents and kept going bankrupt. It was an endless cycle of failing, restarting, and then failing again. Luckily, I have been able to bump my residents up to 2,566 people and the city is continuously growing as I play.
- BUILT ENVIRONMENT:
A goal for my city’s environment is to reduce the amount of pollution, as well as to switch to entirely solar energy. One of my strengths is that I am using wind mills and other solar powered energy to fuel the city’s electricity. A weakness of my city in regards to its expansion, which can be both a good and bad thing. With expansion comes the possibility of a more awkwardly built city. Although I tried to organize the city as best as I thought, I am finding it hard to expand outwards and keep it looking presentable. An opportunity for the city is that, by using more energy efficient systems, it keeps the city more green and less polluted. The current threat I face with my city is the inability to keep up with electricity and water. This is one of the many problems I have faced when restarting and rebuilding the game multiple times. I find that my citizens are constantly popping up with the water/electricity icon, and I couldn’t get them more access to these utilities because of the cost. The power lines are also weirdly placed along the map. The action that I plan to take goes hand in hand with the threat I am currently looking at. I hope to rearrange the power lines around some, and figure out a way to satisfy the citizen’s need for more electricity and water as it arises, whilst still managing not going bankrupt due to the cost of adding more wind turbines and such. I am trying to be as green as possible without breaking the bank.
- HOUSING:
As I mentioned in the background section, I originally made the mistake of placing my housing too close to industrial zones, which contributes to noise. A strength of my housing now is that I figured out how to organize the city so that the industrial zone is separated away from the residences, yet there are commercial zones that are close by so that residents can easily get to work. At the same time, my goal for the housing is to try and keep it as far as possible from the industrial zones, so that the residents may be more happy, which I am finding harder to do as I expand. One crucial weakness of my housing is in regards to the traffic that builds up because of the way I have designed the residential areas. As for threats to my housing, as I’ve mentioned before, is accidentally placing it too close to the industrial zones because of the way it has been organized and thus affecting the citizens happiness. An opportunity for my housing is to begin creating more versified housing options, rather than letting all of the residential aesthetics remain the same. The action I am currently taking is in regards to the aesthetic, and I am trying to build more presentable suburbs, housing more close to the city/commercial zones, and the like.
- ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT:
The goal for the economic development of Talbott Bay is to construct and expand upon the commercial/retail areas within the city, and to profit off of businesses going in, as many cities in real life try to do. I similarly want to expand upon the industrial district to come up with more money. Unfortunately, the city is becoming more difficult to maintain due to financial issues, which is the weakness and threat I have begun struggling to combat. I am stuck in figuring out how to construct my city in a way that it is not more expensive than the money it is bringing in. The course of action I will be taking to combat the economic failure is trying to figure out a way to fund the projects I have currently in mind, which consists mostly of building a strong stability between the zones and districts.
- TRANSPORTATION:
Transportation is vital in the success of a city. A goal I have set out for myself is to start creating more routes for buses and constructing subways for the residents, which is similarly a weakness for Talbott Bay, as we don’t currently have them. Unfortunately, the threat that comes into play is that this will create pollution and hinder how I am trying to keep my city green, and I have also found difficulty in the traffic that comes along with transportation by vehicle. An opportunity of this is adding busing and subways to combat the traffic. My next course of action is to rearrange the streets so that we can lessen the traffic for the citizens living in Talbott Bay.
- COMMUNITY SERVICES AND UTILITIES
In regards to utilities and services, the goal of the planners in Talbott Bay is that they want to assure that there are no future shutdowns of electricity, and that every single resident is receiving the utilities they need. I think the strength of my city is that the pipes have been constructed underneath and along the roads, making water easily accessible for each zone. Just like the goal of the planners, electricity has been the biggest threat for me. The power lines are arranged rather weirdly around the city, and more often than not, I find that residents are without power. It is becoming increasingly difficult to afford more and more wind turbines to provide the electricity, and that I don’t have enough money to implement anymore. This is similarly a threat because of the expense, and it risks the city going bankrupt. An opportunity for this is using a more efficient system of getting power to residents and buildings, which will help lead to fewer expenses and happier citizens.
- PARKS AND RECREATION:
Luckily, the city has many recreational opportunities in the downtown area. I would consider this the strength. The next goal of Talbott bay is to provide the buildings and residents with a suitable amount of green space. Our current weakness is being a sort of ‘concrete jungle’ as it has few green spaces so far. The opportunity for this is implementing new parks around the city, which in turn, is a threat to the city’s budget because of costs. Unfortunately, construction of greenery is costly, and so my next course of action is needing to balance the costs of green places with how much benefit it will provide for the city. Green spaces increase the amount of citizens moving in because of value, and help with the presentability/aesthetic of the city so it doesn’t not look as concrete and grey.
- NATURAL ENVIRONMENT:
As I mentioned in the earlier section regarding parks/recreation, the city of Talbott Bay has a very concrete jungle look to it, which is the weakness we’re looking at. Adding greenery, shrubs, trees and the like around the city, alongside parks within, is going to help liven the aesthetic and presentability. A strength of this is that the cost is not too much to implement these- not nearly as expensive as utilities and other services. An opportunity of implementing these additions to Talbott Bay is that the industrial zones can thrive off of it, using the resources as another form of profit and increasing the city’s budget, but the game definitely considered the realism of what adding this can risk. Cities are more susceptible to the risk of forest fires as a result. The next course of action for the natural environment is to implement more trees, though in a safe manner so that no fires reach the city.
- FUTURE LAND USE PLAN:
There are a few goals of Talbott’s future land use. Firstly, implementation of trees to help with noise, as well as expanding and developing more suburbs, and expanding outwards towards the rivers nearby. One strength of the city is that we chose a relatively flat land to build on, as and a result, there is little disruption to the natural environment surrounding the city. The weakness of the city’s land use is that I did not construct as close to the source of fresh water as much as I could, and the threat is that I now have to build outwards towards the river, which is costly and expensive, just like constructing new suburbs is. An opportunity of this is that more residents will move into the city if we provide a suburb, increasing population and taxes. Similarly, moving closer to the water source will provide an unlimited amount of water, but we risk polluting it. The next course of action for Talbott’s land use plan is to expand outwards to the river and, possibly, start constructing suburbs in that area.
- IMPLEMENTATION:
Although the city has many goals to implement, and they are costly, the city will grow and thrive off of all of these newly created additions. It is all a case of balancing the different districts, residential, commercial, industrial, and satisfying each of their needs but still keeping the city budget in mind. I think the next step of implementation is to purchase another plot of land so that we may expand outwards and bring in new residents. Something I am also trying to keep in mind is the amount of pollution created by the city, as I want Talbott Bay to be as green as possible.
SIMULATION VERSUS REALITY:
Cities: Skylines is a great game for helping the class to understand what designing and planning a city is really like. I was surprised by the amount of realism included in the game, such as, for example, putting trees around the city can risk creating fires and burning everything down. However, the game doesn’t get every aspect of planning a city right. It is incredibly easy to bulldoze over your buildings or roads if something doesn’t work out the way that you had hoped it to. In the real world, it would take months, even years, and cost a lot of money to rebuild and rebuild. Think of how much we have to pay construction workers, and say that we decided to rebuild a highway- consider how many residents would be unhappy by that, as it may be their preferred route to work. I think that, as Burton explained in The Comprehensive Plan, balancing what is best for the city and the needs of the citizens is an important consideration as a planner. There also a multitude of factors that go into planning, and things that can prevent your ideas from coming to fruition. Overall, the simulation was a rocky start for me to really get into, but now that I have restarted the game many times, it is an enlightening perspective as to what the field is that I am going into. It doesn’t necessarily scare me away from becoming a planner, nor putting my hands into designing and reconstructing city/regional areas, but it makes me feel as though I can have an impact on making residents happy. It helps me to realize that planning is more than just deciding where to put a sidewalk or a highway. We have to plan things with a strong consideration for the economy, social justice, and the environment.