SimCity Teaches Us The Pinnacle Of Urban Planning.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Found this on you, rather spooky but amazing

Vincent Ocasla says that in fashioning the "Magnasanti" metropolis, he has "beaten" SimCity by creating the max stable population of six million. It consists of four grids of identical 12 x 12 grids with everyone's workplace within walking distance. There are no roads, the city runs entirely on subways. There's zero abandoned buildings zero congestion, and zero water pollution. It sounds like paradise, but it hides a dark core with a sinister message for would-be top-down urban planners.

Ocasla told Vice:

“========================================================
Technically, no one is leaving or coming into the city. Population growth is stagnant. Sims don't need to travel long distances, because their workplace is just within walking distance. In fact they do not even need to leave their own block. Wherever they go it's like going to the same place....

...The ironic thing about it is the sims in Magnasanti tolerate it. They don't rebel, or cause revolutions and social chaos. No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line. They have all been successfully dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-controlled just enough to keep this system going for thousands of years. 50,000 years to be exact. They are all imprisoned in space and time.
”========================================================

They also don't live past age 50, which Ocasla is fine with because max population, not max longevity, was the goal.

In this over-the-top video, you can watch how Vince made the city, a process of trial and error that took four years to complete and involved burrowing into the code and math of SimCity to figure out how to game the ultimate solution. It comes off as a bit occultish and intimidating, so much so that, according to a comment Vince made on his YouTube channel, the original video was falsely flagged and taken down from YouTube for containing Satanic messages. That's okay, it's nearly Halloween.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

The ironic thing about it is the sims in Magnasanti tolerate it. They don't rebel, or cause revolutions and social chaos. No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line. They have all been successfully dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-controlled just enough to keep this system going for thousands of years. 50,000 years to be exact. They are all imprisoned in space and time.

Sounds like a Randroid Teabagger wet dream to me. I wouldn't live in Magnasanti. I wonder what it would look like with happiness and longevity optimization?

[Wild Zontargs]

Wow, Omnika (as he goes by on the SC3000.com forums) made headlines? Cool!

We had all been pushing the game engine pretty hard for years over there. My attempt originated a lot of the tricks Omni used (here), but would have topped out at about 5 million had I completed it. Omnika used all my tricks, improved on them, and finished first. We had a collective shit fit when he posted his results here.

And as a funny note, my jargon-laced commentary was quoted on one of the sites discussing Omnika's city! (I'm PsychoSmiley over there.)

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?

[Uncluttered]

The ironic thing about it is the sims in Magnasanti tolerate it. They don't rebel, or cause revolutions and social chaos. No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line. They have all been successfully dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-controlled just enough to keep this system going for thousands of years. 50,000 years to be exact. They are all imprisoned in space and time.

Sounds like a Randroid Teabagger wet dream to me. I wouldn't live in Magnasanti. I wonder what it would look like with happiness and longevity optimization?

Nah, they'd get all upset that they have to use the subway and sit next to people of different color and social class.

[AniThyng]

Looks like the realization of the industrial slab sided Arcology from Simcity 2000 which is basically exactly what this is - worker drones shackled into a gigantic metropolis in a building.

I guess one tuned for happiness and longevity would look like the utopian Dome shaped one...or just include tons of drugging

[The Grim Squeaker]

So, the future of high density living is Megacity 1? (Well, not even that, Meg1 Habs don't require citizens to leave their buildings for education/food/work in most cases).
Big deal

The optimization and math work is impressive. (Especially the calcs of required libraries and the like) "D

[Marcus Aurelius]

So, the future of high density living is Megacity 1? (Well, not even that, Meg1 Habs don't require citizens to leave their buildings for education/food/work in most cases).
Big deal

Caves of Steel by Asimov. Can anyone come up with an even earlier example of this type of arcologies?

[Phantasee]

That Japanese island that had a density of 13000 people per sq km?

[Solauren]

Very impressive.

I had the idea of trying to figure that out with the original 'Classic' Sim City, but decided it wasn't worth the effort for a video game.

[Wild Zontargs]

Well, some of the main tricks with SimCity Classic are: you don't actually need transportation from one zone to another, just have some sort of transportation touching each zone; you don't need any commercial zones (or airports); you don't need PD coverage in industrial areas; and you can "stack" zones if you really want to get crazy. I've had cities with populations well over 1 million, but I'm not sure what the highest possible population is.

[YT300000]

Looks like the realization of the industrial slab sided Arcology from Simcity 2000 which is basically exactly what this is - worker drones shackled into a gigantic metropolis in a building.

Except that this one won't fly into space at some point in the future.

[AniThyng]

Looks like the realization of the industrial slab sided Arcology from Simcity 2000 which is basically exactly what this is - worker drones shackled into a gigantic metropolis in a building.

Except that this one won't fly into space at some point in the future.

I think only the Utopian dome one flies in to space, not the slab sided one or the hilarious gothic DOG one