The original SimCity taught me it’s best to segregate commercial zones far from residential zones to make property values higher, and to build very large donut shaped superblocks. The 1960s form of urban planning that SimCity’s model rewards turned out to be totally wrong.

Now SimCity is on its fourth verson, and the model is a lot more sophisticated. Matthew Yglesias bought it and found some flaws like no mixed-use buildings or bicycling. But it does reward locating different zones near each other and good road connectivity. Ryan Avent has some more comments.

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Tagged: development, simcity

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.