The stereotypical attitude of some parents to video games are that they’re boring, all have either guns or sexual content and are a waste of precious childhood instead of going outside or even enjoying the ‘’good old days’’ of books and VCR. However, one game I’ve been specifically playing has not only kept inside from the hot weather for the past few months, it’s even been appreciated as a possible learning step as a future goal of a politician. Yet, this game is a bit more niche than the Call Of Duty or GTA franchises. Meet Cities Skylines.
Cities Skylines is a game on PC where you build your own city. Sounds simple, right? If only that was ever the case. Instead, you have a whole array of issues to deal with, from disasters to noise and industry pollution to attracting tourists to your city, while still managing a positive income and controlling swathes of traffic through roundabouts or public transport. Although not my first taste with city building, with many Simcity games before now, it’s by far the most complex game and took me at least 3 months to get a city I’m happy with.
For example, I created a city called Rockfield. It has a population just shy of Cork at 100,000 residents and 2 motorway systems, one going through the main city and a smaller suburban bypass. It has over 95% of people getting education up to second-level, two colleges and three parks, one city park, one zoo and one amusement park. It features a ton of offices, high rises aplenty with sprawling suburbs, all being connected by commuter trains, two overcrowded metro lines and a recently installed tram network to ease the pressure. Although the tax rates are high, people are happy due to the high services allowing plenty of college graduates to migrate to the city center, with pedestrian pathways reducing noise levels in the busiest places.
Although this might be an idealistic depiction of the city, and not factor in complicated issues such as unionised workers, maintenance issues and much more, it still leaves a sense of pride and accomplishment when you’ve reached the maximum capacity that your computer will comfortably run your game. Even then, the stunning detail of the cities, both in looks and realism, made me wonder if city planners of the future could use these games to help their cities. There’s been even TED talks of how the game I’ve played could help this, how one person recreated the city of Cork in the game, which I both highly recommend and with recent focus on banning cars off roads to allow more pedestrian access and make cities more open to the people of the cities, planners should take notes, with 54% of the world population living in cities and that trend only increasing further year on year. The recent plans to somehow make college green fully pedestrianised has faced long and heated debate over if it would be a challenge for buses and taxis, yet by shifting traffic to radiate the civic area, the positives would easily outweigh the benefits while possibly allowing a move of the northbound tram station from the already crowded Westmoreland St. to right beside Trinity, like the southbound tram is already able to do.
To see if it would work, a very simple plan can be done in the game. Create a flow of traffic through the street and surrounding streets, pedestrianize the area and take note of the consequences. It’s not rocket science, yet it’s these new ideas that scare the traditional city planners who still believe paperwork can still figure out the consequences of cities. For myself, when I turned most of my city center to banning cars, noise pollution significantly dropped while other streets around the area controlled traffic with ease, even managing to reduce the street lanes needed and instead plant more trees and bus lanes. To think outside of the box is a necessary skill for city planning or politicians, and even the random gamer may be able to appreciate the advantage of predicting cities in order to benefit the citizens and tourists. It’s the way that even myself, through video games, feel like I’ve gained a new insight into how complex cities are and that even the smallest change can have significant impacts.
-Ross Boyd, lead writer
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