Realism Project / Mod Development

[the7trumpets 10]

Sorry for my stealty silence lately.  Belive me, I have been pouring over every post at least 5 times in this thread to look at all the great suggestions.  burlesona and rewright's suggestions have been particularly wise, leading us toward a city which is fairly isolated, and mid-sized, so that we can actually finish the project rather than embarking on an unattainable goal.

 

In that vain, I have downloaded 1990 census population and land area data for metropolitan areas.  They have not yet compiled the 2000 data for metropolitan areas.  Attatched is a spreadsheet where i have gone through the first 90 of about 350 cities to see whether they are far enough removed from other cities to provide a good test ground.  Those in grey are absolutely out of the question, being just a few miles from another fairly populated area.  Those in yellow are possibilities, but a little too close for comfort (usually 10-20km).  Those in white are descent possibilities, and those in green are very isolated cities.

 

The challenge will be to find somewhere which has enough population to accurately test commuting of 50,000+ people, but a small enough land area that we can complete the project.  How large of a land area do you think we can do?  A large city tile is 16 square kilometers.  So if each participant does 2 large cities (or 8 medium sized cities), and we have 25 city builders, that totals 800 square kilometers.  That is.. IF we can get 25 people to help out.

 

As you can see, the key is in selecting a fairly easy and quick area to do, so that we can actually complete it, and move on to the later stages.  If anyone wants to continue work on this excel sheet and attach it to a later post, be my guest.  I'm going to be pretty busy this weekend, so I may not get arround to it.

 

Again, the goal is to find a fairly populated, small land area place which doesn't have commuters outside of that city.  I thought Hawii would be perfect (and it may still be), but the proliferation of tourism and the lack of industry seems like it can't really work.  Oh well...we'll find a city soon hopefully.

 

I don't want to insult any of your suggestions, but please make sure that the entire metropolitan area is less than 800 square kilometers (40kmx40km)

 

 

Thanks again!  I'm astounded by the ammount of support so far.  Also, don't forget to PM me if you want to build a city when we get this started hopefully fairly soon.

[dolphin66 5]

I don't have excel so can't use the file. This really sucks...lol. Oh well.

[alt+tab 2]

I vote Seattle-area. It has TWO airports, one international, one maunfacturing. It has An opera house, TWO STADIUMS, Three lots in-game, Has an extensive grid system, a flattened Re-grade area. King Street main train hub, a monorail. A science center, the Space Needle (think Dr. Evil's starbucks lair) a great ferry system. And in the north up in Everett (where I live) THE BIGGEST BUILDING IN THE WORLD, which is equivalent to 5 Empire State Buildings (square ft. space wise) BOEING plane manufacturing Plant (currently building the new 7E7 superjet [whew thats a lot of words]). Anyways, I nominate it because of its In-game compatability and adaptability. And the fact that it has such a beautifull skyline and marina, plus senic islands and hills. Overall, Seattle impresses me more than any other city because of its history, (think TWO WORLD FAIRS) and its Beauty.

[the7trumpets 10]

Date: 5/28/2004 11:24:46 PM
Author:

I don't have excel so can't use the file. This really sucks...lol. Oh well.

quote>

Sorry about that dolphin66, here is the same file in HTML format.

[brett_131 0]

Date:5/27/2004 11:24:32 PM
Author:brett_131

Edmonton Alberta Canada has a population of about 1 000 000 people.  It has a good amount of industry, a good skyline, and mostly middle class residents (with a fair amount of wealthy, and some poor). 

It is fairly isolated except for a few satellite communities, and doesnt'blend in' to other cities like New York does to the whole Northeast.  The largest city close to Edmonton is Calgary, about 300 km south of Edmonton.

VOTE EDMONTON!!!

If you wanna see some pics, check out TJD's thread in the CIty Journals 'The City of EDMONTON

quote>

Edmonton also is a grid, perfect grid downtown but in the ourside of the city / suburbs you get the grid with the main roads with lots of random stuff in between.

TWO airports in the Edmonton Area....one in the city, mostly used for private jets, cargo and any air-ambulances coming in to the city from elsewhere (U of A hospital one of the finest in the world)...the International Airport is located outside of the city...it services commercial and some cargo flights

The University of Alberta Campus is one of the finest in the world.  The U of A area has about 60 000 people living and working in it at any given time...located just across the river from downtown

Downtown Edmonton is beatiful, many park area and plazas.  The river valley is the largest area of park within a city...in total it is over 40 times bigger than New York City's Central Park

 

[davidhogan 1]

i can't believe i'm suggesting this, but Sioux Falls, SD?

 

http://www.siouxfalls.org

 

Their web site has a good amount if info, it's isolated, has trains, I-90 and I-29 cross in it, and it looks like it's got a good amount of medium density.

 

And it only seems to have small square shaped cemetaries, which might help with re-creating it.

 

Seriously though, it's got a great looking road layout, big airport and golf course nearby, it'd probably make a great SimCity.

 

Dave

[Avstime 0]

I would go for denver colorado...

it is the largest metropolitan area within a radius the size of europe!
2 million people live in the mile high city, Denver has 3 stadiums several 800 foot megaliths and one of the most beautiful skylines in the world with the rocky mountains behind......the city has huge factories and tall skyscrapers in the downtown area and a large suburban community of small middle class housing surrounding the downtown for many miles....... denver is probably one of the better cities in the United States

[dolphin66 5]

Thanks 7trumpets. I appreciate the new file. It looks like we have about 10 good cities to vote from. I think this should tun into a poll now but I will wait for 7trumpets to comment on it.

 

We have:

Fresno, CA

Denver, CO

Edmondton

Seattle, WA

 

I will have to come back and edit this to add more after I study the list. My two favorites right now would be Seattle or Denver. As soon as 7trumpets ok's it, we'll turn this iinto a poll and pick a winning city. We still need more city builders so please if you want to help out with this project, lets us know.

[DonD13 0]

Actually, looking more closely at Chicago, it definitely looks like too big of a challenge, as we would seriously need to model the area from Milwaukee, WI, to Gary, IN, and as far west as Aurora, to include the majority of people who work in the Chicago area. This would be a region almost 200km by 100km, for a total of 20,000 square km, or 1250 large city maps. By the time we finished SC5 will have come out and we would have to start over.

I will change my vote to Seattle, WA because it looks like a nice city, and has most of the requirements as well as being big enough to generate skyscrapers galore I agree that we should vote and decide on a city soon so we can get started modelling.

[joerg 280]

Its going to be very hard to find a small enough city with a subway or any kind of mass transit for that matter. And pretty much anything on the US's eastern seaboard has 2 major cities right next door to it.  Also i would suggest Vegas but it is far to dependant on a zone type we dont have. And Seattle is just to big to recreate you would need to do the other side of puget sound, tacoma, olympia, seattle, everett, and about 20 suburbs of seattle not to mention the fact that vacouver is only an hour or 2 away.

 

Also i like alot of the Canadian cities for a task like this but to my knoweledge alot of the cities in the just under a million range have very little mass transit. And then as far as europe goes there are people who commute between coutries every day there much less between cities.

 

I think our best bet is going to be Western US, Russia, Austrailia, and Canada

 

So for the western US we have Sandiego, LA, San Fran/Oak/Jose, Sacremento, Portland, Seattle/Tacoma/Olypia.

For russia i cant really name alot of cities but i do know moscow has a subway and i think St petersburge might aswell.

For Aus there is Perth, Sydney, Melbourn, Gold Coast, and a few others all of which are fairly isolated and have a good mix of wealth.

Also we might consider an Island Nation or state.

 

And lastly we could do a series of smaller towns until we find a mix of mods that works to simulate all of them well.

[davidhogan 1]

Date:5/31/2004 2:14:29 AM

So for the western US we have Sandiego, LA, San Fran/Oak/Jose, Sacremento, Portland, Seattle/Tacoma/Olypia.

quote>

 

To do LA or San Diego you'd need to do at least LA, Orange, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Riverside, San Bernardino, Imperial and Ventura counties to even cover most of the commuters to those cities. 

 

I know people who commute from San Diego to LA every day, and I used to do it twice a week.  It'd be at least as bad, if not worse, than trying to re-create NYC once you take the fact most of LA and SD's non-urban areas are built on hills, completely off-grid.

 

As the last factor eliminating them, San Diego is almost as dependent on tourism as Vegas, as well as Anaheim (suburb of LA) with Disney.  We can't accurately re-create the tourist traffic that LA/SD get, and it's a significant part of the traffic problems San Diego at least faces.

 

Add in border traffic and commuters from Mexico and we'd need to rebuild Tiajana too, it's only 15 miles from San Diego.  There's actually a significant number of people who work in Mexico for US owned businesses and live in the US, and Mexicans that work in the US.

 

Basically, as much as I'd love to see my home done, Southern California can't be re-created as an effective traffic model without building up about a 200 mile (south to nouth) replica of Northern Baja California and Southern California.

 

Wow, never thought I'd have that many reasons NOT to use SoCal.

 

Dave

[antp 0]

Date: 5/28/2004 11:24:46 PM
Author:

I don't have excel so can't use the file. This really sucks...lol. Oh well.

quote>

I do not have it either, but I have OpenOffice.org which is free and which allows to open Excel, Word & PowerPoint files : http://www.openoffice.org

[mikeyb66 30]

This looks like a very interesting project and that's why I would like to be part of it, it would be good to work with you again t7t.

I propose that we base our city on Plymouth, Devon UK. Plymouth is a very self contained city with a population of around 350,000 all located within a small area. I have set up this website with a bit of info on Plymouth and why it would make a good choice. Please take a look and let me know what you think. Sorry the pics are old, i'll try and find some new ones.

[eppisgood 6]

My vote would be for Seattle.  It's going to be hard to find a city that doesn't have a lot of suburbs or a big city nearby (ie LA to SD or the East Coast).  Seattle has Vancouver a few hours away and Tacoma to the south by an hour or two depending on traffic, but there isn't any serious major (1+ million) commuting down I-5 like there is from LA to Orange County to San Diego, etc.  So mainly the commute times would be from Seattle to Bellevue-Kirkland-Redmond-Mercer Island, Des Moines-Seatac-Kent (en route to Tacoma), and Edmonds-Kenmore-Mountlake Terrace.  Which is less than a commute than cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Houston attract.

 

Plus Seattle has a great skyline, busy industrial waterfront, a huge lake, and a diversification of wealth levels.  As an example, the area that would be mapped would be from Tukwila in the south, to Redmond in the east, to Edmonds in the north with Puget Sound bordering on the west.

 

[DonD13 0]

Date: 5/31/2004 2:14:29 AM
Author:

Its going to be very hard to find a small enough city with a subway or any kind of mass transit for that matter. And pretty much anything on the US's eastern seaboard has 2 major cities right next door to it.

quote>

I agree. We may need to consider starting with a smaller city that only has buses and maybe passenger rail. If, for example, we chose a city like my hometown of Peoria, IL, with a metro area of around 400k or so and around 16km square (16 large maps or 64 medium), we could finish the model in a few weeks with only the modelers we already have. The only problem is the lack of subway/elevated rail/monorail/intra-metro passenger rail, which I suspect is the case with most self contained smallish cities like this.

There may be a happy medium somewhere in between there. I don't necesarrily think that large, spread out metropolitan areas are a problem other than the time it takes to individually model the various cities. Since this project is based on accurately representing what happens in a real city, I don't think we should exclude sprawling low density cities unless we don't want the game to be able to realisitcally simulate these types of cities as well as the skyscraper jungles many of us have created. If this project is going to be truly successfull, we will need to model several different types of cities, some with gobs of mass transit, and some based on mostly roads and highways. With that in mind, I don't think it is crucial that our first project-city have ALL the types of mass transit.

Just some thoughts I've been pondering, slap me if I'm not making any sense

Don

[whateverwhatever24 0]

Ok, in my opinion, the best city to do would be Perth, Australia. Its on the Western Coast of Australia, far far away from any other cities, (at least 1000 km). Another city that would do is Adelaide. Canberra is my final suggestion. It is the capital of Australia. It has about 400k in the whole area, and is mainly suburb. The city is in a very good location, in the mountains. Consider it a lower, smaller Denver. The closest major city is Sydney, which is a 3 hour drive. It is centered around Lake Burley Griffin, a man made lake. The entire civic center was well planned out, as are the suburbs. The city was designed in response to the fighting between Sydney and Melbourne over who the capital of Australia should be. It has a some high rises, the largest being about 25 stories. Vote for Canberra, Perth or Adelaide!

[wraith90 1]

I say that we should use Vancouver B.C. in Canada becaus there is an already to scale map avaliable on the exchange, meets all of the requierments like skyscrappers and a subway/elevated rail (sky train)  and the map also has alll the places that people commute from.  The only thing that i can see that wouold be a hinderence is that part of the downtown is on a diagonal.

[Fairlane500 8]

Date:5/31/2004 1:44:13 PM
Author:eppisgood

 As an example, the area that would be mapped would be from Tukwila in the south, to Redmond in the east, to Edmonds in the north with Puget Sound bordering on the west.

 

 

quote>

I'd say you would have to extend it south to Kent or Auburn though (the daily traffic on 167), but that would be the limit. I truly think tou could create Seattle. It uses many of the elements that are given to you in SimCity, and if you look closely in the Rush Hour manual, you will see that Maxis created a replica region of Seattle, including my hometown of Newcastle!!

Slayerovsims:

Don't forget Renton airport, where Boeing build 737s, without it, Renton wouldn't be what it is, and neither would Boeing.

[goldiva 86]

Nice idea...my suggestion...

 

[1] Sydney, because it has:

 

- vibrant waterfront incl. ferry, port, navy base and [i believe] world's largest per capita private boat ownership

- grid

- monorail, aboveground rail, rail, subway, highway

- central parks, clear zoning

- combo of modern high rise and old buildings

- generic modern western city looks [chosen as the film Matrix's backdrop]

- mixed commerical + residential + industrial

 

downside: pop at 4 mil maybe too big/dense for this experiment

 

------

 

[2] Singapore, because it has

 

- vibrant waterfront - Australian style bayfront developement and world's second busiest port, manmade floating industrial park

- grid

- monorail, aboveground rail, rail, subway, highway

- central parks, clear zoning

- generic modern buildings - nice mix of high rises

- compact: commerical + residential + industrial within small radius

 

whole island city state pop = 4 mil, quite spread out, about 2 mil in center

 

[dolphin66 5]

I know that 7trumpets is really busy right now and he's the one that started this thread. I have had to reformat my computer so as soon as I redownload the city file and look through all posts, I will create a poll and we can all vote for our favorite city. I guess let it run for a week or so and see what city is a favorite. We also need more volunteers. Hopefully 7trumpets will get back to this thread soon. I think it would be awesome if someday we could create an entire state. I know, thats a really big dream but if this project works, why not???

Goldiva: will you be one of our batters?? Please!!

[+Guest]

About the whole east coast thing, the area as a whole may be all urbanized, but honestly, to commute from, say, Boston to NYC or Philadelphia to Baltimore would be near suicide.

[davidhogan 1]

Date:6/1/2004 9:40:57 PM
Author:iamrobk

About the whole east coast thing, the area as a whole may be all urbanized, but honestly, to commute from, say, Boston to NYC or Philadelphia to Baltimore would be near suicide.

quote>

totally not relevant to this discussion.  the problem is where do we stop re-creating, at what perfect point to we pick up enough of the commuters to Phillidelphia, but none of the ones that go to NYC?

the point is that the east coast mega-opolis is useless for this reason, just like most of florida, southern california, dallas-ft worth, the greater chicago area, etc.

there's just too many commuters that can go either way to choose an edge, we need a city with clear edges.  that's the point of it.

dave

[dolphin66 5]

Well, I have gone through the list and these are the cities that could realistically be done:

Chicago 2 votes
Portland-Vancover 4 votes
Seattle 6 votes
Pheonix 3 votes
San Fransico 2 votes
Baltimore 1 vote
Pittsburg 1 vote
Albuquerque 1 vote
Corpus Christi 0 votes
Dallas 1 vote
New York 3 votes
Salem Oregon 0 votes
Nashville 1 vote
Raliegh-Durham NC 0 votes
Denver 1 vote
St. Louis 2 votes

Now with that said, there are other cities but these are the ones most mentioned in this thread. To start this as a poll, I would have to start a new thread and since 7trumpets started it, I won't do that unless he gives the ok. Anyone that has already put in a city for nomination, you don't need to vote again unless you change your mind. I will go back through and tally what we have so far. Do we have anymore volunteers than what we have on the first page? If your name isn't on the list and want to be included, please say so or PM 7trumpets. All I am trying to do is get this thing going and help 7trumpets since he is so busy. I don't mod or bat so I can't take the lead on this project. I can however get a city so everyone vote for your favorite city!!!!

EDIT: I went through the thread and tallied the votes up. Some members suggested several so I didn't add those. So pick your favorite city and vote!!! Remember to take into consideration, population, size, transportation and grid.

[mayormaddness 0]

Hey 7 I'm really looking foward to this project, and want to see what come out of it. I for one would really like to see the great city of chicago, but i know you'll be there forever building it, becuase i have. I haven't eeven finished all of the CTA subway lines and I've been working on the city for about 2-3 months now. I still need:

Red Line south- Garfield to 95th

Greeen Line- 51st to East 63rd & Cottage Grove(on the 63rd ST. Branch) and 51st to Ashland/63rd(On the ashland branch)

Blue Line- Harlem to O'Hare Airport

Purple Line- South Blvd to Linen

From there out all the other lines are finished. Every line does make it to the famous LOOP which looks alright in my game. I'll try and post it up sometime soon.

[the7trumpets 10]

Sorry for beong away, dolphin66 is right, things have been insane in real life.

 

In any case, as much as I, and many others, would like to do Seattle, I think it is simply too large.  Below is a mapquest image with grids placed every 4km (large city tiles).  I have highlighted the very minimum we would need to model, and it still comes out to over 300 large cities:

 

 

 

 

 

For refference, here is a symilar map image of Vancouver, with the same scale.  This only requires about 150 large cities, and that is after extending the area into more rural areas than the Seattle map:

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion:  Like I said, I would like to do Seattle just like many of you, but it is still too large.  Perhaps if we are successful at this first city, we'll launch another larger city, but we need to stay relatively small for now.  I'm in the process of going through to make a list of cities which are doable.  At first glance, it looks like the best options may be Canadian or Australian.  Why?  These cities (with the exception of Sydney, Melbourne, and a handfull of the large Canadian cities) seem to be small enough to be within the scope, but still have some mass transit.  If we were to pick an american city, in order to choose one which is isolated enough, it will have a smaller population (100,000-250,000), and not have any mass transit.

 

I'm not opposed to doing something without mass transit, but it seems that if we can find an option which has some, and is still a good candidate, we'll kill two birds with one stone.

 

The only other thing to consider is how easy the cities are to build.  American cities will be more friendly to SC4 tile limitations, with many mid-west and western cities already being based on a north-south and east-west facing grid.  For that reason, we might want to favor a city which has a rough grid system.  For instance, mikeyb66's suggestion of plymoth, England is a great suggestion as far as size and scope goes, but its streets are simply not sc4-friendly.  It's still entirely possible, there just aren't as many opportunities to use avenues and oneway roads, and it would take longer to build per unit area because of the complex curves in the streets.

 

 

So, I continue my search for a 50 square kilometer area which has subway, el-train, heavy rail, some sort of grid structure, is very isolated, has suburbs, farms, and downtown, etc etc.  Obviously we're going to have to compromise, and many of us (myself included) are going to have to yield on our desires for the whole group to be able to construct something larger than ourselves.

 

I'll have that list of cities hopefully soon.  Thanks again for all the support, and do PM me if you want to be a city builder.

[dolphin66 5]

Yea, Chicago might be too big of a project to start out with. Hopefully we will get more votes and interest soon so we can pick a city.

 

EDIT: I have an idea. Why don't we start with Vancover and if that works, we can do Portland next and then figure out how to merge them into one big region.?

[davidhogan 1]

Date: 6/2/2004 11:45:29 AM
Author:

Yea, Chicago might be too big of a project to start out with. Hopefully we will get more votes and interest soon so we can pick a city.

EDIT: I have an idea. Why don't we start with Vancover and if that works, we can do Portland next and then figure out how to merge them into one big region.?

quote>

I think we'd need to do Seattle before Portland, but it isn't a bad idea to just keep expanding the project. Worst case we end up with all of British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington State modeled.

It might take forever, but who knows how many people might be willing to grab up a city and do it if it was mostly farms and a small town?

I'll do what I can to rebuild cities, and really with more rural areas I could probably knock out a few large maps a week if they didn't have more than 500 people on them. Downtown Seattle wouldn't be done in a week though.

I think we'll find that as we get outside of the densly populated areas, we'll be able to keep things moving quickly.

Dave

[the7trumpets 10]

For some reason posting this chart in rich text is not working. Sorry for the formatting, but here it is in plain text. If you make your window wide enough, it should all line up correctly:




Okay, after going through all of the cities in that excel file (eek!!!), I think I have found the ones which are doable considering the size and proximity to other populated areas. Some will obviously be easier than others, and some will be more rewarding than others. Regaurdless of what we decide, we need to work as a team.

Here is a chart of the US metropolitan areas which would work for our purposes. It should be noted that the sq km area quoted is quite liberal. The US census bearau splits almost the entire US into metro areas, so for cities which are more removed from neighboring cities, the land area appears to be much larger than we would have to model in actuality. Look at Tucson, AZ for an example. In general, if the pop per Sq km is less than 120, the land area we would have to model is less than what you see quoted. In most cases, the area quoted is about 4 times the area we would have to model, but some cities like Tucson are much smaller than 6,000 square km.



pop per pop per
Population Sq.Km. Sq.Mi. Sq.Km. Sq.Mi. City State

1249822 7954.3 3071.2 157.1 407 Indianapolis, IN
1239842 9694.3 3743 127.9 331.2 Portland, OR
1162093 8750.5 3378.6 132.8 344 Charlotte, NC
1072227 4189.3 1617.5 255.9 662.9 Salt Lake City-Ogden UT
985026 10549.2 4073.1 93.4 241.8 Nashville, TN
981747 5964.9 2303 164.6 426.3 Memphis, TN-AR-MS
958839 11000.8 4247.4 87.2 225.7 Oklahoma City, OK
952662 5869.1 2266.1 162.3 420.4 Louisville, KY-IN
907810 10312.6 3981.7 88 228 Birmingham, AL
865640 7626.9 2944.7 113.5 294 Richmond-Petersburg, VA
781572 7230.5 2791.7 108.1 280 Austin, TX
735480 5221.3 2015.9 140.9 364.8 Raleigh-Durham, NC
734175 7355.3 2839.9 99.8 258.5 Scranton--Wilkes-Barre, PA
708954 12988.7 5014.9 54.6 141.4 Tulsa, OK
667490 15444.7 5963.2 43.2 111.9 Fresno, CA
666880 23794.3 9187 28 72.6 Tucson, AZ
659864 6188.9 2389.5 106.6 276.1 Syracuse, NY
618262 4963.8 1916.5 124.6 322.6 Omaha, NE-IA
604816 7186.4 2774.7 84.2 218 Knoxville, TN
587986 5156.4 1990.9 114 295.3 Harrisburg, PA
528264 4109.1 1586.5 128.6 333 Baton Rouge, LA
513117 7533.3 2908.6 68.1 176.4 Little Rock AR
506875 6712.6 2591.8 75.5 195.6 Charleston, SC
485270 7686.7 2967.8 63.1 163.5 Wichita, KS
480577 3020.4 1166.2 159.1 412.1 Albuquerque, NM
476923 7329.4 2829.9 65.1 168.5 Mobile, AL
453331 3774.5 1457.4 120.1 311.1 Columbia, SC


...post continued below dolphin66's post...

[dolphin66 5]

The file is not attached to your post....

 

EDIT: I forgot to mention...I would love to see us start with Vancouver BC and if that works, start adding the surrounding cities...Vancouver Wa, Portland, Spokane...maybe a state by state region...that would be so cool. I know, huge ambitions.

[the7trumpets 10]

...continued from post above...

In addition to these, the best Australian, UK, and Canadian options seem to be:

Perth
Brisbane

Vancouver, BC
Quebec, QC ***new***

Plymouth, Devon, UK

Perth, Brisbane, and Vancouver seem to be about the same size population wise as Porland. I'm not sure about Plymouth.

So, let's discuss the pros/cons of the above cities only for a few days, and then I'll put up a poll thread. If those more familliar with non-US cities could post info where we can get good street maps and sattelite images, that would be great, since we'll need a source for that info in order to complete the project.

My personal thoughts:

Given the fact that Perth, Brisbane, and Vancouver have mass transit (el tran/subway systems), I think we should either opt for one of those three cities, or choose a smaller US city that is based on a grid and easy to build like Tulsa, Tucson, or Albequerque. While doing Indianapolis or Portland would be fun, it would be a lot more work than a smaller city, and we would not be able to test mass transit as easily. We would have to construct a 'realistic' mass transit system, where there are no more than 2 subway stops per small city square in the city, and no more than 1 subway stop per medium city square in the suburbs. I have found a great site http://www.urbanrail.net , which has maps and info on almost all subway/eltrain mass transit systems in the world. In general, stops seem to be about every 800 meters in the city and every 1500-2000 meters in the suburbs. But, I'm getting beyond the scope.

The question is, what advantages/disadvantages do you see of the above cities? Let's get some thoughts out there for the rest of this week and I'll put a poll up this weekend.