The American Dream

[Infrastructurist 434]

The American Dream follows the city of Crescent, a big, sprawling, segregated and troubled city located along the Atlantic shore of the state of Georgia, USA - south of Savannah, GA, and north of Jacksonville, FL. The series depicts a city desperate for inner-city revitalization, crime reduction, urban investments & infrastructure upgrades. Loss of industry, manufacturing jobs and the subsequent white flight, as well as a race riot, took a heavy toll on much of the urban core of Crescent.

The Crescent City Council will be the main catalyst for change, and consists of all those of you willing to take part in the coming votes and thereby help shape the city and it's prospects.
 

"In episode #1, we start by placing down much of the road network that encompasses the several Downtown districts of Crescent, before filling out much of the eastern part of Downtown with a mixture of gorgeous historic buildings, arguably less gorgeous office skyscrapers, parking lots, dilapidated blocks and civic buildings. A modern budget-overrunning train station connects the city to the Silver Service route of Amtrak. 

We also briefly touch on the current issues facing a city with an almost archetypal contemporary US urban problem; large swaths of inner-city areas in bad shape, mangled by closing industries, suburban flight, inappropriate highway construction and crime"
 

Thanks for watching and feel free to jump over to the community tab on my YouTube and participate in the vote!

Imgur album full of goodies; https://imgur.com/a/jNX1L


 

[K141 19]

$%&^!! Your Cj's are always insanely detailed. And I love how gritty the setting for this one is. I can't really express how much I enjoy these, tbh.

[Infrastructurist 434]

"In episode #2, we place the Paul Brown stadium, a +66.000 capacity NFL ground with a controversial history. Much of the land it occupies in the northwestern part of Downtown, more specifically the Autumn Park neighbourhood, used to consist of a big primarily poor, African-American community. More than 4000 people where displaced due to the demolition work needed to make room for not just the stadium but also vast surface parking lots."
 

 

[Infrastructurist 434]

"In episode #3, we extend Crescent to the north, building the historical primarily black middle-class suburb 'Carter'. Carter is a bit unique in the sense that despite being among the inner-city layer of blue-collar suburbs that where usually very prone to decay during post-WWII de-industrialization, white flight and suburbanization, it has in fact remained a decent middle-class neighbourhood throughout the hardships of Crescent.

One important factor in this has been the continuous resilience of the local community, which organized efforts to curb rising crime rates and overall deterioration of similar mainly blue-collar inner-city suburbs. Carter was perceived almost as a natural extension of Downtown before the Interstate system separated the two in the 1960's and 1970's.

Today it is a mix of detached houses, old mid-rise commercial, small pockets of row-houses and industry/manufacturing. We also build a church, an elementary school and a high school as well as several relatively modern residential developments."

 

 

[Infrastructurist 434]

"In episode #4, we move eastwards from Downtown Crescent, building the poor, dilapidated neighbourhood of River East. We start off with creating some highway off ramps, a bridge and some now defunct freight railways. A historical blue-collar neighbourhood, River East was devastated by the massive loss of industry, manufacturing and railway related work in the area, and has never recovered."

 

[Infrastructurist 434]

 

"In episode #5, we finish up Downtown Crescent by completing the most western reach of the area. The western part of Downtown is a mixed bag of industry, mainly warehouse based manufacturing with former freight rail traffic, a historic row-house neighbourhood as well as a large park featuring a lake, big old trees and a public stage/amphitheater which was used extensively during the civil rights movement. We also add some very early public housing, through the notorious towers of Waterfront Court - famous for it's hiphop artists and culture."

 

 

[Infrastructurist 434]

"In episode #6, We don't care too much about realism but just want some good ol' highway interchange spaghetti bolognese. We convert the big 3-way Interstate interchange into a 4-way one with a web of off and on ramps, allowing easy access to Downtown Crescent and it's surrounding inner-city suburbs , industrial areas and districts. We finish it up with a small neighbourhood. Hope you enjoy!"

 

 

[Infrastructurist 434]

We got issues in Crescent! Looting, small-scale rioting and the escalation of seemingly random violence in River East threatens to dismay potential investors from proposing new developments in Downtown! The Crescent Police Department have hinted at employing harsher measures; how does the city council react?

You can get all the details at my most recent post on my blog!;

https://infrastructurist.weebly.com/

[Infrastructurist 434]

"In episode #7, we conduct a large scale suburban expansion of Crescent, building three suburbs stretching north and northeast from Downtown, and marking the transition from inner-city suburbs. We build a kindergarten, an elementary school, a baptist church and a big mid-rise residential apartment complex with plentiful parking lots. Making sure roads align on each side of the highway/interstate to represent the divide said highways created upon being constructed during the late 1960's and early 1970's."

 

 

[Infrastructurist 434]

I added some high-quality pictures mostly from the area I just built here; https://infrastructurist.weebly.com/  

[Infrastructurist 434]

"Had a number of requests in the last few episodes of a tour/general overview of Crescent, as our city is expanding quite fast! So, here's a 10 minute uninterrupted city tour of every corner of Downtown as well as the suburbs we have currently built. Thus, we inspect industrial, residential, commercial, offices, railways and small freight-yards (Huge freight yards will come!), plenty of parking lots and trees."

 

[Infrastructurist 434]

"In episode #8, a major Downtown lot owned by the city is bought by the Viridian Family, and the construction of the new branch of the Viridian Business and Technology Institute commences. Instead of merely placing the finished product, I opted for creating a large construction site, as I want to become better at making those. Good fun, but challenging and I am sure it is riddled with mistakes and dangerous decisions!

Anyway, after that we move our attention to a large empty area east of Downtown, and fill it in with a low-income neighbourhood including some god awful public housing."

 

 

[Infrastructurist 434]

"In episode #9, we move west of Downtown, building some low-density neighbourhoods while mainly focusing on creating realistic looking commercial establishments along the Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. These developments are themselves rather small, but their footprint is big because of the extensive parking lots attached to them. A pretty typical scenery in many US cities. We also build a manufacturing business, some subsidized apartments and a school."

 

[Infrastructurist 434]

"we kick off some true suburbian living by placing down Crescent's first mall, built back in the 1960's as an enclosed version with a single main anchor store. Lying north of Downtown, in the first layers of middle-class suburbs, Skyland Mall has managed to stay afloat despite a few things working against it; it is enclosed, which quickly lost popularity, and it is old, being located not far from deprecated low-income suburbs. Being close to closing down in the early 2000's, it has since had an interior renovation and slowly regained traction. We also build a very early suburban office park, which sprung up during the 1970's, offering an office refuge from the surely deteriorating conditions in Downtown."

 

 

Hope you guys enjoy 

[Infrastructurist 434]

"In episode #11, implementation of a bus system moves much closer, as we create a huge expansion of the city across the main river, right across from Downtown Crescent. A mixed area with industry, suburbs, old commercial buildings, empty lots, a baseball stadium and a mall. There's lots of possibilities in this area, but how to exploit them properly? Infrastructure wise, we kick off with a few additional highway ramps, to connect the interstate system with this side of the river, besides the main bridge.

The editing / jumping around in shots might be a little erratic. This long episode was recorded during several smaller stints due to time restraints at the moment. Hope you all enjoy nonetheless!"

 

[Infrastructurist 434]

"In episode #12, We build a bit of everything in order to get back into the grove of things - after a pretty long absence from the game! In detail, we fill up the remaining empty areas just west of Downtown Crescent, with different commercial establishments, a few offices, a public housing project offering luxurious living and broken aircons. We also embark on a bit of road detailing! Overall a very 'relaxed' and somewhat eventless episode, but hope you guys enjoy it nonetheless :o)"