solarpunk What's this?
When we think about cities of tomorrow, we tend to think of something big, strange and epic. We usually tend to think of huge metropolises populated by robots and cyborgs, with plenty of buildings so tall that their height can only be measured by kilometers, with flying cars soaring around the sky, holographic advertisements everywhere selling various stuff, and highways larger than all the modern highways combined. When we try to imagine how the cities of the future would look like, we tend to think of Coruscant, Los Angeles from Blade Runner, the Mega Cities of Judge Dredd, and @2ch.net simplayer's Zanapolis. In other words, a modern city on steroids where everything is possible, and not always in a good way.
Of course those predictions look cool and badass, and they work as warnings of what we might get if we let problems like overpopulation, pollution, poverty, scarcity and wars unsolvable and uncontrollable. But they're also very mainstream, so let's try something different for once. How about humble cities of tomorrow, with smaller but more efficient buildings and infrastructures, electric cars guided by computers, green energy sources like nuclear fusion, and a system of values way different than the one we have today? How about an eco-friendly, post-scarcity civilization, blessed with both a high level of technology and a high level of living standards for everybody, while having its environmental footprint as low as possible? In other words, how about a story that inspires you to do something instead of warns you what not to do, showing a future way more different than we have in our mind?
Now that's something you don't see very often, right? 
There are very few futuristic city journals here in Simtropolis, and most of them have this classic, high-tech, cyberpunk feeling we all know and love, with huge buildings populated by creepy cyborgs, titanic infrastructures that laugh at ours, epic spacecrafts covering the skies, and not a single bird or tree to have around. All those are cool, but let's try something different. How about a city journal that's still futuristic but in a much different way, emphasizing this time not on cyberpunk, but on a new movement named "solarpunk"? Solarpunk is a new -punk that shows a positive vision of the future, this time with green cities that has more trees than buildings, renewable energy sources, eco-friendly technologies, and a high living standard and spiritual level for everybody. Solarpunk is not technophobic, and was made as a reaction to cyberpunk and its dystopian visions of the future. It's not utopian though. Utopia mean perfection, and perfection doesn't exist at all. It's eutopian, which means it's something better but still plausible. While not as adventurous as cyberpunk, solarpunk can still provide us with plenty of stories, adventures and visions to explore. And this city journal is going to explore one of them.
So... welcome to Fairview. Fairview is one of those maps made by the Maxis team available into the game to play with. In this very small map we'll be building our eco-friendly civilization. The goal and challenge here is to build cities that provides the highest standard to everybody with the minimum impact to the environment. This means application of ecological technologies and strategies, plenty of green belts, and no excessive terraforming. So don't expect huge infrastructures and epic cities here that devours the natural landscape. Right now Fairview is an empty canvas without a single tree, but we'll fix it very soon.
Not only the map is very small, it also has plenty of small tiles and only a few medium ones, some of which can only be colonized by excessive terraforming, which is out of question. We're not going to built on the entire map and our construction options will be limited in order to preserve the environment. Despite its sci-fi nature, don't expect big aerospaceports, huge farms, highways or seaports, but you can still expect AIs, cyborgs and flying cars 
Despite the small size of both the tiles and the map itself, there are still plenty of flat enough areas to build our civilization. Not enough for a futuristic metropolis, but still enough for a small city made by mini towns. Who said that the future must be big?
So how those cities will look like? Because of the environmental limitations and thanks for the flat open spaces, those cities will mostly have low density zones but still provide all the necessaries to the citizens and some more, mixing the best from both worlds, the comforts of the big city with the tranquility of the village. They'll look like these, but a bit bigger...
If small futuristic villages is not your cup of tea, Simtropolis has plenty of awesome city journals to explore. But if you wanted something a bit different and more optimistic, something familiar but still fresh, something advanced and still cozy, welcome to Fairview 
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