Hello,

I'm Zaydan. I'm 17. I'm still on high school. I'm passionate at SimCity 4 and city planning in general since 2017. I'm currently a modest player and aiming to be a professional in 2024 and the top of Simtropolis in 2025/2026. I don't think my age is the barrier to be a pro in SimCity 4. It's the opposite, the younger yourself, the higher the accomplishment, especially today. I think it's more extraordinary to be a young SimCity 4 player than let's say a young RPG player since the latter is certainly exist while the former isn't.

I think city planning is an underrated field compared to let's say, economics. Many people stated if you want to be successful, you must to be a YouTuber, an economist, a salesperson, a TikToker, a designer, an architect, an engineer, a trader, a businessman, etc. There's nothing wrong with those professions, but certainly being a city planner is out of the list. That's the problem. A real study has been shown that tech jobs are paid starting from staggering 6 figures, enough to buy a 1 million flat or mansion depending where you live, afford to buy a dream car, being a millionaire, and most importantly, the access to high-quality healthcare and education which in the US is quite expensive. In contrast, being a city planner only gets you $60K per year, which if you live in California, it isn't a pleasant experience due to high cost of living. You can only afford a half million flat/house, standard car, and struggling to pay healthcare and education, at least in the US. Ironically the closest profession, designer and architect, are paid extremely well compared to city planner.

I want to change this. I want to use city planning to change the society for the better. Imagine a city which you need to use car for 3 hours to just to the office and there's a jam. Your time's lost. Your productivity's lost. Your money's lost to buy a gas/petrol and late to work. You're being likely to be far from the family. That's not a pleasant experience. Now, imagine a city which you can work within 5 minutes just walking. No need for cars. No need for gas/petrol. You'll have more time with family, friends, and maybe this community. Your money is intact. Your productivity is even higher than stuck in the jam. That's a dream for all of you. That's why city planners are needed to address the issues above and beyond.

From this point and so on, city planners shouldn't be underrated. They're behind the charm of the cities. They're behind should we use cars or public transport. They're behind our savings on expenses, especially regarding commute. They're even behind on how are the best mix of clean and dirty power, for example. They're behind the success of flood prevention along with hydrologists and engineers. They're also behind the beautiful city blocks that we loved along with landscape architects. They should be as respected as architects, engineers, designers, etc. Even being a mayor/governor requires some sort of city planning knowledge since without it, the job of mayor would be just signing off the legislations and it wouldn't be an active one, which is the key to keep the trust from the citizens and keep them elected for a while. Though fortunately, many people acknowledge the existence of city planners due to their impacts on the mainstream, such as the rising cost of housing due to a law and the pressure from environmentalists to build a low-to-no carbon electric high speed rail than let's say slow diesel trains or even airplanes.

Okay, let's talk about my region. So, my region is located in a slightly higher than the sea level in a tropical area. It means no harbor to build a port. Fortunately the region is assumed to have some land outside the border so we can hook up our neighbor connection to the "outside" world to trade goods and services. Also, the region is quite mountainous though there's quite plenty of plains so we can make a reasonable sized civilization here. There are also some lakes and rivers to supply water to the region, making the possibility of reasonable sized civilization higher.

There are 2 cities in this region: effective. Power and Fairview Town. Let's talk about Fairview Town. The etymology is quite simple, the region name plus town which means it would be a small city. Fairview offers a plain separated by a mountain range with some lakes on the right side. The area is quite forest-filled so we have to make a sacrifice to build a civilization, though it's not the end of the world since we have a mountain with trees on it. Another city is effective. Power. The etymology is quite interesting. I was scrolling thru my YouTube front page and I found a video which contains an iOS bug called effective power bug. The bug is triggered thru a text starting "effective. Power". The bug is quite interesting since they can crash the recipient device but not on the level of constant brick or even data erasure since they're triggered by showing on a notification shade sometimes.

My aim for those cities are to be a developed city, has wide range of mobility options, beautiful not only from the ground but also from the sky, has a really good social support, can fulfill the happiness of my citizens, democratic, environmentally concious,  charming, and profitable. The last one is quite a bit controversial and a good thing at the same time. It's controversial because shortcuts would be taken especially at the beginning, for instance allowing dirty industry to grow. But it's also a good thing because it can allows the cities to do whatever they want, for instance building an airport. It also means that the form of the government won't be a monarchy, instead it's led by a mayor. Although the cities are ruled by mayors, we'll strive to fulfill all the citizens' needs much like a good monarch.

Speaking of workflow, I'm going to use Git for my region and raw screenshots. It's going to be hosted locally on my laptop and it's not a replacement of backups. Instead, Git is used to provide a version control system to my savegames and my raw images. Why am I versioning my files? Because if mistakes happened, I can just roll back to the version I want. Backups are still important to provide redundancy and maybe to fix some Git-irrecoverable errors. Also, I'm using XnConvert to convert my raw PNGs into JPGs which Simtropolis can be happily hosting of them. This time, the resolution isn't converted to be flexible with images with different sizes like the region (with jurisdictions) images. Original files will be available thru Google Drive to prevent quality loss, especially for hi-res region images.

I won't start my city immediately after this entry. Instead I'll review the geology and hydrology of my region. Those things are important to the realism of the city. That's it for now. And I'll see you in the next time.