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About this City Journal

Originally from the now sunken land of SimPegia. P. R. Crastina is a writer who travels a lot, sometimes to big cities.But she's a country girl at heart.

Entries in this City Journal

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1. Fieldsborough once had fields. Not any more. The city planners have taken Mayor Brownstone's demands very seriously : as little grid as possible ! 2. 3. 4. Although there are still pockets of griddy resistance here and there. 5. Not wanting to be outdone, Aldergrove (where the groves of alders have long since disappeared) also tried its best to comply : 6. Although building diagonally still escapes the vast majority of contractors. 6. There too, as you can see above, a few farms hang on. But it's a...
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Time to resume our little journey in the Mont-Valin region. North-East of Middletown, Agrestan has become a suburb of Mont-Valin, like Middleton and the other towns of the region, now amalgamated under the name of Mont-Valin, with only one Mayor, Arielle Brownstone (remember her ? the anti-grid Mayor.) Like the other cities, it was a quiet agricultural town, more like several hamlets separating big farms. That time has passed. it is now a bona fide town. 1. 2. Agrestan has taken to Mayor Brownstone's...
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1. So, first, after deciding things had got to change in Middletown and its region, Mayor Arielle had herself built a new Mayor House. Not quite Mies Van Der Roe-ish, close to the very orthogonal Downdown, close to the very proper City Hall, but still, it was a clear declaration of intent : let’s get into the XXIst century, people – or at least the XXth ! 2. 3. Then she enticed IKEA to open a store downtown : 4. At that time, the whole eastern part of the city was still fields and woodlands. As many new...
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The Rapture

By tariely,

Well, Folks, the Rapture has come. The Dreaded Black Squares From Outer Photobucket came with their dire warnings and their filthy scissors, and the cities are all invisible now. But they are still there. Their people are still there. P. R. is still there. And P. R. says unto Her People : I'll Be Back.
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But first, thank you for welcoming back here, folks -- mattb325, randyE, kschmidt, dedgren, korver, Artimus, Larry-you-know-who-you-are, all of you who like smaller, more laid back cities ! :-) ********************************** in Middletown, commerce has known spurts of new growth each time new residentials zone were open to construction, eating away at the fields and woodlands. Thus there is no unique big commercial zone but several smaller ones all over town -- which does wonder for traffic, as...
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Once upon a time, Middletown was a resolutely farming town. It can easily be seen when flying over (the next local airport is in Mount-Valin). What can also be seen is that it is not anymore, although farms are valiantly resisting the encroaching residentials, commercials and industrials. 1. 2.Agro-industrials were the first to develop, as usual : 3. 4. 5. And some farms are still doing well : 6. Once the hospital, high school and college were built, and people came flocking from the neighbouring villages,...
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After almost two years of not so frenzied but lonely writing, P. R. Crastina jumped at the opportunity to travel again and meet new people. She’s been invited to the Mount-Valin region, which looks a lot like the place where she comes from : some mountain, some river, some rolling hills & fruitful plains – and lots of trees. Her first stop is Middletown – the first city founded in the region in the XIXth century. It’s the end of a long lazy summer. Last days at the lake for the kids… 1. 2. ...with...
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Poutine City

By tariely,

Among all the cities and towns visited par P. R. in her travels, Poutine City is certainly so far the most un-fancy : a no-nonsense, daily-grind kind of city. Not actually a city in itself but the creeping eastern borough of a larger metropolis, Caraway. Poutine is not even its real name (it is Caraway East), but that’s what the inhabitants call it, because it developped quite quickly and a lot of people had to be housed fast, so the Mayor wanted sturdy : lots of prefabs and concrete buildings jammed...
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One of Thille's quaint trait is that there are not many bridges linking its north and south districts on the Ste-Croix River. But "to link or not to link" is a subject rather tepidly debated at the City Council, as the anti-linking party always end up successfully arguing that, since residential, commercial and industrial zones are judiciously disseminated all over, as well as essential services & utilities, it is not necessary : "Build it and they will come" is not a positive motto around here – not...
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Thille : Blue and Omega

By tariely,

Today, P. R. goes to the Omega Library for a day of reading, lectures and workshops. After which she will relieve the stress with some heavy shopping and fine dining at the Blue Commercial Center. 1. The library is situated in a comparatively quiet part of the city. Its real name is Heywood Library, but its shape inspired some Greek-savvy citizen, and somehow the name stuck. 2. With its adjacent Menines Park and pretty little miniputt, everything is not high-brow-only about it. 3. 4. 5. The Menines Park :...
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Thille : Downtowns

By tariely,

1. There are two downtowns in Thille, one on each bank -- a good thing too, as there are few bridges linking North and South Thille (more about that later). But the real one is on the right bank of the Sainte-Croix river, i.e. North. That's where the big skyscrapers are, harbingers of Things to Come, although they have not replaced all the middle wealth commercials that came before ; some small houses even resist obdurately, but they won't last long (you have to really look for them...) 2. Hey, P. R. found...
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Thille : Old & New

By tariely,

Thille is mostly a modern city now but a few churches hint at its past : The Old Church (Sainte Ermentrude), which was once the main piece of a fortified town, long gone since, and Sainte-Apotolska, built later by the first immigrants in the region (Polish farmers). Sainte-Ermentrude and Sainte-Apostolska were the biggest, in fact the only, towns of the place. They have been absorbed, as all their much smaller sisters, by the growing city. Those churches' proud spires, once the highest buildings in the...
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1.The most striking aspect of Thille now is that almost all citizens walk to work – the Thillois are in very good health ! That was not really intended – industries came flocking in as soon as the airport was built and the city’s father scrambled to house all the people that were flocking in in their wake, with little regards to city planning. (Goober & Sons Architects made a bundle during that period !) But it worked nicely out for everybody. There is very little car traffic and the buses are almost...
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Agriculture in Thille is still going strong and well protected, even though it is slowly gnawed at here and there. The ancient river beds, for instance, are carefully zoned so the residential and commercial encroachments do not become irreparable (and just in case of The Deluge). 1. 2. Close to the heliport (and its commercial and residential development), clean energy in remnant fields : 3. The passenger rail line also stops in the fields: 4.The cows can't play trainspotting but at least they can hear the...
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Thille : Mushroom City

By tariely,

The first time P. R. visited Thille, when she was a kid, it was on the smallish side, a quiet agricultural community of little hamlets, devoted to their fields and pastures. Then it became the dormitory of Strosswald, the nearby, bigger city east of it. But those stretches of flat land also became the target of the region developers : it was the ideal place to put a bigger, more modern airport. And so farmers were bought off or expropriated, amidst much anger, demonstrations and civil disorder. But the...
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1.The youngest Zabnis, groomed to become mayor after her father, is Cora, the Elder Zabnis' grand-daughter, who's been the town's mascot since a very early age. But she's not one for nepotism. She studied successfully as an engineer and landscape designer. She's begun to work for the city in the Park & Recreation Department and is making her way up from the trenches, so to speak -- at some point she worked on the dredging of a few swamps. One she replaced by a small but welcome rustic amusement park in the...
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Among the first settlers, very early on -- we're talking beginning of the Nineteenth Century, here -- there were priests and clerics, as usual. A contemplative order, the Narcissinists (following the rule of Saint Narcissin, an ascetic) built their community in the woods. It lasted about thirty years, then a fire destroyed the Abbey and the pious brothers moved closer to town. But the place is still a touristic attraction and also a magnet for painters and photographs, especially in winter, when the rock...
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Smallville : Agricola

By tariely,

1.Agriculture is still a vibrant economic part of Smalville's economy. In an alluvial plain, the earth is fertile, and once the temperamental rivers and the swamps had been tamed, Smallville became the bread basket of the Eden region. 2.The Country Fair is a year long tourist attraction 3. Rolling fields 4. 5. Smallville is very proud of its big and very efficient water treatment system. 6. However, some farms are being slowly caught up by the creeping urbanization : 7. The local beer, the Zabnis (surprise...
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Since the middle of the Nineteenth Century, there have been several waves of settlement in the Eden Bay region, mostly Europeans. First the French, then the English, then Poles, Ukrainians, Italians... It has trickled down somewhat now, but people are still coming in from all corners of the world, lured by the opportunities and the quality of life in the region. Each wave of immigrants brought its own culture and, in Smallville, it shows in the name of the churches. Of which there are many -- at some...
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1.In Smallville, you generally live close to the place you work in -- and you often go to work on foot, as I said earlier. For some, the early morning jog can be quite picturesque : 2. 3.The construction of the Heliport brought some trouble, concentrating a lot of commercials in the same place, but it was soon resolved by a carefully planed rezoning of the whole town, mixing residentials and commercials. 4. ...but true to their origins, the City Fathers didn't have the county fair rebuilt somewhere else......
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Smallville is not so small. In fact, it's the second most populated city in the region after Eden Bay which is the Real Thing with mucho skyscrapers et al. (its excuse being that it's where the big seaport is ; but you won't get to see it : P. R. 's pictures of it were destroyed in a fatal computer crash). It was already an urban area when her sisters towns were still villages, and has kept on being the main commercial center (after Eden Bay, of course). For a long time, it was also where people went for...
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1. The Coyla, north-west of the city, was the first to be (relatively) tamed by bridges, and then the settlers began settling in earnest. It meant dealing with water -- a lot of water, beginning with the Mathis River and its many swamps (in the whole Eden Bay region, swamps were the bane of the first settlers.) The Mathis was especially prone to flooding, and very early on the first mayor, Zabnis Senior, decided it would be completely canalized. 2. 3. To convince the citizen to fork out their hard-earned...
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Smallville : Logging

By tariely,

1. For a long time the main industry in Smallville was logging, on Mount Harrelson. Once almost clearcut to death, it is now taken care of, replanted, and listed as "Renewable resource". Of course, the alluvial plain was also deforested in order to build the new Smallville (once bridges had been built on the Coyla). But three generations of tree-loving Mayors (the Zabnises, of which more later on) saw to that, and as you could see in the previous entry, the city is green enough. Now on with the logging....
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