Welcome to my first city journal! I don't know who, if anyone, will read this, so I suppose a brief introduction is in order, and afterwards, pictures. I have been playing SimCity games for years, since SimCity 2000. Until two weeks ago, I was totally unaware of the online community surrounding the game. I found it by accident; my old copy of SimCity4 wore out, and I had to replace it. I was looking to replace the Maxis landmarks I had once had, but their website wasn't working that day. So I looked elsewhere, and on another site found buildings I had never seen before: the Lever building and NYC housing projects by marcszar. In the description was mentioned something called the "CAM"...and, the rest, as they say, is history. This was how I discovered the BSC LEX and Simtropolis, which have deprived me of much sleep since.
My intent here is, I guess, to try to give back a little to the community by sharing my creations. Its not much, since I have just been introduced to the deeper mysteries of SimCity, but still, this is the tribute I offer to all the people whose labor I have benefited from. You guys are awesome. You have completely recreated for me a game that in its original "vanilla" configuration was at times disappointing, at times frustrating, but always left me wanting more. Now I have found it!
I am from Chicago originally, but I now live in NY state. I love both cities, but it is hard to beat NYC it terms of sheer scale. There is a strong rivalry between New Yorkers and Chicagoans about whose city is best; so in some ways I feel like a traitor to my home city, but NYC was the most interesting region offered in the vanilla version of the game, and I have simply not yet run out of things I want to try to do with it, or found the time to do them.
I was an architecture student, and I am an avid amateur photographer, so my specific interests with SimCity in general and this region in particular is realism, slightly skewed towards the artistic by my sense aesthetics. Cities are like the fossilized will of man, in many ways our greatest and most enduring acheivements, but they also hum with the collective lives of millions of individuals.
The coast line represented would be the East River side of Manhattan, from roughly 14th Street to nearly 34th Street. In the upper right hand corner you can just see Madison Square, and near the center, Union Square. The neighborhoods represented are East Village, Gramercy Park and Kips Bay. I do not know what the actual character of these neighborhoods is like, I have never seen them, but this is the way they developed in reaction to my city planning.
The neighborhood in the center of this cluster is section of the city known as Stuyvesant Town. I guessed from the map that it was a housing project, and accordingly, I zoned large blocks to try to entice some of the housing project blocks I got from marcszar to develop there. No dice. I did get mega buildings, but I evidentally made the neighborhood much too nice. Oops. Cities have a life of their own, so I am going to roll with it. This is now the center of downtown.
A closeup of the convention center, which you could see on the left of the previous two photos, surrounded by awesome buildings I have found by various people in the community. I have downloaded far too many to credit all of the custom work in the city, though I would like to, but if anyone has a question about where I got a particular building, I will happily refer them to the source.
Here is the seat of my benevolent administration (just don't tell that to the rioters I had this year). It is located in a historic part of Greenwich Village. The buildings surrounding it include many actual historic buildings, such as the Rookery Building and the Wrigley peristyle, both from my home town of Chicago. This recreation represents roughly the intersection of Greenwich Avenue (to the left of the roundabout) and Sixth Avenue (to the left). Again, I have no idea what the neighborhood actually looks like, but I liked the site for my town hall.
This is another piece of urban planning of which I was particularly proud, representing Washington Sqaure and the New York University Campus. On the left is the Arch that sits at the south end of Fifth Avenue. As it is springtime, there are some very striking flowering trees around the cafe and the cherry trees in the Japanese gardens are blooming. The actual University is supposed to be represented by the library, the city college, and the stadium; my rendition of a modern urban college campus.
Well, that is all I have for now. If anyone has any interest, I will post more of my urban planning work later. Thanks again to the community that made it all possible!
