SimCity and Urban Planning/Environment

Creating a pleasant environment to live in is a concern both of real-life urban planning, as well as in the game SimCity.

Environmental planning in real-life Urban Design

Environmental concerns have been a growing focus for urban planners. Arcology seeks to unify the fields of ecology and architecture, especially landscape architecture, to achieve a harmonious environment for all living things. On a small scale, the eco-village theory has become popular, as it emphasizes a traditional 100-140 person scale for communities.

In most advanced urban or village planning models, local context is critical. In many, gardening assumes a central role not only in agriculture but in the daily life of citizens. A series of related movements including green anarchism, eco-anarchism, eco-feminism and Slow Food have put this in a political context as part of a focus on smaller systems of resource extraction, and waste disposal, ideally as part of living machines which do such recycling automatically, just as nature does. The modern theory of natural capital emphasizes this as the primary difference between natural and infrastructural capital, and seeks an economic basis for rationalizing a move back towards smaller village units.

The Environment in SimCity

SimCity provides a number of options for making your city a pleasant place to live for your SimCitizens. This can be done by building parks around your city. In the game, parks reduce pollution and increase land value.