SimCity/Natural Disasters

A key aspect of planning, both in real life urban planning, and in SimCity, is natural disasters.

Natural Disasters in real-life Urban Planning

Many cities are constructed in places subject to flood, storm surges, extreme weather or war. City planners can cope with these. If the dangers can be localized (for flood or storm surge), the affected regions can be made into parkland or greenbelt, often with lovely results. Another practical method is simply to build the city on ridges, and the parks and farms in valleys.

Extreme weather, flood, war or other emergencies can often be greatly mitigated with secure evacuation routes and emergency operations centers. These are relatively inexpensive and unintrusive, and many consider them a reasonable precaution for any urban space.

Many cities also have planned, built safety features, such as levees, retaining walls, and shelters.

Some planning methods might help an elite group to control ordinary citizens. This was certainly the case of Rome (Italy), where Fascism in the 1930s created ex novo many new suburbs in order to concentrate criminals and poorer classes away from the elegant town. France currently uses similar methods to control ethnic-Arabic groups on welfare.

In recent years, practitioners have also been expected to maximize the accessibility of an area to people with different abilities, practising the notion of "inclusive design," to anticipate criminal behavior and consequently to "design-out crime" and to consider "traffic calming" or "pedestrianization" as ways of making urban life more bearable.

City planning tries to control criminality with structures designed from theories like socio-architecture or environmental determinism. These theories say that an urban environment can influence individuals' obedience to social rules. The theories often say that psychological pressure develops in more densely developed, unadorned areas. This stress causes some crimes and some use of illegal drugs. The antidote is usually more individual space and better, more beautiful design in place of functionalism.

Other social theories point out that in England and most countries since the 18th century, the transformation of societies from rural agriculture to industry caused a difficult adaptation to urban living. These theories emphasize that many planning policies ignore personal tensions, forcing individuals to live in a condition of perpetual extraneity to their cities. Many people therefore lack the comfort of feeling "at home" when at home. Often these theorists seek a reconsideration of commonly used "standards" that rationalize the outcomes of a free (relatively unregulated) market.

Natural Disasters in SimCity

The SimCity games also incorporate natural disasters - either recurring randomly (if you so chose), or by your selection. Natural disasters include flooding, tornadoes, fires, riots, earthquakes, etc. Later disasters included lightning strikes, volcanoes, meteors and attack by extra-terrestrial craft. In the Nintendo and later versions one can also build rewards when they are given to them, like the mayor's mansion and the casino for gambling Sims.

Effective planning can be used to limit the impact of natural disasters; for example, building enough Fire Stations (and adequately funding the fire department) can prevent a major fire from engulfing your SimCity.