{"id":68015,"date":"2023-11-20T08:15:54","date_gmt":"2023-11-20T13:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=68015"},"modified":"2023-11-18T14:15:16","modified_gmt":"2023-11-18T19:15:16","slug":"review-cities-skylines-ii-a-new-dawn-for-city-building-gaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2023\/11\/20\/review-cities-skylines-ii-a-new-dawn-for-city-building-gaming\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: Cities: Skylines II \u2013 A new dawn for city-building gaming"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Claire Basinski, like many other millennials, the original SimCity served as her closest exposure to city planning in her youth. Today she\u2019s president of the Ontario Professional Planners Institute (OPPI), and she provided her reflections on the endless possibilities of the most recent city-building game to be released, Cities: Skylines II.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is maybe a full circle moment [for me] because I am one of those millennial children who grew up with the original SimCity, which was probably the precursor [to modern city building games], and definitely looks to be the case to this unbelievable tool,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Paradox Interactive\u2019s Cities: Skylines II was released after grand anticipation to PC audiences on Oct. 24, while console owners will sit patiently till spring of 2024 after a delay was announced by the Swedish studio in late September. The game is the sequel to 2015\u2019s hit Cities: Skylines, which went on to sell 12 million copies.<\/p>\n

Basinski sees the game as an opportunity for an uber-realistic city building simulation to come to the forefront of public thought \u2013 something not seen even in the early golden years of the city-building genre with titles such as Don Daglow\u2019s Utopia, which made a pixelated takeover of living room Intellivisions worldwide across the 1980s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe degree of complexity that this game accurately depicts is something I don’t think we have ever seen. It\u2019s a combination of the progression of technology that we’ve been seeing in the planning world and other spaces, whether it’s AI or transportation traffic modelling. It just seems like it’s really one of the first tools that brings together the multitude of different facets and considerations when it comes to city building,\u201d Basinski said.<\/p>\n

Cities: Skylines II begins with a choice between 10 different maps to build your city on; these varied lands have different sets of unique factors one must decide on before embarking on the city-building, including varied climates, latitudes, buildable space, and natural resources available.<\/p>\n

\"Zoning<\/a><\/p>\n

From there, similar to its predecessor, begins the affair of zoning of residential, commercial, and industrial areas, which will be familiar to veteran city-building aficionados. But the sequel begins showing its bite is in its new features, such as scalable and upgradable service buildings to match your city\u2019s progress, and managing a well-run sewage and garbage system to avoid pollution and maintain a healthy water supply. A reworked progression system is also included featuring milestones that a player can choose to upkeep, like population growth, citizen happiness, and economic health.<\/p>\n

From its launch, Cities: Skyline II ran into a set of early complications. Performance issues including general bugs and the game\u2019s inability to run even on rather beefy PC setups left a sour taste in many fans\u2019 mouths. Paradox Interactive has made available a set of patches meant to fix the issues that made the game unplayable for some.<\/p>\n

Yet, the game\u2019s merits far outweigh its technical errors. An important and crucial aspect for city planners is a need to improve the lives of those around them, something that Basinski sees value in, as it’s a way of thinking that hits close to her own origins within the profession.<\/p>\n

Raised in the neighbourhood of Moore Park, one of Toronto\u2019s most affluent neighbourhoods, she like many others was drawn to city planning as a way to rectify the inequality that creates comfort for some and discomfort for others based on something as minuscule as which postal code they call home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw the significant divides that our built forms, our built structures \u2014 the haves and the have nots \u2014 and the significant range and experience from a life perspective that people have just by way of how our cities are built and how our cities function,\u201d she said. \u201cI happened to write my incoming essay to the University of Waterloo on the juxtaposition of Rosedale and Regent Park. That’s where my passion started. It’s really the complexity that is city planning that sometimes gets oversimplified,\u201d Basinski said.<\/p>\n

Keeping the human pulse within the sometimes grandeur appeal of city planning is something the game begins to introduce to the conversation,<\/p>\n

A boost is given to civilian simulation with AI systems tailor-made to reflect the human experience. Citizens are born into your city and go through the stages of life. They can be monitored going through their daily lives, attending work, school, getting married, and even going off to retirement as they age \u2014 their thoughts can be kept up through the game\u2019s social media standing Chirper, adding a deeper slice of immersion, but also heart.<\/p>\n

Basinski, who often works in infrastructure and servicing planning in the space of transportation, was also specifically impressed by the in-depth factors that were applied in order to accurately represent some of the processes she sees day-to-day.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I come at this from the perspective that I do a lot of work in infrastructure and transportation planning and I happened to see an example where they are bringing in traffic data, they’re also thinking about how time and comfort have an influence on human behaviour,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

What she mentions is a feature called pathfinding, where the game uses built-in traffic AI that factors a city\u2019s road network, comfortable distance and time of travel for citizens, cost of transportation, and even quality of roads and congestion of cars if one decides to nudge forward a large car-depended system rather than a model of public transportation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one thing that does stand out is they refer to transportation as pathways, movement pathways and I think that is a really interesting and exciting way to start to rethink how transportation is planned and how people use it,\u201d she said. \u201cThe reality is, when we step outside the spaces where we live, we are already transporting, we are moving somewhere, what we strive towards is to try to find the ways to connect all of these different pieces. And I use \u2018connect\u2019 intentionally because of course transportation and movement and pathways are sort of the cornerstone of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A deeper focus on economics is another big addition. Players will have to manage their economy by balancing the supply and demand of production, adjusting private and corporate taxes, as well as goods and services. This money can then be invested in a variety of urban developments to further improve the city.<\/p>\n

Yet, just as quickly, if economics and general population satisfaction are not kept up, citizens can fall ill, lose their jobs, face homelessness, or in moments of desperation even turn to crime.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don’t always get to see [the effects] in real-time at faster speeds so it would actually help to start to demonstrate more of the connections between what we call planning interventions or planning solutions, and the wider societal health impacts,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is all about how humans experience place, and space and are able to live their lives in healthy sustainable ways that create resilient individuals and resilient communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Cities: Skylines II, players must consider issues such as budgeting, unexpected developments, bad investments, or even poorly constructed pipe systems to be crucial to the health of their creation, but similar to real-life planners they must be willing to adjust to the happenings of circumstance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really is a profession of trade-offs based on professional experience and expertise. I have the pleasure of speaking on behalf of almost 5,000 members across the province of Ontario, who are all practicing in a space where it is our duty to work in the public interest and to put forward plans, proposals, and recommendations and do work that is meant to try to achieve these big visions of growth, healthy and sustainable communities, climate resilience, and overall public health,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Whether in the hands of an experienced city planner, a fan filled with anticipation, or even the wandering eye of an individual acting upon a mild interest \u2014 Cities: Skylines II, with all its faults and sky-high ambitions, provides an exciting ode to city building.<\/p>\n

Images from Cities: Skyline II press kit<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Claire Basinski, like many other millennials, the original SimCity served as her closest exposure to city planning in her youth. Today she\u2019s president of the Ontario Professional Planners Institute (OPPI), and she provided her reflections on the endless possibilities of the most recent city-building game to be released, Cities: Skylines II. \u201cThis is maybeContinue reading “REVIEW: Cities: Skylines II \u2013 A new dawn for city-building gaming”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8556,"featured_media":68017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,20],"tags":[22521],"class_list":["post-68015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-urban-design","tag-cities-skylines-ii"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nREVIEW: Cities: Skylines II \u2013 A new dawn for city-building gaming - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2023\/11\/20\/review-cities-skylines-ii-a-new-dawn-for-city-building-gaming\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"REVIEW: Cities: Skylines II \u2013 A new dawn for city-building gaming - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For Claire Basinski, like many other millennials, the original SimCity served as her closest exposure to city planning in her youth. 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