Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu From: clouds@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Kathy Strong) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games Subject: Re: SimCity Summary: Anyone consulted A PATTERN LANGUAGE ? Message-ID: <40548@ut-emx.uucp> Date: 2 Dec 90 20:30:43 GMT References: <11590@milton.u.washington.edu> <90330.145528RJGRAHAM@MIAMIU.BITNET> <9668@fy.sei.cmu.edu> Sender: news@ut-emx.uucp Reply-To: clouds@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Kathy Strong) Lines: 125 In article <9668@fy.sei.cmu.edu> firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) writes: > >Try building a city where the zones are grouped into clusters, with >only roads within the cluster and only rail joining one cluster to >another. SimCity is on my (long) list of things-to-buy-when-my-new-Mac-arrives, but this posting made me jump in anyway. It's a little off-topic, but... Has anyone here read a book called A PATTERN LANGUAGE: TOWNS, BUILDINGS, CONSTRUCTION, by Alexander, Ishikawa, Silverstein et al.? It's hard to describe--the best I can do is to say it's about the philosophy of building, on all levels. And yet, that's all wrong, because it is a book with very detailed, concrete ideas, not just airy concepts... From the jacket: ------------------- At the core of this book is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by people. ... "Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (how high should a window sill be? how many stories should a building have? how much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution... -------------------- Anyway, the first third or so of the book is dedicated to building com- munities. Here's the first part of the Table of Contents: -------------------- 1. Independent regions Within each region work toward those regional policies which will protect the land and mark the limits of the cities: 2. The distribution of towns 3. City/country fingers 4. Agricultural valleys 5. Lace of country streets 6. Country towns 7. The countryside Through city policies, encourage the piecemeal formation of those major structures which define the city: 8. Mosaic of subcultures 9. Scattered work 10. Magic of the city 11. Local transport areas Build up these larger city patterns from the grass roots, through action essentially controlled by two levels of self- governing communities, which exist as physically identifiable places: 12. Community of 7000 13. Subculture boundary 14. Identifiable neighborhood 15. Neighborhood boundary Connect communities to one anouther by encouraging the growth of the following networks: 16. Web of public transportation 17. Ring roads 18. Network of learning 19. Web of shopping 20. Mini-buses Establish community and neighborhood policy to control the character of the local environment according to the following fundamental principles: 21. Four-story limit 22. Nine percent parking 23. Sacred sites 24. Parallel roads 25. Access to water 26. Life cycle 27. Men and women ... ------------------------ Well, I could go on.. The Table of Contents lists all 253 "patterns" in the book, ending with items like "front door bench," "half-inch trim," "small panes," "pools of light," and "things from your life." But don't these sample items from the "towns" section of the book sound like things you have to deal with in SimCity? At any rate, the discussion of nodes (with roads) connected by rail lines reminded me strongly of the discussion of public transportation (#16)... "A city contains a great number of places, distributed rather evenly across a two-dimensional sheet. The trips people want to make are typically between two points at random in this sheet. No one linear system (like a train system) can give direct connection betwen the vast possible number of point pairs in the city. It is therefore only possible for systems of public transportation to work, if there are rich connections between a great variety of DIFFERENT systems...." And they go on to discuss why this is easier said than done in real life, both because of competition among different services and because it's less economic to serve the feeder routes than the big commuter lines. "The traditional way of looking at public transportation assumes that lines are primary and that the interchanges needed to connect the lines to one another are secondary. We propose the opposite: namely, that interchanges are primary and that the transport lines are secondary elements which connect the interchanges." Well, if I continue, I could easily end up typing the whole thing. If anyone is still reading :-), send me mail if you'd like to chat about planning in general or the book or SimCity, either one, in particular. Cheers, --Kathy -- ........................................................................... : Kathy Strong : "Try our Hubble-Rita: just one shot, : : (Clouds moving slowly) : and everything's blurry" : : clouds@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu : --El Arroyo : :..........................................................................: