Have you ever lived in a walkable neighborhood?

Have you ever lived in a walkable neighborhood? I did once and it was wonderful.

Why am I talking about this? I played Cities Skyline last night and when you have the chance to design a city you think a lot about transportation. No matter how big or how many roads you make, it is never enough and traffic is always a problem.

Part of the way to fix traffic problems is to design your city in a way that minimizes issues. This is not as easy as it sounds. There are a ton of different transportation methods but my favorite is called the Metro/subway. I love having underground subways that have a small pop area where people can enter and exit. It just reduces the noise, and pollution and makes things so wonderful.

This is not a commercial for that game but most of my favorite games have been where you are given a goal and you find the best way to achieve it. I like that I have the freedom to try different things, and if you have seen photos of cities players have made they are quite impressive. I wish that simulation games were more part of education because it leads you to easily want to learn about things you hadn’t considered before.

For example, each time I play I try to learn a new aspect of the game. Last night I learned about how to do forestry and plan tree growth. It was a little complicated at first but then it started to make sense. Now it is straightforward. I will be doing that in future games. I learned naturally about forestry because I was in charge of making sure it was profitable. When things are fun people want to learn.

I am working in my city to give people the ability to have a walkable neighborhood. It really takes some planning, but it’s gratifying to see my Sims walking around. It’s not easy having a green city, but it surely is beautiful and wonderful to live in one.