Sim City (4) Succession Session!

With Spudsville well on its way to being a farmer's paradise, Quintillus arrived in Fort Consternation just in time to succeed Thorgalaeg as mayor. Immediately after doing so, he was informed that the teachers were about to go on strike, and just after that, that the hospital staff might too. The latter was particularly concerning given the smog that now resided in Fort Consternation's skies. It wasn't quite as bad as Pittsburgh in the early 1940s, but parts of the city were getting close.





For comparison, see images of Pittsburgh circa 1940 here. Fort Consternation was making a valiant effort.

To get a better idea of just how bad the problem was, the Mayor pulled up some historical records.





Yikes. Air pollution is four times what it's been for most of the century, and water pollution is more than six times as bad as it was historically. Bottled water companies must be making a killing...

Equally important was getting a picture of how well the recovery from the water shortage had been going. Clearly, progress had been made. Peck avoided bankruptcy, mythmonster convinced people to start moving back, calad got the economy back on the right track, and Thorgalaeg got the city to the place that you could recognize it as Fort Consternation, and that it really did have hope. But how far off were we from the glory days?

Fiscally, the city income was still about 33% lower than the high point.



This was not particularly surprising; the city population was down 50,000 and poorer, while many of the jobs had been outsourced to New Eden. Tax-wise, $16K/month was from low-wealth residents, $8K from the middle class, and $4.7K from the wealthy, all at even tax rates. And, even normalizing the tax rates, high-tech made $1K in revenue, versus $5.5K for manufacturing and a whopping $12K for dirty industry. The demographics had changed drastically.

Power consumption was still up from the big fall, but not nearly as much thanks to calad's destruction of abandoned buildings. Water consumption was actually down, despite the thirsty industry.



Garbage capacity was found to be a bit too low, so a new landfill or more recycling would be required.

As for education, the citizens were still dunces compared to 20 years ago, but there was a noticeable upswing.



Octagenarians (the least populous group) were the smartest, and twenty-somethings (the most populous group) the dumbest, but no decade was quite up to an EQ of 100 yet.

Life expectancy was about 55, down from about 80 prevously. This was also going up, but much more slowly than education. All the pollution couldn't be helping.

In a surprising bit of good news, public transportation had been quite successful relative to cars since the Great Drought.



The Transportation Department was in fact slightly profitable. Whether this success was due to re-zoning, calad's toll booths, or another cause, was unclear, but it was good for the city.

Crime, however, remained high compared to the old days.



So, armed with sufficient information, the Mayor began implementing changes. The first was giving the sanitation department an extra $500 per month, hopefully enough to increase recycling capacity enough to avoid a messy problem.

Next up was some tax-adjusting. The surplus of $4000 per month was not bad, but not great, either. A 0.2% increase on residential taxes gave $500, and a 0.5% increase on dirty industry gave another $500. The extra $1000/month would be quite helpful.

In March, Quintillus shut down the nuclear power plant for economical reasons. Power generation was already well above demand, anyway, and this saved $3500/month. Even the old coal plants were much cheaper per megawatt-hour.

May saw the first fire of the administration, at a smelting plant. It was put out quickly enough.

Later that month, while studying the water system, Quintillus realized that there was dirty industry right next to the water pumps.



This was not good. Water pumps were expensive, though. So, instead, the dirty industry in the area was bulldozed, and commercial and residential areas put in its place. This was goal-oriented zoning at work!

With June came the end of the school year, and thus, a chance to re-evaluate the education policy. Unlike a decade and a half ago, things weren't all bad this time.



Quintillus hoped that if they ever made a proper sequel to Sim City, they would allow showing just, say, high schools, so you could identify where high schools were lacking, or where there were high schools but no elementary schools. Alas, that was not yet the case.

Thorgalaeg's Beaches were served by an overcrowded private school, and two underutilized large elementary schools, one regular elemtary school, and was among the best-educated parts of the city. Apparently everyone sent their kids to the private school for high school since there was no public high school. There were also several thousand people served by a library, but with no schools.

Looking at the options, Quintillus decided upon expanding bussing at two elementary schools, and replacing a large elementary school with a high school, named in memorium of higher education.



Next up was the Central Park area. Although a city college, the main library, and Quintillus Memorial Library were all nearby, there were no schools. To the south, there was an again-overcrowded private school, a successful Peck of Arabia High School, and a dreadfully overcrowded MoreEpicThanYou Memorial Elementary School - scarily, that was overcrowded without bussing!

Central Park itself would be served by the new Central Park Elementary School, replacing some abandoned condos. To the south of it, however, another school was needed, and the free land was so obscured by abandoned buildings that a bulldozing spree was called for.



Another school was then opened, serving both the unserved area, as well as the area swarming to MoreEpicThanYouMemorial.



Finally, a bus stop was moved to make room for Central Park High. Education would come to Fort Consternation!



Unfortunately, the plan was not entirely successful. In the Thorgalaeg's Beaches neighborhood, the teachers went on strike upon learning that each of them would be expected to teach 250 students all day long.



There simply was no way a school that size could accomodate 3000 pupils.

The new plan was to make a bigger school. This would either mean mass evictions or the destruction of the ancient plaza in the center of the neighborhood. The latter was chosen, and Uber Cool High School was opened. Tennis courts, a skateboard park, a basketball court, and a couple small plazas replaced the extra land from the old plaza.



August witnessed the second fire. That smoke detector ordinance apparently wasn't effective enough.

October witnessed the third fire. Oh my. Quintillus hadn't even closed the "Emergency" menu from the previous one yet...

After putting that fire out (literally), Quintillus was called to Central Park Elementary School. It, too, was hideously overcrowded.



Central Park High and Basic Arithmetic Elementary also were overcrowded, but not so egregiously. There really was a huge pent-up demand for learning subtraction in Fort Consternation!

To solve the problem, the Central Park House of Worship was moved, the Central Park schools both expanded, and the bus stop that had been moved in the summer was re-moved. Unfortunate for those who depended on it for transportation, but good for their kids.

The changes were well-received, as the first residential construction of the year began in November, right near the new schools.



To date, Fort Consternation was down about 10,000 people this term, as demand had been stratospheric for industry, but negative for everything else. This was starting to reverse. Even in industry, there was now demand for high-tech.



Perhaps industrial leaders were starting to believe Fort Consternation would once again have a top-level workforce, and hoped to get in the game early. If so, that would be great!

Ghetto Town Elementary was expanded to commemorate the event, and funding for MoreEpicThanYou Memorial Museum was increased.

The next month, Ghetto Town Elementary was unceremoniously destroyed to make way for the new, more optimistic Prosperous Town Elementary.



By the end of the year, the average EQ in the city had already climbed by a good six points or so.



However, the much-increased education budget had effectively erased any budget surplus, with the city projected to run a deficit for the month of January. And thus, before education would come to the Southland, money would have to be secured to make that possible.

Sure enough, upon returning from the New Year's holiday, Quintillus was quickly met by the financial advisor, who informed him that he'd been spending "like there is no tomorrow". This was a hyperbole, as the city could continue at this rate and still not be broke by the end of the term. But money for further expansion of education was lacking.

Fortunately, there was excessive spending. Nearly $4000 was cut from the education budget while avoiding overcrowding. The War on Utility Spending also continued, with a Large Water Pump being destroyed, saving $3000/month. The city no longer needed as much water as it had back in the day.

And, the three Waste to Energy plants were closed, to be replaced by two Coal Plants and some additional landfill. The move was expected to save $1500-$2000 per month. Unfortunately, the city did not have enough cash to build the second new Coal Plant.



So, hopefully that wouldn't mean rolling brownouts. On the plus side, the savings were $2600/month in the interim, and the city's monthly surplus was now over 9000!

February brought kinda good news. On the plus side, the city was only using 97-98% of its power supply. On the minus side, it was now using 97% of its water supply. Additional utility spending would be necessary, but for now the one coal plant was sufficient, and education expansion would continue.

Clean Skies Memorial High School was the next school to open. Replacing a regular old high school, it would be the school for the entire old Swagful Farms neighborhood, as well as surrounding environs.



Airport Memorial Elementary was opened as well, west of the White House and old airport, to cover most of the remaining area in the Clean Skies High area that did not have elementary school education.

A fire broke out on April 1st in an abandoned commercial building near Germanicus12 Stadium.



Fortunately the Fire Department did not interpret the notice as a prank, and the fire was extinguished before causing significant damage. And yes, those are new buildings you see being constructed!

April also saw the Southlands receive their education investment. It was found that both Southlands Elementary and Quintillus Memorial High were well-placed, but needed bussing. The local library was also moved to be closer to the schools.



MoreEpicThanYouMemorial Museum was remodeled, and the City Holocaust Museum was relocated and renamed to the Great Draught Museum. Both city museums had been in the same area of the city; now the Great Draught Museum was re-opened in a (surprisingly unzoned) area near Thorgalaeg's Beaches.



With this, most of the city would have good education coverage. During the summer, Quintillus decided to map out exactly which areas had which type of coverage.

This took quite some time, but in the end, he came up with relatively accurate maps showing the coverage of all the city schools, as well as the local libraries.

Elementary Schools


High Schools


Libraries


Both the elemenatary and high school coverage was pretty good. The uncovered zone west of the White House was also undeveloped, and the eastern coastal zone with no coverage, which Quintillus himself had built decades ago, was abandoned. MoreEpicThanYou Memorial Elementary would likely get some expanded bus coverage in the near future, but otherwise the city schools now covered most of the populated zones in the city.

Library coverage was more lacking. Another three libraries or so were called for - one between the Southlands and Swagful Farms, one between Swagful Farms and Central Park, and one in Thorgalaeg's Beaches, perhaps moving the Hilltop one east thereafter to cover the sad area north of Germanicus12 stadium with no education whatsoever.

So, to that end, new libraries were opened.





Two new subway stops were also opened near the Thorgalaeg's Beaches Branch, the first investment in transportation of this term.

Finally, the Hilltop Branch was closed, and the area around the Bank of China Tower and Germanicus12 Stadium received not only a library, but also elementary and high schools, taking the place of long-since-abandoned buildings.



The Bank of China Elementary School was so popular that its teachers quickly went on strike! Before Quintillus could decide whether a Large School was needed, his attention was wrenched away - Dead Forest Paper was on fire!

It was not outside the realm of possibility that fire stations would be expanded in the near future.

By the end of the year, the city's education level had increased significantly.



About 20 points' increase in two years - not bad. The city still was not growing, but the zone demand was changing.



At this point, high-tech industry was negligible. It was decided to alter tax policies, setting high tech to 6% from 1% so that the city wouldn't go broke when it took off, but also increasing dirty industry tax, while decreasing residential taxes by half a percent.



In the short term, this would change revenue by less than $100 per month.

March 1st saw yet another fire, in yet another abandoned high-rise. Due to inept AI pathfinding algorithms, it nearly burnt to the ground.

The spring began Quintillus's program of high-tech-ization. The idea was that more jobs were needed, as was cleaner tech. Air pollution was still bad.



Hollywood Hills was the first target area. Medium industrial zones would be bulldozed and re-zoned as high density industrial, hopefully with high-tech companies opening there.



Unfortunately, the new industries were mostly manufacturing, not high tech. And they didn't really provide any more jobs.

Sensing that jobs were why there were still lots of undeveloped residential areas, Quintillus re-zoned the land around Volcanoside Memorial Hospital as industrial.



By the end of the third year, there was still no growth. Well, technically that wasn't true in all ways - revenue was slightly up. But the population was down to 445,000, twelve thousand less than at the start of the term.

So, thinking perhaps developers were hesitant to build in a city on the brink of brownouts, Quintillus commissioned Power Surplus Memorial Power.



A new water pump was also opened, in a non-polluted area.

Finally, Quintillus decided it was time to change some of the city ordinances. The Youth Curfew was repealed, now that nearly all youths were actually attending school, and the Clean Air Act was enacted.

A new landfill was needed in spring, and thus one was zoned across the hills from the Space Shuttle.



Rocket science was still going strong!

Another fire broke out in May.

Quintillus was on a dirty-industry-demolishing spree in the spring and summer of 2138, hoping less pollution would stimulate Southside growth, and by July, this was finally happening!



By early 2139, the population was approaching 500,000 - the power surplus and lessening pollution seemed to resonate with potential residents. Even better, the replacement of dirty industry with manufacturing and a bit of high-tech industry was lessening power demands despite a higher population.



With the Southside teeming with new Tenements and Apartments, Quintillus now turned to the eastern docks. And he was surprised to find that some of the long-abandoned beachfront buildings had been re-occupied.



This was certainly good news. Each one of those skyscrapers re-occupied saved $1000 in demolition costs.

Another beneficiary of this change in priorities would be the University of CFC, which had been surrounded by smokestacks.



Quintillus demolished the dirty industry there, zoned some light commerical since 24-hour diners were likely in high demand by the students, and increased funding, as there were now over 3000 students in attendance.

As his term wound down, Quintillus began pondering whether a landmark project would be appropriate. Several ideas were proposed, including the Statute of Liberty on an as-yet-unoccupied island, the American Museum of Natural History near Central Park, Fernsehturm anywhere it looked good, and the Empire State Building (after a loan) to make businesses flock to Fort Consternation once more. The Statue of Liberty lost because the island it would be on was near only industrial areas, and the Empire State Building lost because it would make everything near it look puny. Fernsehturm did look pretty cool, but no one could agree where in the city it would go best. The Natural History Museum was a popular idea, but this was toned down.

Instead, Quintillus would expand the current museum system, which was rather inadequate and hardly up to the standards of having a national museum in its midst.

The Fort Consternation Agricultural Museum was opened in the Swagful Farms area, a homage to an earlier phase of the city's history.



The City History Museum was opened by the original area of Fort Consternation.



This area was, unfortunately, almost entirely abandoned, and was thusly demolished so that in the next mayor's administration, it could begin rebuilding. And, since the mayor had nearly demolished the courthouse by mistake due to its dilapidated state, he also restored the government budget to full funding.

Finally, the City Museum of Natural History was opened to the west of the White House.



Like clockwork, the Mayor's museum-building spree led to an art museum seeking Fort Consternation as its new home. Thorgalaeg's Beaches were seen as the natural area for an art museum, but the only free land was right next to the Great Draught Museum. In the end it was decided that was acceptable, and a bit of a museum area was established.



Evidently, the haute couture movement was gaining steam, as the very next month, an proposal for an opera house began gaining momentum.



Having read of the Opera House's bugs, Quintillus decided not to build it yet.

The remainder of the year went uneventfully, building a bigger landfill, and being thankful there were no more fires. Fort Consternation ended the term a much better-educated city than before, with a gradual shift to cleaner industry occurring, and with fewer abandoned buildings, but still a ways off from its glory days.



Population: 491,489 (+34,135; +7.5%)
Funds: $78,640 (+71093; +942%)
Surplus/month: $8,879 (+$2809)
Mayor rating: 9/12 (+1?)
Education level: 120 (+40)
Total Fires: 7

Education was largely very good now, and improving quite quickly. There were a few areas still not covered, and the Southlands hadn't caught up to its potential yet, but the situation was much better.



On the other hand, healthcare had not been a focus of Quintillus's term, and you could tell:



Transportation had not been a focus of Quintillus's term this time, unlike many times in the past, and the result was a resurgence of the car.

Both air and water pollution had been reduced significantly, though they remained well above pre-draught levels.



This was seen as a good result, particularly given the shift to coal power. But environmentalists would, of course, want more progress in the future.

Crime was up slightly, as neither the police nor fire departments had received any real attention. Without any changes, the next mayor could expect a similar amount of fires.

The shift in industry was happening rather quickly.



However, this only looked good when you didn't compare too far back.



And finally, the citizens were becoming more wealthy.





This had all helped contribute to the increase in revenue of $12,500 in the second half of the term, after flat revenue in the first half, allowing the city to continue to grow.

Fort Consternation still had its challenges, and a long way to go to really reach its former glory, but with every term it was getting closer.