As mapmaker, I feel I have to weigh in on this. The type and placement of resource icons is entirely KA's call, of course, but I had my reasons for this particular design. The idea for these resource icons (I thought of them as tall lights, rather than stick-pins, myself) was precisely to make the resources easier to spot, because the map is deliberately busy, as Gotham City should be. They're color-coded, by the way: red = strategic, green = luxury, yellow = bonus, blue = marine bonus. The building or location "produces" the resource. I went to a lot of trouble to make each of these key buildings one of a kind, which necessitated acrobatic manipulation of the graphics files. The last thing I wanted to do, then, was cover them up with resource icons, so I came up with this. In some cases, like most of the amusement park, the buildings themselves are resources, and, since you can't place an icon atop an icon, the icon light acts to alert the player to the whole set of resources in that area. Perhaps I could remake the icons so that they "glow' more brightly, and are easier to see? I could change the Amusement area and Stadium icons into regular signs, but I doubt that would make them easier to identify as resources. I've always favored hiding resources, myself - and let them be "discovered" by the player. The downside to that is that the AI knows where they all are anyway.