Urban dynamics
by Jay Wright Forrester · first published 1969
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7HN commenters
2019–2025first – last mentioned
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In this controversial book, Jay Forrester presents a computer model describing the major internal forces controlling the balance of population, housing, and industry within an urban area. He then simulates the life cycle of a city and predicts the impact of proposed remedies on the system. Startling in its conclusions, this book became the basis of a major research effort that has influenced many government urban-policy decisions.
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…lighthearted and doesn't talk about the underlying models behind simcity. Would recommend also reading: https://logicmag.io/06-model-metropolis/ - which talks about simcity's inspiration from Jay Forrester's 'Urban Dynamics" and it's flaws. Also, https://placesjournal.org/article/a-city-is-not-a-computer/ , which is something I've been meaning to read & contrast alongside Geoffrey West's works ( https://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_...…
on “From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners” ↗This is a bit misleading. From what I've read, the modeling in sim city is heavily influenced by Urban Dynamics by Jay Forrester, a 1969 book which was highly regarded in urban planning circles when it came out and has since fallen out of favour [1]. The "optimise for gameplay" quote was in reference to how developers…
on “Nostalgia for Minecraft” ↗IIRC it was partly inspired by Forrester's Urban Dynamics.
on “When SimCity Got Serious: Story of Maxis Business Simulations and SimRefinery” ↗…theories, happen? >WW: First, it was just a toy for me. I was just making my editor more and more elaborate. I thought it would be cool to have the world come to life. So I started researching books on urban dynamics, and traffic, and things like that. I came across the work of Jay Forrester, who was kind of the father of system dynamics. He was actually one of the first people I found that actually simulated a city…
on “Magical systems thinking” ↗…in an afternoon if you like. Gosh, you know, it's hard to squeeze in more books, what with catching up with my Proust and Kafka and Dostoevsky and all that. Anyhow, in college I did a simulation of Urban Dynamics, in FORTRAN. Does that count? There were a whole class of doom-sayers back then. Ehrlich was one of them. He wasn't smart enough to avoid saying things that could be checked, like the others were.
on “50 years on from The Limits to Growth, what did we learn and what’s next?” ↗…while lamenting that he's just ahead of his time. I'm sorry, but 3 * A/B is not some mind-blowing model of geopolitical forces at play. SimCity came out around this time and was inspired by the book Urban Dynamics, which contains complicated models based on systems of differential equations which feed into one-another. Considering that, the work referenced seems elementary, to the point of not even needing to…
on “I Really Blew It (2020)” ↗Simcity (originally) was based on problematic books like Urban Dynamics (https://www.polygon.com/videos/2021/4/1/22352583/simcity-hid...), which has heavily influenced every other city builder ever since. I don't think things like the lack of parking are an accident. I wouldn't…
on “Documentation related to the implementation of SimCity 2000” ↗