SimCities and @Culture
Brandy and Tim
Defined as a "God" game
Choose a landscape and create city zones (i.e. commercial, residential, industrial, etc...)
Place various representative city icons on your geographical map
Turn the simulation on and watch it grow!
What is a simulation?
A simulation is a situation or concept that is modeled after reality or something in the real world. Simulations are often employed as learning tools in such diverse fields as the medical industry, in which they are used to determine possible outcomes of surgeries, or in the video gaming industry, where games such as Microsoft's Flight Simulator have become increasingly popular.
Lefebvre's Production of Space*:
Perceived |
Conceived |
Lived |
1st Space |
2nd Space |
3rd Space |
physical, surface, materialistic, visual |
mental, transparent, idealistic, geometric |
social, active experience, imaginative |
Can be tested and verified |
Generated space |
The convergence of perceived and conceived space yet in opposition |
Based on Lefebvre's Production of Space, should we consider SimCity to be an actual computer simulation?
Reasons For: By manipulating a city setting we can understand the real world and urbanization through a computer game that lets us get hands on experience of what it is like to develop a city.
Reasons Against: Too idealistic because SimCity is only classified through Lefebvre's conceived representaion of space, that of mental space. For example, if crime rate is high in the created city, the user simply places more police stations and jails around the geographical space and crime rate decreases. Clearly this is not how we can or should handle this problem. Considering this example we should seriously question the function of SimCity in our lives.
Frederic Jameson's Cognitive Mapping: Conceptual maps that people develop to make sense of a complexurban setting. Miklaucic wonders, does new media such as SimCity contribute to an aesthetic of cognitive mapping or does it simply contribute to more spatial confusion? Based on our discussions, we came to the conclusion that SimCity although entertaining, may be too idealistic to create an understanding of cognitive mapping. Even though the framework of the game is situated as a grid/map, the geographical space is superficial and redundant with homogeneous hypermediacy such as representational city icons.
Three Stages in the Evolution of the City (Sharpe and Wallock)
1. Population growth and emergence of industrial capitalism
2. Shift to impoverished center city and affluent suburbs
3. Decentering of the urban, with a dispersed set of metrocenters
Take a look at the above simulation of a city. If a city is considered through its decentered-ness, what does it mean that we can create cities (such as above) and reconfigure space on a terminal monitor in cyberspace? Does it alter our sense of urbanization? What implications does it have for the future?
Moving Towards a Postmodern Space
Natural space is rapidly disappearing and becoming lost to thought (read: simulations) in which a society produces its own unique space. Scott Bukatman notes that "Cyberspace is clearly a produced space that defines the subjects' relation to culture and politics. Like all such spaces, however, it does not simply exist to be inhabited; space implies position and negotiation."** Because of the malleable formation of cyberspace and its characteristic "technological utopia," it can create more fantastic realities that are not held to the same standards as the real world. In this way SimCity and other simulations are truly creating a new space for society.
Consulted Works
Bukateman, Scott. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Cambridge,MA: Blackwell, 1991.
Mikaucic, Shawn. Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois. Paper presented at the Illinois Program for research in the Humanities Conference: Producing, Consuming Cities. April, 2001.
OCPrices. http://www.ocprices.com/Core/SimCity4/SimCity4Screenshot6.jpg
SimCity4 Screenshots. http://www.application-systems.de/simcity/screenshots.html
*Information compiled by Shawn Miklaucic, Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois. Paper presented at the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities Conference: Producing, Consuming Cities. April, 2001.
**Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subjects in Post-Modern Science Fiction
.