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Coming from Spain it was always a difficult game to see as a simulation: What do you mean, commercial zones? What in the world it this low density residential? It was basically impossible to try to make a city like the one I lived in.

Seeing American suburbia, decades later, explained everything.

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It was so weird to me too. The idea of laying down zones for purposes was completely different from the way I imagined my city was built, considering businesses and residences coexist not merely next to each other, but often one on top of the other, even in relatively low density areas. I would have imagined that you'd start from some basic service to attract settlers and then add infrastructure as the population grows, while the inhabitants figure out the land use on their own, with uses changing over time with the ebb and flow of the economy.

It's a different historical setting, but the Anno games work kind of like that. The resulting towns look more like something you'd expect as a European with markets, churches, taverns, theaters and things like this in the town's center and agriculture + industry on the outskirts.

I thought they made cities like that in SimCity out of technological limitations of the software. When I saw US cities for the first time, decades later, it clicked.

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