Completing the Instant City

“The man who is traveling and does not yet know the city awaiting him along his route wonders what the palace will be like, the barracks, the mill, the theater, the bazaar. In every city of the empire every building is different and set in a different order: but as soon as the stranger arrives at the unknown city and his eye penetrates the pine cone of pagodas and garrets and haymows, following the scrawl of canals, gardens, rubbish heaps, he immediately distinguishes which are the princes’ palaces, the high priests’ temples, the tavern, the prison, the slum. This – some say – confirms the hypothesis that each man bears in his mind a city made only of differences, a city without figures and without form, and the individual cities fill it up.”

– Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino (download entire novel)

Congratulations on the second “Instant City!” There’s so much exciting architecture.

Addressing Vanessa’s concern about whether the current city is livable or not, I believe it’s a matter of sustaining the energy until it is actually finished. Heavy lifting has been done, and now cohesive elements need to be added by people who are inspired to. This is another layer: showing how people interact with the city. What small things could be added to complete the sense of livability. A book store?  Sidewalk paintings? A café?  Or perhaps some infrastructure,  like a simple helpful path or fence someplace, to guide traffic along…

Also in response to Vanessa’s 27 day post, Savage’s outline sounds like a great idea for the next Instant City. Small teams working on cohesive individual cities or areas could foster more presence on the sim, some healthy competition, and people across time zones might collaborate.

All the best, Newton
going for the 30th update

PS: Sorry, I am having issues with my wordpress account (I guess) so was not able to respond in context on Vanessa’s blog here)