On Simulated Homelessness

January 22, 2015 timothywstanley@me.com

SimCity players have discussed a variety of creative strategies for their virtual homelessness problem. They’ve suggested waiting for natural disasters like tornadoes to blow the vagrants away, bulldozing parks where they congregate, or creating such a woefully insufficient city infrastructure that the homeless would leave on their own. You can read all of these proposed final solutions in Matteo Bittanti's How to Get Rid of Homelessness, 'a 600-page epic split in two volumes documenting the so-called "homeless scandal" that affected 2013's SimCity...' For Bittanti, it's impossible not to see the connections between the homeless problem in the Bay Area and the way it's portrayed in SimCity. 'That is, can we fix homelessness in SimCity, or because we haven't fixed homelessness as a problem in real life, therefore we are bound to lose?' Bittanti asked. 'Is SimCity a reflection of what's happening in reality, and therefore is very realistic, or is it a programming issue?'

"Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug or a Feature?" - http://bit.ly/1872KnE