The soundtrack changes tone from soft strings to a more ominous sounding brass section. The game lectures me: “People want places to shop and enjoy themselves.” I’m tempted to placate them with a “Statue of Shopping”. The blue bar, showing demand for commercial space, fills to the top. I get complaints that “there’s nothing to do at weekends”. But my citizens are insatiable consumers, infuriated by the boredom of a good quality of life, and it doesn’t take long for them to balk at my pious, dematerialistic policies. The soundtrack changes tone, from soft strings to a more ominous-sounding brass sectionĪt first, it seems to work. There are no offices, no shops, and no landfill sites.

Industrial districts are zoned for agriculture and forestry. Jobs are in teaching, healthcare and public service – professions that contribute meaningfully to society and directly improve the quality of our lives. I start with a kind of unproductivity plan: keep growth slow and employment high. I lay out my post-growth city within a circle, as a finite boundary for development and a nod to the heritage of quixotic planning, from Howard’s Garden City to Burning Man’s Black Rock City. In a world of finite resources, is it sensible, or even possible, to plan for infinite growth? Or as Tim Jackson asks, is it possible to achieve prosperity without growth? Could the game be bent to build a post-growth city where the economy is based on social exchange rather than consumption? I wanted to use Cities: Skylines to test an alternative economic model which challenges the assumption that growth is only good. I had tried to break the rules of the game, and ended up with a broken city. “Where has everybody gone? #ghosttown” peeps my timeline. There is also no democracy, or I would have been voted out of office long before the lights went out. Whole districts are abandoned, public services have been shut down, employment has collapsed and the budget is crippled by Greek magnitudes of debt. There is no “game over” in Cities: Skylines, just 400 or so citizens rattling around the remains of my city.

Hot to get cities skylines for free