Wisdom of the Century

Before the turn of the century one of the greatest education games at the time on the PC was SimCity 2000.  The SimCity series has (up until EA acquired the license) been about managing semi-realisitc city planning and infrastructure while simultaneously being fun to play.  That might not sound particularly impressive, but when it comes to games that seek to educate, it's a hard hurtle to clear.  For me, in particular though, there was a life long lesson I took away from the game.  It's something that feels very relevant to what is happening right now in the USA.

There are a lot of factors the player must consider when playing SimCity 2000.  The most obvious ones are sewage and electricity, but there are many others; including air pollution, zoning, road/rail networks and (of course) tax revenue to pay for everything.  What I really want to focus on in this blog post is crime and law enforcement.  More specifically, the last a biggest city I built in SimCity 2000 was a massive urban sprawl that for much of the mid-to-late game was overrun by crime.  I couldn't understand why this was the case.  I had dumped a ridiculous amount of money into building police stations to the point that there was almost one on every city block.  I calculated (based on the total population divided by the number of cops) that on average every one had at least one member of their immediate or extended family in blue uniform.  Yet the crime levels did not subside.  Eventually, I hit on the problem.  My city was lacking in education.  The primary and secondary schools were overcrowded and universities were too few and far between.  After reallocating funds away from law enforcement toward education, I began to notice a significant drop it crime.  In fact it ultimately worked so well I ended up demolition some police stations to make way for more schools.  I also introduced a scholarship fund to smooth the transition away from enforcement to prevention.

In hindsight I guess it all makes sense.  My city had a large underclass of poorly educated individuals who lacked much-needed opportunities to rise up and out of their impoverished circumstances.  This might seem like a problem exclusive to video games with no bearing on the real world.  However, if you look at the police budgets in major cities throughout the USA and compare them to other social support and welfare programs it's basically the exact same issue.  I guess my takeaway here is maybe more government officials (especially those in positions of power) should play SimCity 2000.