In October of 1994, Maxis held a contest among SimCity 2000 users to create the best city they could come up with. Cities of all kinds were submitted, some had immense populations, some looked like great places to live, and some just plain looked neat. Of the over 100 cities submitted, we sat down with mouse in hand and picked what we thought were the best 20 or so. Here they are, each with a little description written by each author about his city. (It should be known that the people responsible for judging these cities wish to remain anonymous, but can be easily spotted by the pizza in their teeth and nice white coats.)


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CITY: Bayview
Submitter: Brian Poff

I am submitting this city (Bayview) for the SimCity 2000 CD Contest.

I think it is one of the most beautiful cities I've seen.  It also has several special features:

1.  BayView Overlook - Forested mountain overlooking the entire city, with a winding road that goes all the way to the top.  There is a small park at the top for picnicing.
2.  BayView Prison   - Entirely self-contained prison on an island. The prison has it's own power generators and it's own water supply.  It's only accessible via a drawbridge.
3.  Airport Tunnel   - Tunnel going from one island to the next that runs under the airport, then curves around the hill to connect to the airport.
                       
I think I used my initials for the mayor (because I don't want to see my name everytime I start the game).  You may change it to my real name "Brian Poff".  I'd do it myself, but I don't know how.

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CITY: Cape Wells
Submitter: Ken Wells

A beautiful Sim City complete with Natural Forests, Islands, Valleys, and a very healthy economy.

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CITY: Centerville
Submitter: Loren J. Howell

  Several points of interest:
  1.  A balanced budget,  with a very high city services-to-tax ratio.
  2.  A crime rate of 1%.
  3.  No subway or rails.
  4.  A fairly high education quotient,  and an across-the-board A+ education rating.
  5.  No arcologies,  although the city was designed wth arcologies in mind.
  6.  Industries are all near the edges of the city to keep pollution to a minimum.
  7.  Entirely powered by hydroelectric,  although the dams make it look "unnatural."
  8.  A highly structured and symmetric layout.
  Also,  the schools are named for Presidents ( really imaginative, huh? ) and the hospitals are named after dead musicians ( Elvis, John Lennon, etc.). This city would be an excellent "example" city for trying out different budget and city service settings,  to see how every little change affects 
everything else,  since it is so delicately balanced.

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CITY: Ceres Garden City
Submitter: Keith Plunkett

It was built for desirability rather than population, and is set over many levels from the sea at the front over the mountains behind. From the graphs and other information, it has the following statistics:-

Year             : 2441 (started in 2000)
Population    : 88k
Traffic           : 9
Pollution       : 13/14
Value           : 219
Crime           : 9
Health          : 87
EQ              : 127
Unemployment    : 0
Mayor's Rating  : 89%

None of the "cheats" were used to build this city.

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CITY: Egypt Falls
Submitter:Andrew Ashbaugh

          Egypt Falls is a relatively young city. It was built and financed by Joeseph Forester, one in a long line of rich city builders. The Foresters built many of the cities in SimIllinois with money out of
their own pockets! And when they die, it's a tradition to leave so much money to each of their cities general funds. To Egypt Falls, Joeseph left $2.1 billion. He did this for many reasons, mainly because Egypt Falls, being his first city, was his favorite city. It has been the capitol of SimIllinois ever since Simfield was devestated in 2055. Egypt Falls was founded in the year 2019. It grew up fast!

          Egypt Falls didn't have much purpose behind it. Except that Joeseph didn't want HIS city to have the problems so many do, such as crime, traffic, water shortages, and low popularity rates. He had more money than other mayors, so he used it for this purpose.

          Egypt Falls is in a rather isolated spot. Actually, Acurac, the southern and largest neighbor of Egypt Falls is the biggest benefactor of its growth. They are totally dependent on each other.
Acurac needs Egypt falls to have an economy, and Egypt Falls needs Acurac so people can enter and exit Egypt Falls. Most of Egypt Falls intertown roads lead to Acurac. The reason, of corse, for this isolation is the terrain. Egypt Falls is built on a huge plateu that rises 3,000+ feet above sea level. The reservoir in the city is a wonder in itself! It apparently has no sorce of water! There are
waterfalls on both sides that drain it. Scientists have studied this for years. The waterfalls that the city is named after are a huge tourist attraction, bringing people from miles around. And the can be viewed at sea level for Egypt Falls' only airport, a small one that doesn't connect by road to the city!

         Egypt Falls plays an important part in SimNation, however. It has several good colleges, and many well educated sims. This, and the low tax rates have made it the electronics capitol of SimNation!  A few computing companies have their headquarters in it, and just about all
of them have a branch of some kind there.  There is a good amount of media there as well, with many big TV and radio stations. There isn't much unemployment, a rarity for a city set up to house residents first, commerce second, and industry third. This might be because of its size, it has a popualtion of around 40,000 sims in all.  There is extremely low rates of crime and polution. Almost giving you the feel of a town of 2,000 people in a fairly large city. Egypt Falls has many zoos, marinas, museums, and parks to have fun at too. It isn't hard to see why their main attraction is tourism after all.

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CITY: Four Cities
Submitter: Bing Chen

This is a city with four little cities within it.  I thought it might be a good idea to see how Sim Citizens interact with one another within their city.  The major forms of transportation between cities are airports, subways, freeways and the occasional cruise in the sail boat.  Each city has its own unique landmarks but they are all filled with parks and trees.  Police and fire protection are 
adequate...if not excellent!  Land value varies but tends to be on the valuable side.  

Hope you have fun with this city. 

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CITY: Helena Point
Submitter: William Liao

If New Monroe Bay is the Beverly Hills of SimNation, then Halena Point must be the Bel Air of SimNation.  These two cities share some common traits:  low population density, full of trees, high EQ, good subway, popular mayor, and low unemployment.  But Halena Point has much higher land value compared to New Monroe Bay:  $310K+ vs $260K+.  Halena Point also has a much lower population, 70K+ vs 500K+.  In addition, when I designed the terrain for Halena Point, I actually tried to model the Sepulveda Pass area of Los Angeles.  The freeway is Interstate 405.  The flat land between the moutains is San Fernando Valley (Van Nuys, Sepulveda, Reseda, and Northridge.)  The mountains are Santa Monica Mountains.  One side has Bel Air Estates, Sherman Oaks, Studio City and Universal City.  The other side has Encino, Tarzana, Woodland Hills, and Calabasas.  Of course the result looks nothing like the original because of space constraints and feasibility.  (A coast gives the industries that extra edge.)

Improvements I like to see:

Due to the small population, the city has low income.  But to keep the sims happy, it has to spend a lot.  The budget barely balances every 50 years.  The fusion power plant will use up any savings over the years. (The $3 million is accumulated when the city was developing.  It had very dense population and low spending.  Over 2000 years city was very stingy and built nothing new.  (Good thing they don't understand democracy.)

I want to build an arco, but it's not available to me.

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CITY: Hawaii
Submitter: Michael Juneau

Hawaii with all the islands!  Has a master Subway that conects all the islands.  The power system is kinda weird but it works.

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CITY: Herman Mallville
Submitter: Durant Imboden

Here's an entry for your SimCity 2000 CD-ROM Contest.

The city is called "Herman Mallville" and was loosely inspired by the novel MOBY-DICK.

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CITY: Hi-Loh2o
Submitter: Joseph Reeder

A neat split-level city for Sims who enjoy roller coaster like subways, trains, and roads.

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CITY: La Isla
Submitter: Santiago MUNNE-BLANCO  (Pronounced 'Munay')

This was created in six days, and I rested on the seventh.  It is not really an island, because I left the contact to the mainland in place.  It represents an early effort by the Munne-Tomkin team to produce a complete island, and occurred after a fortuitous "make", which I then fully developed.  Later attempts to reproduce something similar failed, which is why "Glorioso" was later built from the sea-bottom upwards.

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CITY: New Monroe Bay
Submitter: William Liao

New Monroe Bay is the Beverly Hills of SimNation. When clicking on "land value" in the map window, you will find most of the land colored dark gray or black.  Clicking on the "value" button in the graph window will tell you that the average city block is worth $260K+, much higher than any of the cities I've downloaded from here.  The city is full of green, has low crime rate and limited pollution.  There are seven launch arcos where most of the population resides, and "the rich and famous" sims have built luxury homes, condos, and apartments all over the city.  The industries are heavy on aerospace and electronics.  The subway is excellent.  The EQ is 110+.  And the mayor's rating is high 80% and sometimes 90+%.  The city has only about 500K sims, because high density lowers property values. 
 
Improvements I like to see: 
 
Since only a small portion of the population lives outside the arcos, it is difficult to change from an industry based city to a commerce based city.  
To maintane everything, the city spends a lot of its income.  It's net income is only $3K. 
 
It took me until year 8000 before I could get it right.  I had to swap residential and industrial zones a couple of times.  Since no cheat was used, sometimes I just had to wait and save up the money. 
 
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CITY: NYC
Submitter: Matthew Singleton
 
Tri state area (New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey), $5,000,000 in funds, but only a population of 80,000 people, very healthy, educated sims. (download simcity.bak with this 
file too you will need it to load this game). 

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CITY: Parade
Submitter: Chris Weiss (Maxis employee)

This is a city I created long ago using SimCity 2000 DOS. It consistently has a mayor's rating in the high 90%s, and I've hit 100% on a few occasions. It was not created using any cheats or file editors.

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CITY: Retreat
Submitter: Kathy Nave

My city is my initials.  It has a low crime rate, an unusal design and it grew even though there are no bridges to connect the two land masses.  The approval rating is very high and the entire city is built with hydro electric power which took up no valuable land space.

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CITY: River5
Submitter: Brad Smull

This city was started on easy level in 1900.  No cheats have ever been implemented in the game unless you consider turning disasters off a cheat (I don't :)

The city is by no means complete (by my standards anyway), but the deadline is here, so I must submit it as is.  The only really outstanding feature that I could see was the small
university campus that I put into the city.  Also, I consider the city itself to be a very aesthetically pleasing city, if not the best overall layout.  I just hope that you agree.

Thank you for taking the time to view this city.  I hope it made some kind of good impression on you.

P.S.  any names in this city relating to actual, real-life, places or people is entirely involuntary and I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

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CITY: Spiralopolis
Submitter: Jerry Moore

Spiralopolis is a thriving city with a population of 9,342,726 healthy, educated sims. The city has a single road that starts in the town center and winds out in the form of a spiral.

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CITY: St. Christopher
Submitter: Christopher Pierce

In my city, size was not the goal. My goal was to create a beautiful city in which I would like to live.

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CITY: SymCity
Submitter: Craig Lichetenstein

This city is pretty Symmetrical. I'm sure there may be a flaw but it's a great city with a great budget and cool buildings.

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CITY: The Bahamas
Submitter: David
 
This city is made of many island, has 2 billion in budget,high EQ, LE about 77, all zones are low density, large seaport and airport, many retreational areas, high land values, little crime, many bus stations and one island has a subsystem,pollution not a big problem ,and excellent water system. population about 11 thousand. 

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CITY: Glorioso
Submitter: Giles Tomkin

The place I would like to live!  There's a good chance that most people would know each other, or know of each other's families at least.

Presentation 
format -
A set of files saved during the stages of development (TOMG-B1 thru 4 = 'B-efore start') of the real estate and another set during development of the island city state (TOMG-C1 thru 4 = 'C-ity').
Heavy accent on airport and seaport. Low accent on industry.  Heavy accent on wonderful residential areas and public services - schooling, hospitals, marinas, etc..

Names -
All names 
used are from real places around the Glorioso Island Group - which is a real place - currently uninhabited. But you'll have to find where it is for yourselves - shouldn't be too hard!

Surprises -
During development some surprises occurred - When I opened the airport, it immediately jammed itself full after building four huge runways.  Population at the time was around 18,000.  The same happened with the seaport - instant satisfaction, apparently out of all proportion with the population's needs.  Very gratifying.

Development -
Lots of work on the landscaping before opening the city ("done"). The land shapes were planned to avoid the confusion of bridge and road building from level to another (Is this a bug??).   

The special feature of Glorioso is endless water supplies conveniently flowing from hill & mountain tops, to provide limitless everlasting hydropower and water to the islanders.  It may have been total cheating, but it sure makes Glorioso a wonderful place to live.  Melanoma is the citizens biggest enemy, just the way it should be (That's one name I could have added for a beach front someplace - it fits with the others very easily!)

The "land bridge" was used only during development, and was removed ('lower terrain') once the population passed 30,000. 

The north-east island peninsula was developed first, with accent on industry, to promote early growth near the 'connection' to the nearest city. (Bug - The signposts to neighbouring cities - and therby these cities - cannot be renamed)

Next the North Island was developed, balancing industrial- commercial- residential.  After the money started to roll, I developed the south island ("Analalava") - first with the port, and later with schools, colleges, libraries and museums; all with a minimum of low-density everything, and a maximum of police, fire stations, hospitals, marinas and parks, including the Analalava National Park, Glorioso's pride and joy.

The prison island has its own piece of subway - if prisoners manage to get to the mainland via the subway, they may only emerge at this one point.

Plenty of small detail is left for finishing touches & re-arranging - like all works of art (Hey- SimCity as art?), one has to draw a line somewhere - in this case your deadline of Oct 14th for the finished item!

By October 8th, the money is coming in so fast that I can't spend it all, and have therefore lowered taxes to the minimum in the finished submitted version.

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CITY: VirtualVille
Submitter: Greg Gerke

Features:  
  - Drive Crazy Mountain - Mountain full of tunnels and sharp turns. 
  - Wilderness Park      - Plenty of trees, water, and other forms of entertainment.
  - Dark Park            - Commune of Draco arcologies.

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CITY: Eaven Moore
Submitter: Christopher Osborne

Eaven Moore was created with the FUND cheat, which I hope doesn't disqualify it. I used all the money to plan the WHOLE city form the ground up, which I found to be more difficult than it sounds. The overall aim of Eaven Moore was to use the fund money to design a city that was both beautiful conceptually, and a nice place to live.

The main feature of the city is the canal that stretches for one side of the city to the other. In the middle of the map, the canal splits in two to surround an island that forms the heart of the main commercial district and the heart of the city itself. At the very centre of the map, on an artificial 
raised hill, is the Eaven Moore Space Needle (aka a Llama Dome). This cental area also feature some exclusive water from appartment blocks and four marinas.
Another dominant feature of the city plan is the "green belt". This is an almost complete ring of lanscaped open space to ensure all resident of Eaven Moore are close to openspace. Roads in the green belt pass through tunnels to ensure landscape in not spoilt by cars. The green belts feature lots of trees and water and four more marinas to take advantage of it.
All the industry is located on the edge of the map to minimise the effects of pollution, and is separated from adjacent residential areas by a barrier of trees.In addition to the main central commercial district, there are fore more "suburban" commercial districts surrounded by low density housing.
Many of the services are grouped together to simulate the large institution that befit a great city such as Eaven Moore. There is a university made up from four colleges, a general hospital made up form 10 individual hospitals. The cities water is provided by two large water works at the north and south ends of the canal. Large air and seaports are also provided.
Close attention has been paid to making the city an good place to live. Crime is low, an extenisive bus system has been provided to keep traffic down, schools, libraries and museums are well provided for, and, in addition to the lanscaped green belts, there are plenty of parks.
Although the use of the fund cheat has brought in lot of money (the -1533% has now been paid back however), a tax rate has been set that still brings in a small ammount of money each year, just to show that this city could survive financially
