PolyTown

PolyTown lets you build the city both you, and your people, desire. Do you think building another landfill is a better solution than increasing the quality of city schools? Well you can go for that, just make sure that you, as the mayor, haven’t promised the opposite. Your city will be built on compromises: the wealthy will gladly replenish your treasury as long as you keep them satisfied, helping you provide services to the whole city. But what truly matters during elections is the large group of workers living on the edge of poverty. How will you balance their needs?

Zone your city

To keep things running smoothly, your city must be planned in advance. Decide where residents can build their houses, where shops open, and where factories appear. Zoning helps you prevent citizens from getting sick near polluting industries, ensures that shops have enough customers, and factories can deliver their goods on time.

The chair is hot

If you think that your citizens are doing well, maybe you have nothing to worry about. People won’t demand change if everything is okay, but from time to time, things will happen. Local hospitals will be overcrowded due to a disease spread through polluted water, or a prolonged period of high unemployment may hit the city. Events eventually occur.

But do not despair: pledges are a tool that could help you during your electoral campaign if you’re not sure you’ll be re-elected. If you successfully promise to create more jobs during your next mandate, you might just keep going. But failure after failure will make it harder to stay afloat, and you may ultimately need to look for another city, or another job entirely.

The bigger, the needier

In small cities, citizens aren’t very demanding, you can keep them happy with stable access to water and electricity. But running a big city is something else. Even lower-income groups will eventually expect good education and healthcare. But this is the only way to have big infrastructures in the city, universities and hospitals are far too expensive for a small town.

No traffic simulation

Just this once, you’ll be relieved of managing traffic (we assume that citizens will be smart enough to move closer to their jobs, or change them, if distance is too great). But that doesn’t mean transportation is useless. Services still need to be accessible from far away, and public transport will help you with that.

Do you only have the budget for one high school but still need to serve a distant residential area? Add a bus line that will bring students to school. Citizens may also explicitly demand access to public transportations (afterall they still need to get to work).