This is not quite a spherical cow and there is something to be learned here, but really, I'd like to see this with
- non-square-grid cities with highways, public transport, …
- realistic synthetic populations doing non-random destination selection (nobody randomly goes to a supermarket at the other end of a city, after all)
- actual traffic simulation with jams (or at least using real traffic data)
and then evaluate both the energy use and travel times. That being said, doing this kind of thing, e.g. with ActivitySim, even for one real city, is quite a bit of work.
I was going to dismiss this and then I read the whole abstract and that is, pretty much what it says. Oh but I guess it also says they came up with a model for how far apart things are determining how far you have to travel to get there
But there was an article or map or something talking about the placement of towns, I think, back east (or the south, or Virginia).
Simply, the towns were placed within a days travel of each other. And the communities they served were, effectively, about a 1/3rd days travel in radius. That's how far folks would go to get into town, and being a day apart facilitated long range travel instead of camping in the wilderness.
The towns were basically small towns designed to serve those local communities. Cities formed on the intersections of such roads to support more trade and traffic.
I don't recall if it talked about towns along rivers where transit might be faster.
But it was an interesting article with a map of actual towns.
Just look at Magnasanti for the most efficient sim city
Here's a preprint from 2025: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00100v1
And an explainer/simulator here: https://vis.csh.ac.at/cities-morphology/#/
This is not quite a spherical cow and there is something to be learned here, but really, I'd like to see this with
- non-square-grid cities with highways, public transport, …
- realistic synthetic populations doing non-random destination selection (nobody randomly goes to a supermarket at the other end of a city, after all)
- actual traffic simulation with jams (or at least using real traffic data)
and then evaluate both the energy use and travel times. That being said, doing this kind of thing, e.g. with ActivitySim, even for one real city, is quite a bit of work.
Google Maps has all that data.
(has played sim city thousands of times since 1993) "I got this."
Without getting behind the paywall, the abstract says that how far you have to travel determines how far you have to travel??
I was going to dismiss this and then I read the whole abstract and that is, pretty much what it says. Oh but I guess it also says they came up with a model for how far apart things are determining how far you have to travel to get there
I forget that actual reference.
But there was an article or map or something talking about the placement of towns, I think, back east (or the south, or Virginia).
Simply, the towns were placed within a days travel of each other. And the communities they served were, effectively, about a 1/3rd days travel in radius. That's how far folks would go to get into town, and being a day apart facilitated long range travel instead of camping in the wilderness.
The towns were basically small towns designed to serve those local communities. Cities formed on the intersections of such roads to support more trade and traffic.
I don't recall if it talked about towns along rivers where transit might be faster.
But it was an interesting article with a map of actual towns.
I think the best shape for a city is a Mobius strip: go anywhere without turns, so no traffic lights needed.
Every 60 seconds a minute passes
Well stop clapping you stupid git
Iykyk