What about a Capital City?

I think Linden should create a Capital City, where all members are first greeted, and where all concerns about the world can be directed to. Capital City would serve mostly as a facade, not having any real government power; it's main attribute would be the presence of Linden's staff in the city to serve multiple purposes.

The City would also be unique in architecture and design. I think it would be cool to have a lined avenue where players could drive their cars around in an accurate way. Tree-lined streets could be home to neat rowhouses where Sims can live. I most compare it to Washington, D.C.


It could also be an interesting location for city jobs. For example an airport could be built, countless stores could take-up the first floors of most homes. It would be a pedestrian-friendly enviroment in the sense that you can walk around and feel like your in a real city.

Having a Capital City would mostly act as a place of orientation for all new members, a place where they can go home too, after a day's worth of exploring SL.


Just a thought..

ENCLOSED: Is a street layout I drew for Capital City. At it's center would be the Capitol/Town Hall Center, and on outward would be neat rowhouses and shops, and a public forum ( as suggested by one of you.)

Any comments would be appreciated

I like it.

Of course, I don't like the taxes that will follow, necessitated to pay for the building and operational expenses of the capital.

Also, I suggest Capital City have the first full-time police force. Griefers are a beotch.

Ambleside and Waterhead seem to serve this function.

Really, they have a FT police force?

Technically speaking, yes. Several Lindens frequent the area, and if all else fails, dial-a-Liason.

This gets into the "full time policing of the Welcome Area" issue, though. I don't think they want to extend such a service to specific regions of the world, simply because it would (needlessly) require many additional staff members per section.

And Waterhead/Ambleside are, short of the Welcome Area, one of the major hubs of communication in-world, with Lindens existing side-by-side with residents in neighboring sims.

It would be nice to have an employment agency near the welcome center.

May I suggest a lyceum for education and art, an agora for "content-creators", public baths (could be a club, I suppose), and a colosseum for taking forum issues inworld and other gladiatorial sports?

Great idea!!!!! I think it would go over nicely. Having one general area to get all needed information for noobs and older players would be wonderful.

You forgot the prim mines for newbies, Seth.

The City could act like an extension of Miramare and Baciola. Only this time, the city would be layed out in a congruent pattern, be lavishly decorated, and offer cheap rentable land for stores and apartment. Capital City would have the potential to become SL's version of a real-life metropolis.

Because of it's relatively compact design, the city would allow for stores, clubs, airport, car services, and a urray of businesses to occupy small plot of land. Making it possible for humble clothes makers, object designers, and even build architects, to rent small plots of building space at low rates. And Linden along with the Resident would be able to take advantage of all the new traffic!

The City should also have wide tree-lined avenues capable of handling cars and other vehicles. If planned and scripted right, the cars would no longer 'sink' into the road and into the SL underworld.

As for Linden's involvement, I think they should be in charge of the city's core planning and final layout. Resident should be able to buy land and develop their buildings in a fashion that would create ambience and place in a neighborhood. Linden should also locate thier staff and town hall meetings to the City.

In fact, at the center of Capital City, should be SL's version of the Capitol. In that building, all Town Hall meeting would be held, under a nice prim-filled dome! ^_^

Well I suppose I'll be the first to say I don't like it


A centralized SIM would only take away from the rest really.

A lot of the things you have listed are already available all over SL and quite frankly I think a lot of the intention is to get people to explore (as it seems to me) when they first come into the game.

Granted noobs can be overwhelmed, but 99% of what they want can be found through the find button.

Though I do like the idea of the look. A nice city instead of 90% of the telehub location that I describe as ghettos.

Just as a reminder, I posted a picture of what I have imagined for a street layout, it's on the first post.

As you mentioned, LL has already attempted the Linden built infrastructure and creating a 4 sim city/metropolitan concept. I happen to own a sizable chunk of land in Barcola, and it is joined by Miramare, Sistiana, and Grignano.

This was a losing deal for LL. due to only a portion of the sim being sellable (and more importantly generating monthly tier revenue), in addition to using more resources to create content - they never even added to those that have been there since March '04.

I bought into Barcola at auction to experience something similar to what you describe, and attempted to create what I could for that experience on my land there. Unfortunately it is now a ghost town. There are a handful of owners who still own there and actually continue to develop. Several others let time go on without building, cleaning etc. Some don't even attempt to continue the urban environment that could exist with the infrastructure.

If anything, I think this could be pursued in the existing sims. The proximity to the WA and existing sims could accomplish what you speak of. One major change of course would impact the existing infrastructure. It sucks. Great layout, although it could have been done much cleaner, and usable. I would love to recreate the roadways to include useful walking paths, and roads that are drivable. Unfortunately it seems to be shelved and collecting dust in the minds of LL. The 4 sims reside on some of the slowest servers available right now, and framerates blow. That much content packed together needs some performance gains to be a bustling urban mecca. In Barcola, it appears as if initially the plan was to add a couple more bordering sims - although I am sure this will never come to be as it was a losing experiment as far as LL is concerned (an assumption based on their willingness to even fix the current content there).

Bottomline is they are promoting user created content. Sounds like you have a plan. I would buy your 4 sims, propose to LL to have them near the existing City, and build it yourself. If you do ever choose this endeavour, let me know - I absolutely enjoy building urban cityscapes.

Nova Albion is a beautiful place - I fell in love with Grignano in my first week in Second Life (if not my first day). Grignola is pretty lively, sometimes - and as the capacities increase as Second Life and the technology in general improve, it will get livelier. It's all there waiting - things rarely happen smoothly and with perfect timing in life.

The reason I was proposing this to LL is because they are the only ones with so much available land and resources. I'm currently on the lowest tier of the game's membership hierarchy, so I can't buy or develop land.

I think the project is beyond worthwhile, and with some support gaining, it would be great to know where to start the endeavour. In a nutshell, I don't want to idea to be some sweet dream that gets canned. So I would need some help and guidance to realize the dream.

As LL gets bigger and more decentralized, we will no doubt have multiple capital cities. Midtown, have you considered proposing this idea to someone who owns their own continent? For example, Hiro Queso, Anshe Chung, Gigas Group, and soforth, for future visionary ideas?

I don't think it will be long before one resident or a dedicated team is the overseer of like a 50-region continent (that's a good chunk), and maybe by that time, the far west of the map won't look like the mainland blew chunks!

You will, of course, also need to be on the pulse with some really talented builders and more residents with applicable talents.

most importantly for it to work... It needs life. You need peopel to be there, for peopel attract people, and with people comes traffic, with traffic comes stores, with sotres comes more traffic...

....and then it lags so bad it crashes the sim

For the love of all that's decent in the world,


STOP CALLING IT A GAME!


*wails, gnashes teeth*










If you're waiting for me to also *rend garments*, fuhgeddaboutit. Go find yourself a hoochie mama at The Edge or whatever.

Neualtenburg is already my Capitol City

What about a (large) roving capitol building? A sort of persistent but mobile event with an associated structure. It could move daily/weekly/monthly to various places, often in newly created land I suppose due to availability. This, I think, would take advantage of possibilities in SL and avoid duplicating Waterhead or the urban sims. The design of the building could itself change in a continuous contest maybe. The building could be marked the way friends are so that it can be found quickly.

Babba Yagga's capitol city! hah!

Midtown Bienenstich, the nearest we have to a "city" in the urbanistic sense (not in the architectural, where we have several) is something like Neualtenburg, as Satchmo already mentioned.

Please take into account that we have to think about the "scale" of things in Second Life. Granted, it's rather easy to "build a city" — all it takes is money, time, and talented people. Granted, you can even have the city "live" — with shops, malls, casinos, and some special events as attractions. Something very near that idea is Midnight City, for instance.

Overall, what we have in SL are mostly "neighbourhoods" - small clusters of people, living together, working together, contributing sometimes to the common good, preserving the land and facilities around their homes/shops. Since we have the freedom to build whatever we want, we can make our neighbourhood "look like" a city.

Also, we have "communities" - usually meant in the sense of "planned communities". A group of people organize the land across one or several sims according to a plan, and the residents there enjoy the facilities they have at their disposal (AnsheLand a Hiro Queso's are possible examples, Slate is another, the Elven sims or the Furry sims are others, and so on). Here there is a relationship between "planners" and "plannees". "Planners" are often the landowners. Sometimes they have "SL companies" running the community; sometimes it's a more simple organization and not profit-oriented. "Plannees" rent or use the land, and eventually rise to "planner" status if they consistently give good contributions to the overall community — a sort of meritocracy in a sense, although some landowners would never dream of having their "customers" as memebrs of the board, lol.

In a sense, these "communities" resemble much more the idea of a private condominium or, if you prefer, a touristic resort. The owners provide services and entertainment to the whole community.

Cities, well — they are a complete different kind of beast. Neualtenburg is not a "city" in that sense - it's far too tiny to be even considered a "village". More like a "hamlet". But there are no "planners" and "plannees" there — all are simply "citizens". Nobody "owns" the land — it's City-owned, and the City sells deeds to the land, which are transferable as property. But still it's a government that organizes the City — a partly-elected group, which serve for a term, and gets replaced by the next batch of citizens. Still, it's not the "government" that "owns" the City — the City, in a sense, owns "itself". The difference here is that there is no difference between a group wishing to attract "customers" (ie. basically providing infrastructure and entertainment for others to use) and the customers themselves. This also means that all the infrastructure "appears" because people need it — and they self-organize to create the infrastructure they need. In Neualtenburg you have shops - but it's not a mall. You have several places where people host contests and discussions - but it's not a club. You have some entertaining things to do (splash around the Canal, visit secret places underground, etc) - but it's not an amusement park. Classes are held there, as well as exhibitions, but it's neither a "learning centre", a "newbie island", nor an "exhibition centre". And, of course, people live there, but it's not a "rental group". Actually, it's all of those together, at the same time, but also neither of them separately. You need to have them all if you wish to label it a "city" (well, at least — a hamlet ).

As a side-effect, cities — from which the word "civilization" comes — create their own culture, and, well, "civilization". There is a "Neualtenburg way" of dealing with things — propose them to the citizens and have them vote upon them. There are special items crafted just in Neualtenburg — not because there aren't talented people elsewhere, but because these things appear naturally when a "city" begins to have its own identity, which is separate from the personal identity of the people living there. A silly example: Neualtenburg has seasons — textures and trees change from summer to winter and back to summer again — not because it's cute or cool or a pretty good idea, but simply because there are events there that don't make sense to hold in a summer setting (or in a winter setting). These simple things — the city adapting to change across time, and time changing the city — are distinct marks of what makes a city "live".

So, long post. My point is, it's not just nice buildings and good urban planning that makes a "city". The many examples of "ghost cities in SL" with astounding buildings (my favourite one being Nexus Prime in Gibson and Bonifatio!) show that it takes a bit more to transform pretty buildings into something that comes near the concept of a "city". If you wish, you could see SL from above, and consider it, in a way, as a small city with over 50,000 inhabitants. That would make sense to me — SL, taken as a whole, has enough "critical mass" to "be" a city. But at the "local" level — individual sims or groups of sims — what you have, at most, are good neighbourhoods and private condominiums. And a tiny hamlet on an island somewhere struggling to grow

Quick, Torley! Get a boat! Hamlet is stranded on an island!

You're likely to get many people reacting as follows: Great idea -- you supply the land, and I'll build it. Since I have experience doing full-sim reconstruction projects with multiple stakeholders (sometimes at odds with each other), I'll offer a few comments.

1. Start by talking with the stakeholders, really listening, and asking questions to elucidate their requirements. Do not start with design ideas. There is an endless supply of magnificent, sublime design ideas. Begin by talking to the people who will contribute to the long-term viability of the sim.

2. The multiple, possibly inconsistent requirements presented by the various stakeholders are the basis for the design tradeoffs. These people may be in competition with each other for allocation of space, prims and sightlines. One example is the understandable desire of every retailer to get the absolute best spot nearest the sim's telehub. The job of the planner is to optimize the tradeoffs to favor the overall long-term sustainability of the sim (i.e. not becoming a ghost town/financial liability for the owner).

3. The architect/planner is just another stakeholder. (On my projects I've been both planner and architect, but it doesn't have to be done that way.) The best architects in SL are intensely creative, and like to develop their own distinctive styles evolving over time and experience with many projects. This is the architect's personal agenda. It is just one of the many factors to be balanced in the allocation of scarce resources. I'll give you a specific example using your own design for an urban layout. You had fun making an attractive design, but if that design were built I predict that you'd see a FOR RENT sign on the corner lots for a long time.

4. A community is always changing. One example is the sale of a sim to a new owner. Another is a change of theme. The best design is not a fixed layout to be perpetuated ad infinitum, but a configuration that can morph gracefully through future changes. One of my current projects is UNLIMITED sim. If you happen to visit it now, you'll see the sim in transition from one stage to another. The dramatic terraforming is complete. (A volcanic island with its crater wall functionally separating the commercial core from future residential use of the waterfront). Requirements included an Elven theme, and 20 stores with specific dimensions like the boxy stores in certain main grid malls. 20 generic shops are now in place, carefully fitted into the inner crater wall, and filling up with retailers. But -- surprise -- those people are mostly urban trendy retailers, not Elven at all. So the next stage will be conversion of those generic shops from generic to some style which may or may not be Elven! In the future the owner may change the look of the sim again. The decoupling of style and generic 3D space ensures that this can be done without disturbing any of the retailers.

I hope these examples give you some idea of the problemsolving involved in implementing design ideas as a viable sim. Best of luck! : )