City Builder: From A Game

The plan was to build a properly-zoned city within one lifetime, and get a return of the founding costs in a hundred years. It was expected that there would be a transition of about 10 to 16 mayors throughout the hundred-year period. There is an assumption that the city government, as well as their families to the third degree, would not be corrupt, and every ruler would ensure a smooth transition to the successor.

Transportation, aside from proper zoning, should be one of the primary considerations.

* * *

What was to be Raheem City was by now an empty expanse of land, 25% mountainous, and with the semi-polluted Guang-Quez river flowing in a diagonal across the southwest quadrant of the land area. The plains were overgrown with grass, and the area surrounding the hills were covered in thousand year-old forest growth. The instructions were clear that the vegetation around the hills were not to be touched, and clearer was the condition that the semi-polluted river flowing from the bigger cities up north were not to be made more polluted than they already were. In fact, it should be in the pipeline that once a suitable technology appeared and the government could afford it, they would build a water treatment facility that could make water from the Guang-Quez drinkable.

Planning for the city started two years ago. There would be a large central park near the approximate city center, with future space for monuments, playgrounds, and everything. But as the city didn't have funds appropriated for these just yet, they just built for now the roads that encircled the park, marking its borders. The original vegetation within the park's area were preserved, pending future landscaping as needed. But the old trees were to stay, and those that needed cutting down had to undergo a strict and lengthy review before being allowed—if at all.

Starting from the central park, the grid of roads were mapped out and the corresponding zones were designated. The first of the roads to be paved were were those from out of the city going in to the residential areas. Before  they built any commercial establishments, they wanted to bring people in as residents.

Lots were cheaper with the initial "pre-selling" price. The earliest buyers were just from the overcrowded neighboring metropolis north of the city. Connected to it via the I-9 speedway, Raheem City was a 30-minute-drive away.

Building the link to I-9 was one of the top priorities during the first year since the city's founding. The mayor sought the national government's assistance, as well as that of the private land developers, to help fund this speedway connection. There was agreement that half of the toll income would go to the private corporations during the first ten years of operation, decrementing by ten percent every five years hence, until finally all income would go to the city.

While that was going on, land development commenced. Not two years after the first residential development went on sale, the first factory in the industrial complex broke ground. It was to be a car manufacturing plant, and promised to employ 5,000 of Raheem City residents. This guaranteed a slight increase in Raheem City land value, and so prospected land buyers were told to get their real estate now before the cost got even higher within the following years.

Years one through five saw the highest surge in the city's population. Though there would, of course, be a continuous stream of new residents, statisticians noted that this would be the highest surge in population growth in the entire history of the city.

The end of the sixth year would be the end of the term of the appointed mayor. Everyone—including the national government—were curious to find out if this OIC would seek an elected position on the city's first ever election, and if so, if he would relinquish his post to the winner if the winner was other than him or an immediate relative.

For what it's worth, it should be noted here that this OIC's name was Mayor Raheem.
* * *
Next to (initially) cheap land costs, what made Raheem City attractive to new residents was the establishment of schools. Shenkar Academy and Polonoling Community College were the first two to offer a full suite of primary to tertiary education. At the same time, deals were already in the works for the movement of the Raheem City branches of three other major universities.

Then there was the growth of the manufacturing sector. More factories opened during the next five years. Raheem City's own version of the Silicon Valley occupied the major central road on the industrial zone—which made it more a silicon strip than an actual valley.

Several blocks away were the chemical plants, which, in a few years, would lead to citizens' protests for the enhancement of the environmental ordinances. But in the meantime, the important thing was that these plants generated more jobs and income for the city.
* * *
No city would truly be free of crime. There were petty crimes reported as early as the first year that people settled in Raheem City: pick pockets, semi-violent pranks, occasional bike theft. But it wasn't until the Who-What-When-and-Where Massacres of 1999 that the authorities realized the need for a really good police force.

Truth be told, the Who-What-When-and-Where Massacres of 1999 didn't happen exclusively in Raheem City, nor were the crimes confined within that single year. It was a series of killings spread throughout the greater geographical region, spanning the years 1997 until the killer was arrested in 2005.

This series of massacres reached Raheem City via a mass execution of an entire eatery one early February morning in 1999. The sheer violence of the proceedings was previously unseen in Raheem City since its founding, while the Who-What-When-and-Where notice left at the scene of the crime quickly tagged it as indeed the handiwork of Who-What-When-and-Where Massacres perpetrator.

As a result, the _ational Board of Investigators (_BI) opened up a sattelite branch in a number of malls in Raheem City. Their aim was to catch the WWWWM killer if by some chance he or she happened to apply for an _BI clearance. A protocol was put in place whereby the _BI authorities would be alerted for "hits" among the _BI clearance applicants. It was an ingenius dragnet of sorts, given that everybody was required to furnish an _BI clearance for just about any aspect of their bureaucratic lives.

Now, a "hit" was a similarity between the combined given- and surname of any two or more _BI clearance applicants, or those who were already in the _BI database. Upon identifying a "hit", the _BI personnel would ask the applicant to wait 14 days for them for verification, after which time the applicant's request for a clearance would presumably be resolved. Why the process took 14 days to complete, and what investigative actions were done exactly that it required this much time, people could only speculate.

In any case, 14 days was an awfully long time to be waiting for what would otherwise have been a simple addition of filters on a database search query. A lot of applicants grew frustrated over this. What an ordinary _BI clearance applicant didn't know was that while they were waiting for their "hit" to be verified, the _BI was slowly closing in on the WWWWM killer.

Already, they had a name of the suspect, forwarded to them by the Regional Headquarters: a certain J. J. Santos. As their immense good fortune would have it, one fine August morning, a person with just the name J. J. Santos applied for a clearance needed for local employment, falling right into their clutches. The poor murderer's namesake couldn't do anything except watch helplessly as the computer screen blinked "HIT" in red bold letters next to his name. Never mind that this J. J. Santos fellow that they'd identified could be no farther from committing a massacre than, say, accidentally poking a guy's eye out in a martial art's event. The only fault of this killer's namesake was that he happened to want to move to a better paying job, and thus needed an _BI clearance so he could job hunt.

For this unfortunate fellow, he never got to go home to his family that day. _BI agents were waiting to arrest him at the very mall exit, to be hauled to detention. Simply because he shared the same given name and surname as a suspected criminal.

With this, one could say that Raheem City also was in need of justice—but this was not yet to be for another few more years to come.[1]

* * *

In the greater scale of things though Raheem City was looking to be in good shape.

With all the tax money collected, Raheem City was ready for an inter-city railway system. This they wanted to implement as much as possible before the traffic problem started to really get serious. A railway system would help a lot in not only in easing traffic, but reducing individual citizen's carbon footprint as well. All in all, it was a good thing for a developing city to have.

* * *

The transition of mayoral duties was mentioned here awhile ago. At the same time, it is probably a good time to mention why the city has the same name as its mayor. See, this young city went by a number of different temporary names shortly after its founding. When Mayor Raheem was approaching the end of his term, while everyone expected him to cling to power, or at the very least, have a member of his family run as his successor, he did a very surprising thing by doing none of these. Now, one has to understand that during this time, and in this country in particular, this behavior by one in power was unheard of.

So in appreciation for this un-traditional politician-like behavior by their former leader, the whole city granted him a kind of virtual immortality that not even a dynastic political rule could ever provide. Every single citizen unanimously agreed that there was no better name to give their city but the very name of their noble and one-of-a-kind mayor, Mayor Raheem. And this would be so for the next hundred years.

* * *

Moving now to a decade since Raheem City was founded, there were various needs from the citizenry. More infrastructure projects were started: more hospitals, police and fire stations, a library, two cemeteries, a radio station, a prison house, two separate bridges that cross the Guang-Quez, and the city hall. This latter was constructed right across the western face of the central park.

Understandably, all these spending required an ever increasing budget. In the last five years, the various taxes underwent an increase. Increase in residential and commercial taxes covered the administrative costs. Industrial taxes increased significantly, mostly to compensate for the environmental damage their operations were gradually introducing. The factories for a time complained that their contribution to the air pollution was not as much as that of the "dirty" coal power plant near the city's edge. The authorities confirmed this after a careful study, and yet as the coal plant was the only source from which the entire city got its power, they could not immediately address this issue on pollution. Instead, the city council decreed to channel a portion of the industry's tax increase to build a much cleaner power source, until they could completely shut down the coal plant. The industrial sector found sense in this, and came to an agreement with the city council not long after.

With Raheem City becoming slightly more expensive, demands for further expansion settled down somewhat. There were a few businesses that closed for various reasons not all primarily due to the increased cost of living. Those that stayed though were just about to benefit from the Plague of Materialism that was yet to sweep Raheem City in the next few years.

Raheem City did not start out as highly commercialized. What commercial establishments there were were only small-to-medium scale enterprises, mainly re-selling products brought in from the neighboring cities. This was about to change during the completion of the inter-city railway system. With the ingenious schemes of the corporations to attach the rail stations to the malls, commuters using the trains were forced to pass by the malls every time.

Mall owners quickly saw the potential in being able to easily lure commuters to buying things. The mall owners invested in bringing in and carrying international brands of Things that were most fashionable for anyone to Have. This ranged from clothes, shoes, watches, bags, intelligent phones, electronics, and other similar accessories. When television and print suddenly dictated that it was most desirable to have a certain body figure and specific skin type to look best in the above-mentioned fashion accessories, establishments opened in those very malls to help people achieve just the required physical appearance.

And placing these train stations on the entrance of malls was essentially very much like installing money-sucking devices that parted the people from their hard earned money simply by walking by.

Thankfully, Raheem City's work force was paid more or less fairly, and so they had some bit of money left to spend on an expensive lifestyle.

Now a couple of decades into cityhood, and with Raheem City and its denizens looking very much like what an urban metropolis more or less should, what lay in this city's future, and would they achieve the hundred-year goals that they had planned upon founding?

____________
[1]
When the real WWWWM perpetrator was arrested in 2005, the other  J. J. Santos was finally set free with a clean _BI clearance, to job hunt to his heart's desire.

Expectations

Stephen Malkmus V. Santos had his life planned out for him the moment he was conceived. As soon as he could sit, he would be carried to his high baby chair in front of an upright paino to learn the scales. He would learn to sing even before he could talk. The first sentence he would ever utter would be the opening line of the first epic novel he would ever write.

In his pre-school years, he would not be babysat by electronic gadgets. He could use electronic gadgets all right, but only if they were of the ProTools variety, and would allow him to engineer his own unique electronic musical sound.

He would be well-versed in at least five international languages before he was out of his diapers, and that would be aside from the native dialects of his parents: Tagalog and Kapampangan.

Before entering grade school, he would brush up on some Political Theory and a smattering of Pre-Law during his playtime. He would sharpen his pronunciation skills by participating in debates against University students during the weekends. During semestral breaks when there were no Univerisity students to debate against, he would pass his time by painting his future masterpiece.

Such indecisions as to whether he would take flying commercial planes for a major airlines company, or play as the star centre forward of a top international federation football team as his main pastime would not be a problem, since he would have good time management skills enabling him to do both.

If these all seem too much to expect for a yet unborn child to accomplish, these are actually but a few of the more commonplace entries one is likely to find if one were to browse the Expectations Booklet his father is preparing for him. With the first of the drafts started in secret as early as his father's bachelor years, the Expectations Booklet contains a list of milestones he is sure his future child will, at some precise predetermined future time, achieve.

In its present form, the Expectations Booklet is a six-inch-thick legal-sized office binder, called such because on its binder spine is hand-written in black marker a simple description of its general contents: "EXPECTATIONS". Within are a couple of hundred pages of legal sized bond paper, filled with almost no margins with the very small handwriting his father is known for.

There are two columns for every page; one for the "life goal"—as his father likes to call them—and the other the target date the goal is to be achieved. Once each expectation is met, his father will simply strikeout the entire entry and will be ready to move to the next milestone.

For now, of course, none of the entries are struck-out. In fact, his father is in a late stage final revision, trying to add a couple more pages of goals that aren't included in earlier drafts. This late stage revision, similar to how the booklet has been started, is also being done in secret—that is, unknown even to the future child's mother.

They say babies can hear and comprehend even in the womb. If so, Stephen's father is using every opportunity when his wife is asleep to read to the yet unborn child writings from his Expectations list. In the middle of the night, he sneaks the thick office binder into the room, and whispering through each of the items in the booklet, he calls Sthephen by name and assures him that he will indeed achieve.

It was automatic. Though deep in residual early morning slumber, he came awake at the sound of paper being ripped. The ticket, of course! It came in a gray, recycled, low grade paper, cheque-like rectangularity. He accepted it as soon as the conductor handed it over. Whereas before he was asked of his destination beforehand, this time, due to the regularity with which he availed of this mode of transportation, the conductor already instinctively knew his destination. Magal Lanes--he could tell from the patterns of the perforations. He noted how the holes just exactly appear right where a particular number would have been, and it left no doubt in his mind that the conductors of this particular bus liner were not only experts at traversing the interior of a bus while in motion, but they were also pretty darn good at punching ticket holes with extreme accuracy. Like the punch cards of early computers, this seemingly insignificant bus ticket contained a wealth of information. From the date and time of travel, kilometers from the source to the destination, amount to be paid, it also displayed the the serial number. This last was to him the most crucial piece of information held in this oft-ignored bus ticket. As he took it he gave it a not so insignificant time in contemplative perusal, noting in its uniqueness how it had never ocassioned--and quite expectedly!--that he has been handed a bus ticket of this serial number before. He nodded in approval at the authenticity of the whole deal, paid the conductor the amount expected of him, and leaned back in his seat to resume his sleep.