{"id":1393,"date":"2010-01-13T17:56:15","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T22:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/?p=1393"},"modified":"2010-01-14T22:33:02","modified_gmt":"2010-01-15T03:33:02","slug":"simcity-baghdad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/2010\/01\/simcity-baghdad\/","title":{"rendered":"simcity baghdad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"525\" height=\"253\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1402\" title=\"sim-building\" src=\"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/sim-building.jpg\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/sim-building.jpg 525w, http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/sim-building-300x144.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 525px) 100vw, 525px\" \/><br \/>\n<em>[update: thanks to commenter <a rel=\"external nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/tsarchitect.nsflanagan.net\/\">\u0446ar\u044cchitect<\/a>, a screen capture from a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dcstrategies.net\/services.php\">demo<\/a> for SIM Building, a program of the sort which likely provides the underlying architecture for UrbanSim]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>An <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/doc\/201001\/military-simulate\">unfortunately brief article<\/a> in the latest <em>Atlantic Monthly<\/em> describes &#8220;SimCity Baghdad&#8221;, a video game developed for the US Army in order to train officers to navigate the intersections of local politics, Iraqi culture, infrastructure, urban social systems, and insurgent violence.\u00a0 It&#8217;s not exactly what I was thinking of when <a href=\"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/2009\/10\/gameworlds\/\">I described<\/a> a hypothetical <em>Infrastructure XL<\/em>, but UrbanSim (that&#8217;s the actual title of the game) nonetheless represents a fascinating evolution of the traditional and staid genre of city-building video games, though it is obviously an evolution with sinister overtones.<\/p>\n<p><em>[Your authoritative source for understanding military urbanism is of course <a href=\"http:\/\/subtopia.blogspot.com\/\">Subtopia<\/a>, but this recent <a href=\"http:\/\/bldgblog.blogspot.com\/2010\/01\/nakatomi-space.html\">BLDGBLOG post<\/a> on Die Hard, the Israeli military, and the violent navigation of architectural space also springs to mind for its explication of the links between military practices and architectural practices.\u00a0 And I&#8217;d be negligent if I failed to mention the Archinect school blog of Nick Sowers (<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/soundscrapers\">@soundscrapers<\/a>), which is conveniently capped just today with a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.archinect.com\/schoolblog\/entry.php?id=95186_0_39_0_C\">look back<\/a> at his grand tour of military installations (and American bases in particular) around the world.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[update: thanks to commenter \u0446ar\u044cchitect, a screen capture from a demo for SIM Building, a program of the sort which likely provides the underlying architecture for UrbanSim] An unfortunately brief article in the latest Atlantic Monthly describes &#8220;SimCity Baghdad&#8221;, a video game developed for the US Army in order to train officers to navigate the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[848,297,844,296],"class_list":["post-1393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asides","tag-infrastructure","tag-military-urbanism","tag-urbanism","tag-video-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1393"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1401,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393\/revisions\/1401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}