[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
Yesterday’s tour of Tiny Tower got us through only half of its New Urbanist principles – we have almost as many yet to come – including the principle of user deification.
A world in your hands, K
13. The city does not run itself. Leave your Tiny Tower unattended for a couple of days and when you return, all the businesses will be closed (out of stock), all the bitizens will be at home idle, and the city’s revenue will have fallen to zero.
Many elected officials and all dictators forget this – and in taking their urban economy for granted, they ruin their country.
We elected you to improve the country, not deplete it
C. Finance and budgeting
14. Always maintain liquidity. If you run out of liquidity, you can neither make further capital investments nor replenish your inventory.
You’d like to build another floor but you lack enough capital (coins at lower left)
Tiny Tower’s municipal finance runs on a balance-budget requirement, which is a commendable discipline largely ignored in the real world.
15. A little unemployment is a good thing. It’s better to have more housing than jobs, because the small number of unemployed represents your optionality to upgrade your workforce.
Economics believe there’s an optimal ‘full employment’ in the range of 95% of the desired workforce.
In today’s America, we are far below that, with the lowest labor-force participation rates in decades.
16. Always be building. A tower that is not building is wasting the opportunity of time.
VIP’s expedite construction
For ‘tower,’ read ‘city’ and you have a motto for enlightened urban administration. Always be growing your economy.
17. Property yields revenue; cash is an idle resource. Paging Ben Bernanke! Cash in the bank yields zero. If you want it to turn capital into yield, you must invest it into property.
Why do you think I’ve been printing it?
D. Politics and governance
18. Baksheesh works. No matter what process you require, a little tipping (as represented by a non-monetary commodity called Towerbux) will speed it up. Is that bribery, an expediting fee, or baksheesh?
Will you grease three palms?
Intriguingly, one can play the game ‘clean’ by never using baksheesh, but the temptation to speed along an urgent process is well-nigh irresistible.
Every service costs money
19. Subsidies are not necessary. Everyone is a Lockean economic actor.
In this, Tiny Tower oversimplifies land-use economics. Some of its uses (such as food) are clearly less economic than
And Tiny Tower’s lack of subsidy for affordable housing is feasible only because it enforces a rigorous inclusionary zoning – without housing there are no jobs, so even though the housing is under-economic, it must be built.
20. There is no crime. Would that this were so.
I am the law
E. Long-term urban planning
21. Children and the elderly do not exist. Tiny Tower is a world of perfect workers; children and the elderly, who are economic deadweight, are banished from the realm.
More than a bit cynical – though accurate socioeconomics.
No elderly people here
22. There is always something to do. Pick up Tiny Tower and within sixty seconds you will have some task needing your attention: a bitizen to be ferried in the elevator, a VIP to deploy, baksheesh to pay, a store to stock, an employee to evict, a floor to build.
In the end, concludes Candide, we must cultivate our garden.
In the end, we must cultivate our tiny tower.
In the end, we must cultivate our cities.
I need to get back to work for relief from my leisure
23. The game never ends. I am told Tiny Tower caps out at 180 floors. I’ve been playing the current game since mid-May and am on the 77th floor.
In Tiny Tower, though possibly not in the real world, cities can grow indefinitely. For the future of humanity and human prosperity, we need them to.
Are you ready to live on the 95th floor?
