The City Must Grow

A city-building game driven by zone management. Each turn assigns a random zone type — residential, agricultural, commercial, or industrial — that must be placed on the map. Zoning decisions determine how the city develops: get the balance right and the population grows, but let the zones sprawl or crowd inappropriately and the city begins to decline. Unused buildings collapse. Poorly managed zones trigger chain failures that can bring the whole system down. The goal is to sustain development and population growth for as long as possible, which requires constant recalibration rather than any single winning configuration. There is no definitive end state — only an ongoing contest to keep the city from falling apart.