Choose the studio site, cut a first road grid, and walk the terrain in-simulation before committing to anything that is expensive to undo.
22 February 2027
Before you arrive#
Load the issued Kerrow Basin map without regenerating it. Use the studio settings: no simulation-altering mods, no unlimited money and no unlock-all. Leave the road tool alone. The map must reach the room with no roads placed.
The lecture is at 10:00 that morning. Bring its three terms — fiscal performance, mobility performance and livability — and be ready to name the panel or protocol that supplies each reading. Bring somewhere to write the one-page site report and somewhere off the machine to copy the save.
What happens in the room#
The first two hours are survey. Open five layers in this fixed order: natural resources, water, wind — the arrows inside the air pollution view, since there is no wind view of its own — terrain, outside connections. Keep one open at a time, close it before opening the next, and take one screenshot per layer. Under each screenshot, write one sentence saying what the layer rules out. A description is not yet a finding.
The land value overlay stays closed until 14:55. At hour zero it is nearly flat; opening it first would make the ground look less structured than it is. At 15:00 the road tool opens only for its length and gradient readouts. Drag the two candidate routes, record the figures, then cancel the tool. No road is confirmed.
At 15:30 open the economy panel and write down the opening grant before anyone has spent any of it. On an untouched map there is nothing built to charge upkeep against, so the monthly line reads flat: this is the zero, and every figure the studio quotes after today is a movement away from it.
At 15:40, state one sentence to the room: “I am siting on X. I am buying Y and paying with Z.” Written or recorded equivalents can be arranged with Marisol Quaye. The sentence is quoted back at the first jury.
The two sites#
Halstead Reach is a flat north-east terrace under 2% gradient, 1.2 km from the Dunthorpe interchange at 1.8%. Its unimproved normalised land-value score is 14. The ground is fertile, so development forfeits productive soil, but the short connection and compact service area make it the canonical lab site.
Ludworth Bench is the windward shelf on Verrall Ridge, about 90 m above the basin. Its route to Dunthorpe is 4.1 km at 6.2% through Thackray Cut, and its unimproved land-value score is 22. It is quiet and has the cleaner prospective air position, but requires roughly three and a half times the road length and a second service point. Any pumping cost caused by the lift is a planning judgement, not a simulator readout.
Both sites are defensible. The indefensible choice is the one made without the arithmetic. The cohort continues on Halstead Reach; the Bench remains the costed rejected alternative.
The tradeoff#
This is fiscal performance against livability. The Reach buys the cheaper monthly servicing position. The Bench begins eight land-value points ahead and sits windward of future nuisances. The choice cannot be deferred: next week’s block pattern starts at the first road, and the same district continues for the rest of semester.
The conventions this session sets#
Save the untouched archive as <student ID>-w01 and make one off-machine copy.
Unless an exercise names a different observation window, take live readings at
in-game 08:00 and state that time in the record. Label each number at the
point of use as live UI, manual observation, worksheet calculation or
reference-scenario value.
The standing rule begins here: a plan claiming all three metrics improved must show costs, time windows and who benefited. Week 1 is the zero against which those movements are read.
What you leave with#
Leave with the untouched save, the one-page report, and these baselines: a ₡75,000 opening grant against a flat monthly line; 1.2 km at 1.8%; 4.1 km at 6.2%; land value 14 on the Reach and 22 on the Ridge. Put the settlement sentence on the report and bring it to the Week 2 desk.
The spec
The session contract: what must be ready, recorded or defended. Each line is written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.
- You have either a capable machine or a booked design-lab machine with Cities: Skylines II and the standard map installed; use no simulation-altering mods, no unlimited money and no unlock-all.
- The Kerrow Basin standard map is loaded in a new save, not regenerated, with no roads placed.
- You can name the three metrics — fiscal performance, mobility performance, livability — and say which panel each one is read in.
- You have somewhere off this machine to put a save file, and you can put one there today.
- You have blank paper or a document open for the one-page site report, which is produced during the session and not afterwards.
Teaching team
- Marisol Quaye — convenor