Paul Di Filippo - WikiWorld

I took out my phone and got a map of iCity as of this very moment. I queried for the Desire Path and found it halfway across town, in the Coal Sack. Oh, well, I had plenty of time and nothing better to do. So rather than dive underground for a quick subway ride, I continued on the relatively slow sidewalk toward my goal.

I used the time to study the stats on my ten remaining districts.

Resident satisfaction was holding steady in six: Cyprian Fields, Bayside, Crowmarsh, East Plum, Borogroves and Lower Uppercrust. My figures had taken a hit in two: Tangerang and Bekaski. And the remaining two showed an uptick: Disco Biscuits and Nuala’s Back Forty.

I immediately scheduled an interim charette for Tangerang and Bekaski. No sense letting things get bad enough to open up these two districts to a competitive reformation. That’d be just what I needed, the loss of two more of my fiefs to someone like Grale. In Disco Biscuits and Nuala’s Back Forty I initiated proxy polling to try to determine what the residents found so newly appealing about life there.

Finished with that, I looked to see if any new postings for competitive reformations elsewhere had come up. I sure didn’t want any of my fiefs to be the subject of such a contest. But if some other unlucky planner let his district slide, prompting such a referendum—well, that’s just how the system worked. I wasn’t going to hold back out of pity. Competitive urban planning was not a game for the weak-spined. And I needed to pick up a new district to make up for my loss of Floradora Heights.

Yes! Bloorvoor Estates, currently accredited to Mode O’Day, was up for reformation! I liked Mode, but I couldn’t afford any weepy sentimentality. My mind already churning with plans, I set my sights on Bloorvoor Estates and vowed not to look back.

I was just hoping Mode wouldn’t be present at the Desire Path. If I didn’t have to see her and commiserate, my life would be a lot easier.

I crossed over the district line separating Bollingwood from the Coal Sack, and within another minute had dismounted the sidewalk to stand at the door of the Desire Path.

The interior of the bar had changed since my last visit two days prior, a complete makeover. A gallery of taxidermied animal heads—and some human ones—filled one whole wall. All utterly realistic fakes, of course, composed of sensate putty. Beneath the glassy-eyed heads, a bunch of my peers sat at a variety of tables. I moved to join them.

“Hey, look, it’s Moses!” “Moses proposes, and the populace disposes!” “Fred Law!”

I dropped down into a seat and soon had a drink in hand. After a polite interval of small talk, the expressions of pity for my recent loss came. Some were genuine, some were thinly stretched over glee.

“I always thought Floradora Heights was one of your best districts, Moze,” said Yvonne Lestrange. Yvonne and I had lived together some years ago for almost 5,000 hours, and retained genuine feelings for each other.

“Thanks,” I responded. “I particularly liked how Sparkle Pond reflected the spire of Bindloss Church.”

Cristo Rivadavia said, “Yes, quite a pleasant sentimental effect. But really, Moses, whatever were you thinking with that plaza?”

“Which one?”

“The one where the fountain placement created absolutely chaotic traffic flows.”

“That placement was determined by the best shared-space models!”

“Nonetheless—”

Laguna Diamante intervened before our argument could escalate. “Hey, boys, that’s enough head-butting. We all know that Moses has done plenty of good work. He couldn’t help it that the Floradora citizens eventually tired of his plan. We all know how fickle populaces are.”

A general round of “Amens” arose, and glasses were refilled for a toast.

“To Diaspar!” “To Diaspar!” “Diaspar forever!”

With genuine conviviality restored, the talk naturally turned to the Bloorvoor competition.

“Well, I’m out of this one,” said Tartan Vartan. “Unless I get randomly seeded. My stats don’t put me in the top ten any longer.”

Hoagy Spreckles put a comradely arm around Vartan’s shoulders. “Don’t worry. Just run a few more phantom zones like your last one, and you’ll get an invitation from one populace or another. After that, you’ll be in like Unwyn.”

Everyone began to talk at once then, tossing out hints of how they would approach this competition.

And then in walked Mode O’Day herself.

If I had been dragging earlier, then Mode was positively flatlining. Her pretty face resembled a bulldog with dyspepsia. She carried a lump of sensate putty with her that she continually kneaded like a paranoid ship’s captain angry about his missing strawberries.

To massed silence, Mode dropped into a seat like a sack of doorknobs. She plopped the putty in the middle of the table and took out her phone. Still no one spoke. She sent the plans for the Bloorvoor district to the putty and the shapeless lump instantly snapped into the configuration of that neighbourhood, a perfectly detailed miniature we all recognized.

Mode studied the tiny sculpture for nearly a full minute. No one dared offer a word. Then with the swipe of a thumbnail across her phone’s screen, she rendered the putty into the semblance of a human hand with middle finger outthrust and the others bent back.

“That’s what I think of my populace!” she said.

And we all cheered.

So I dove right into the work of reifying my plan for the reformation of the Bloorvoor district. After so many years as both an amateur and competitive urban planner in iCity, the whole procedure possessed an intimate familiarity.

First, of course, came the dissatisfied populace. Registering their accumulating displeasure or simple boredom with their district, the continuously polled voice of the populace eventually triggered a Request for Reformation.

At that point the top ten urban planners (barring the one who had designed the failed district), along with a handful of randomly seeded contestants, were invited to enter their designs.

Any district plan arose from a planner’s innate creativity, experience, inspiration and skills, of course. But the charette process also held importance. Citizens got to weigh in with suggestions and criticisms.

At some prearranged point all the plans were locked down. At that stage they were instantiated as both phantom zone walk-through models and physical tabletop versions. (The phantom zone was littered, of course, with thousands of other amateur walk-throughs compiled on a freelance basis.) A period of inspection by the populace lasted a week or so. Then came the first and most important vote. The winning plan would govern the overnight reformation of the district. A final pro forma poll on the morning after the reformation, once the populace had a short time to verify the details of the full-scale instantiation, would award final accreditation to the planner.

Simple, right?

If you think so, you’ve never been a competitive urban planner.

I spent several nerve-stretched weeks subsisting on a diet of daffy-doze and TVP bars, trying to design the best, most exciting district I had ever designed, a brilliant mix of utilitarianism, excitement, surprise, grandeur and comfort. What governed me? Well of course I wanted to please the populace. But I was working just as hard to please myself. The aesthetics of my plan were actually uppermost in my instinctive choices and refinements and calculations.

Urban planning was my artform, iCity my medium.

I sought advice from a couple of my compatriots whom I trusted and who also weren’t involved in this competition. (I trusted any of my peers just so far.) Virgule and Yvonne saw my roughs and offered suggestions.