simulcra said:
In simcity 3000/2000, zoning "mixed use" (ie instead of euclidean blocks of residential and commercial, rather interspersing them amongst each other) would result in catastrophic traffic nightmares.
Huh. I've been playing these games since I was a wee one (I blame Maxis at least partially for my choice of professions--but I thank them even more), and with years of playing 2000 and 3000, I always found that mixing commercial, residential, and industrial land uses side-by-side (with lots of bus and subway stops) resulted in no traffic problems whatsoever, and a very high mayor rating. I just finally got 4 deluxe last week (years after its release), so I haven't had time to do more than learn the basics of the new game, and have no idea how this type of development will affect the traffic modeling.
As for why pedestrians weren't integrated in the modeling of earlier versions--it's definitely a processing thing. Older computers just couldn't hack the computations needed for such complex systems, and I'm actually surprised that Maxis has attempted to have 4 run such complicated models. As I said above, I still haven't experienced how well it works for myself.
(but it's Friday, so I've got all weekend to play planner in a city I can actually influence policy in--they sure don't let us planners do so in real cities)