Each city gets a staff report, the way a rezoning case would have come before my board: the facts first, then the findings, then a recommendation. Pictures will be added when my son-in-law makes good on his promise.

Findings. My first city, begun the evening I opened the box. I laid it out the way the old county would have liked it: a courthouse square, houses in rings around it, the mill district along the river. It was a handsome little place for about forty game years. Then the garbage caught up with me. I had never built anywhere to put it, because in thirty-one years of planning the trash had always been somebody else's department. The newspaper ticker filled up with complaints, the land values went down, and by the time I found the landfill button half of the west side had moved out.

Recommendation. Humility. File closed.

Findings. A strict grid, because after Harlan's Ford I wanted something I could keep track of. Dense commercial in the middle, apartments around it, factories on the far side of the creek with a wide park strip in between. The downtown choked on traffic until I dug the subway loop, and after that it filled in so fast I had to go looking for more water.

Then a gentleman came to my office with an offer for a casino. The money paid for the subway and then some. It also brought crime to the six blocks around it, and I've been building police stations ever since. The casino is still there. I drive past it every game day and feel the way I used to feel about the outlet mall on the bypass.

Recommendation. Keep the subway. Staff is divided on the casino.

Findings. This is the one I'd show a visitor. It started as a port town with smokestacks along the harbor and houses up on the ridge where the air was better. I put a school in every neighborhood from the first decade and a college as soon as I could afford it. Around the 1960s the smokestacks began closing on their own and clean industry moved in behind them. I didn't do anything clever to make that happen, except wait for the children to grow up.

New Weyburn takes garbage from two neighboring towns and gets paid for it. My wife says this is the most planner thing she has ever heard of. The money goes into the parks along the river, which now run the whole length of the city.

Recommendation. Approve as submitted. Staff has no further comment, except to say it was worth it.

Findings. I wanted to see what would happen if I built a city the way a lot of real places were actually built during my career: all light zoning, every house on a big lot, every shop on the one main road, no buses, no rail, nothing within walking distance of anything. The answer is that it looks exactly like home. The traffic map is solid red along the main road, commercial demand dried up, and the population has sat at 22,000 for thirty game years. Nobody rioted. They just stopped coming.

Recommendation. I show this one to my old colleagues when they visit. None of them think it's funny.

Findings. Maddie visited over Labor Day and asked to make her own city. She dug a lake in the middle, surrounded it with parks, and put one house on each side of it "so everyone can see the water." There is no industry, because she says factories are smelly, and I did not have the heart to tell her where the jobs come from. She has the soul of a planner and the budget of a school board.

Recommendation. Continued at the applicant's request until her next visit at Thanksgiving.