CITYBUILDING | Less Parking, More Living
What cities can learn from video game designs.
Written By Zoe Tishaev
In the last few years, 3D open-world games have taken the world by storm, and breathtaking new graphics enabled by exceptional technology are revolutionizing what customers demand from video game maps. Designers must be intentional in their creation if they want to keep up.
What makes a video game environment interesting? What makes some of the best-rated game franchises in recent memory—Grand Theft Auto, The Last of Us, Fallout—so beautiful and endlessly fascinating to explore?
It may be unexpected, but video game designers are some of the most daring urbanists of our time.
Grand Theft Auto V might be the best example of a real-world city transported into the virtual realm. Set in the fictional city of Los Santos, the open-world playground of GTA V mirrors the landmarks, cityscape, topography, and flora of Los Angeles—with one crucial difference: a notable lack of parking lots. It seems odd for a game centered around stealing cars and embarking on mainly auto-dependent missions, but the denizens of Los Santos are relegated to street parking when dropping off their carriages.
Just look at these side-by-side photos between Los Santos and its real-life equivalent, and the intentional design choices become readily apparent: Six-lane highways are cut in favor of more greenery and gently sloping, windy roads.
The thrill of joyrides in GTA is hardly diminished by the lack of huge asphalt deserts in which to deposit a vehicle. On the contrary, haphazard parallel parking jobs that let players leap to the next car keep them engaged in the lively streetscape of Los Santos.
Even the single-family-home neighborhood of “Vinewood Hills” is notable for its lack of cul-de-sacs and dead ends. The real-life Hollywood Hills would not likely not provide the same model for immersion if players were constantly forced to reverse themselves at the end of a leisurely ride to the end of the neighborhood.
Fallout 4, a post-apocalyptic role-playing game, takes place in the radioactive ruins of twenty-third-century Boston. A focal point of the story takes place in “Diamond City”—a development in what was once Fenway Park. Some Bostonians like to compare the accuracy of various landmarks, but they’d be forgiven for missing the half-dozen parking lots and garages immediately adjacent to Fenway that, in the game, have been converted to other buildings to match the environment. Consider the satellite view below. How exciting would the game be if the adventure were interrupted by all those parking areas? Even after the apocalypse, nothing is more depressing than walking through a parking lot.
In a few cases, the Boston depicted in Fallout 4 even boasts a road diet compared to its real-life equivalent. See the case of the Massachusetts State House, where the building’s fictitious doppelgänger fronts a street that is a full lane narrower than the one in real life. The sci-fi State House also notably has a much shorter setback from the street, with a lower set of steps that better activates the public realm.
Despite the ruined streets of Fallout’s Boston being littered with abandoned automobiles, the streets are tight and the alleys narrow, encouraging the player to keep pushing and exploring.
Video game designers must take care to build an environment that keeps players engaged and interested. When they borrow real-life elements to capture the essence of certain cities, their changes are deliberate: swapping parking lots and decks for buildings, narrowing streets, and drawing never-ending roads that beckon a player toward adventure.
If video game players wouldn’t settle for anything less, why should we?
Zoe Tishaev is the Spring 2023 Duke Initiative for Urban Studies Fellow on Transportation Alternatives and University Development.