For its first week the game lived in a small test neighbourhood. It did the job, but it was a film set, not a town. So I drew an island.
I started with the ground, the coast and the sea, laid a road network across it with real junctions and bends, then added pavements and street lamps, then plots and zoning. The town got four quarters: a suburb with houses and gardens, a downtown with towers, an industrial district called the Ironworks, and the harbour. At the edge there is an airfield, and at the quay a container ship that later became the Eastreach Trader. In early November the island finally got its name: Eastreach.
Moving every existing building and system onto the new map took a weekend of careful work. Customers needed new homes and paths, shops needed new spots, the police needed new routes. And a town needs a lot of small things to feel lived in, so a few days later I went over every street: flower boxes, shutters, awnings, washing lines, water towers, graffiti, and fire escapes on some of the houses (never down a shop front).
One rule from that pass is still checked by an automatic test: pavements must stay easy to walk along. A probe walks every pavement in town, and it has to find zero blocked spots.
