A SMALL CITY / AN ENORMOUS QUESTION
Change one rule.
Watch everyone adapt.
One city becomes two. The same people begin with the same lives. You change an institution. Then you follow what happens to the shopkeeper, the worker, the schoolchild, the budget—and the unintended consequences.
A fictional thought laboratory with invented parameters. It can illuminate mechanisms, not predict real-world outcomes.
Choose the rule to rewrite
Changing any policy setting begins a fresh experiment; matched seeds isolate the changed rule.
Four districts, many outcomes
Select a district to inspect its citizens. Colour conveys relative reserve levels only; exact numbers are shown in text.
Lives over time
Below zero means households are short of reserves; it does not imply a closed accounting system.
Find one person in the averages
Who bears the cost?
Events with consequences
Challenge the model
Change the city seed to ask whether the result depends on who happened to live here. Change the strength of the rule to test unintended effects. Compare the citywide average with a particular person’s story. This is structured exploration, not evidence that a policy *works*.
Show methodology, mechanisms and limitations
120 fictional citizens across four districts have different roles, reserves, skill, care burdens, work probabilities and debt. Four district organisations have evolving rents, jobs, housing conditions, shops and employers. A budget and bank balance record some policy consequences. These are connected feedback processes but NOT a closed monetary economy.
Each period updates institutions, then citizens, then budget conditions. Hiring is deterministic from a seed; policies modify opportunities, expenditure or incentives. Immediate effects can trigger later changes in employment, trust, rent, housing maintenance, wages and debt service. The model is illustrative, not calibrated; its chosen coefficients can reverse the policy ranking. It omits political choice, migration, competition between many enterprises, detailed cash accounting and real municipal institutional complexity.
The trust and stress indices are fictional game states, not psychological assessments. No real customers, acquaintances, family finances, health details or confidential observations are represented. See source map and model card.