What a Megacity with 107 Million People Looks Like—via SimCity

"Peter Richie spent eight months planning and building a megacity in vanilla SimCity 4, and the end result is mind-boggling (especially as a former mayor myself): 107.7 million people living in one massive, sprawling region," according to Derek Mead.

Here's what the effort shows about life in a mega-times-ten-city:

• 26,542 km of paved road (16,492 miles)
• 8,626 km of subway lines (5,360 miles)
• 324 Hydrogen power plants (6,000,000 megawatts of energy)
• 486 Waste to Energy Plants
• 512 Large Water Pumps
• Over 2,000 elementary and high schools

Mead studies the Richie's SimCity effort for lessons in the kinds of challenges cities and planners will face as more and more cities broach mega-city status and deal with the resulting, increasing pressures on the environment, infrastructure, and civilization.