RenewCity

You inherit a neighborhood that's been through the bad years. Corktown, Detroit. Vacant lots, a highway scar, a train station that sat empty for decades — and a community that stayed through all of it. Your job is to bring it back.

Tired of building perfect cities? This is the other kind of city builder. Permits take three quarters, the council wants a hearing first, a lawsuit is waiting on your desk, and the budget is always short. If you want to know what running a real city feels like, red tape and all, this one's for you.

Development or gentrification? The bike lanes, the new storefronts, the tram line — the things that make a place better — are the same things that make rent go up. Improve the neighborhood too fast and the people who held it together can't afford to live there anymore. Move too slow and the voters show you the door.

RenewCity is a turn-based simulation about that trade-off. There's no perfect fix. There's just you, a tight budget, and a community that has heard promises before.

Real places, real streets

Every district is built from real OpenStreetMap data — the actual street grid, building footprints, and landmarks. Corktown ships with Michigan Central Station, Roosevelt Park, Ste. Anne de Détroit, and the I-75 corridor where they really are. Two more neighborhoods join it in the full game: Seongsu-dong in Seoul and Connewitz in Leipzig, each with its own politics, pressures, and stories.

Gentrification is a system here, not a score penalty

Displacement, rising property values, and what we call community authenticity are all tracked block by block. Push too hard and the neighborhood moves through the stages of gentrification in front of you — early signals, then pressure, then crisis. Housing policy, land trusts, and tenant protections can slow it down, but every one of them costs money or political capital you'd planned to spend somewhere else.

A career, not a single term

Elections come every four years and the bar for re-election rises the longer you stay. Deliver on your mandate and you keep going. Lose the room and you're done — voted out or recalled. Most runs end at the ballot box, and every one of them is a different story.

250+ decisions across 19 categories

Streets, transit, schools, clinics, housing policy, taxes, festivals, food access, and more. Convert a stroad into a transit boulevard. Pick between a public hospital, a private one, or a nonprofit clinic, and live with what each one does to the neighborhood. Negotiate with employers who want tax breaks. Strike a deal first and figure out where to put it later.

The city talks back

Over a hundred authored events written in the voice of each place, and a local paper that reports your quarter back to you — sometimes kindly. The Record keeps a running history of your decisions in plain prose, then comes back years later to note what they actually did.

And yes, there's paperwork. A lawsuit you can settle or actually read. A permit form that rejects you for leaving a field blank that doesn't exist. A 1987 parking booth that the preservation board would very much like you to keep.

Always know why

Trust dropped last quarter? Click it. RenewCity breaks down exactly what moved every number, so a bad quarter is something you can learn from instead of a mystery.

Features

• Three real neighborhoods: Detroit, Seoul, and Leipzig

• Quarterly turns with no time pressure — think it through

• Gentrification, displacement, and community authenticity simulated block by block

• Four street types, from six-lane stroad to transit boulevard

• Nine public services with public, private, and nonprofit trade-offs

• Taxes, bonds, grants, and TIF districts — and deficits that bite back

• Rolling elections, a named opponent, and an election night worth staying up for

• The Playbook: earn lessons each term and grow your mayor's style

• The Backroom, for when doing it the right way isn't working

• Win, lose, or the pyrrhic ending: you hit every target and a fifth of the neighborhood is gone

• Sandbox mode for when you just want to build