Urban planning isn't always as glamorous as it might seem (did it ever seem glamorous in the first place?) as today we turn into "boardroom planners", exchanging lots of words rather than putting lots of shovels in the ground.

We collectively decide to build a medical school for our university, which will produce the doctors necessary to treat sick workers from our new coal power plant. Aaron begins development of a hillside neighbourhood akin to LA's Hollywood Hills (but with more sand).

We also have an exciting conversation about how we take our tea and coffee.

Video: https://youtu.be/R-G4u8PfrGc

We debate the proposed downtown location, settling on a space just beyond the two intersecting highways and north of the oasis.

Stephen reveals some light offline building in the form of a new interchange north of the university, and a freeway extension that also bypasses it to the southwest. A site for the airport is roughly planned out, along with some optimal plane spotting locations.

Onyx goes back against his usual hatred for grids as he builds his campus and insults Stephen's old mountainside Azur Bay university, prompting him to defend its non-grid layout on the basis of a lack of buildable space.

Video: https://youtu.be/TUay8nRVHz0

In a primarily discussion-based episode, the city expands to the north in order to provide land for the construction of our first university campus.

We lose power as our main power plant, the solar tower, goes up in flames. As we extend roads northwards, we debate our proposed locations for the city downtown core.

A sync error forces us to delete all cars in the city to resolve it, resulting in a ghost town-like streetscape at ground level.

Video: https://youtu.be/Z_y-aNWiZ14

Stephen rescues the city from its "vanishing buildings" plague but Onyx alertly notices that we have way more money than we should have (a side effect of the fix) and Stephen pledges to fix that too.

Aaron builds another bus line to serve the north edge of the city through to the park. Onyx neglects his lake watch duties and it floods again, even worse than the first time.

We begin developing a new district, Saguaro Park, but we immediately start to experience problems glitched pipes, roads, lag and crashes.

Video: https://youtu.be/Zd-q2xDyr_Y

The attempt to fill the park lake works too well as we flood the surrounding neighbourhood and damage several buildings, including the park's maintenance depot.

Aaron proposes a crosstown bus line once again and Stephen finally builds it, hoping to alleviate the massive traffic jams emerging on our streets.

Meanwhile some unknown issue begins to spread across town, causing businesses to rapidly disappear one after another and buildings to eerily flicker until they vanish.

Video: https://youtu.be/jFN7da69sU0

Stephen de-zones all of Manchester industrial area but Onyx forgets to replace it in the temporary district despite being asked to do so.

To temper expectations of a quick university build-out on Manchester's former lands, Aaron builds a vanilla university instead as a stop-gap measure.

As we survey the city, we notice that severe traffic jams are emerging across the city on all our arterial roads, yet we can't determine what's causing them. Onyx reveals (and is very proud of the fact) that he knows where to buy the best dr*gs in Vancouver.

Video: https://youtu.be/b_uP5NJGpHw

Stephen audits the city's finances and cuts healthcare funding again, only to restore it immediately as everyone gets sick. To boost our revenue, a new mining district is drawn out and we start the relocation of the Manchester industrial zone to this area.

Meanwhile, the former land is reclaimed and cleaned for residences. Onyx states he may be on the autism spectrum, while Aaron voices his belief that everyone is on the spectrum in some way.

Video: https://youtu.be/4SerjM87xqc

Onyx is back from vacation and makes sure that everyone is aware of that.

Stephen mass replaces all the US-style roads back to an enhanced vanilla road style due to the US road inventory not having any roads with bike lanes (as should've been expected).

We begin to collaboratively plan the eastern neighbourhoods as a mixed residential-commercial district with a separate office park.

Onyx attempts to do some math to calculate the water needed to fill his park late but botches it massively.

Video: https://youtu.be/A6X9nWU0PP0

Onyx builds a pool at his urban park as he still doesn't have the terrain tools to begin his terraforming.

We begin building some pockets of high-density commercial and residential zones at key intersections around the city.

While placing a fire station down, Onyx bemoans its utilitarian appearance and we debate form vs. function, with Stephen favouring function and Onyx favouring form, with Aaron on the fence.

Video: https://youtu.be/B7en9PZMWmE

The city's first official "light offline building" project is revealed by Stephen to be a trumpet interchange on the east side of the city. Onyx tries to work on his park terrain but forgets to turn off a broken mod, resulting in Aaron attempting to take over and failing spectacularly.

Pollution begins to grow out of hand in Manchester, forcing us to move residences away. Money also starts to become a serious issue, and we install toll booths and raise taxes temporarily to compensate, with Aaron asserting that running a deficit is OK if it's purely to finance city services.

Video: https://youtu.be/NTihEnLmNpU