Me and my friend, Neil, have for the longest time joked about Chicago Mayor Richard Daley as a mayor with so much power to influence, manipulate and micromanage in improving a city, that he was not really a “real mayor” but a “SimCity Mayor”.

SimCity was a classic City Creation Simulator back in the day when Super Nintendo was huge. Most of the time you built large cities where you created residential areas for living, commercial areas for increased property value of your city, and industrial areas for jobs. In between was fighting crime and pollution in the city, while keeping citizens happy with good roads, fire stations, environment and of course... a low tax rate.

But videogames can hardly cover the complexity of creating a metropolis, and many people resorted to cheating and exploits to make their flourishing city. Such as building parks and lakes near industrial zones to miraculously lower pollution, building as many football stadiums as possible to raise property values, and using cheat codes to create massive cityscapes without raising taxes for such a project.

The joke had always been that Daley was able to do all these things, including other features of Sim City such as controlling the weather, and summoning monsters to attack the city. All which we believe Daley has the power to do.

If anybody had played the SNES game, Dr. Wright is the advisor to the player as he/she creates the city, he's a short professor fellow who gives generic tips on how to be a good mayor.

-