Concept derived for a Level Design class from Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities" passage. 
Andria was built so artfully that its every street follows a planet's orbit, and
the buildings and the places of community life repeat the order of the
constellations and the position of the most luminous stars: Antares, Alpheratz,
Capricorn, the Cepheids. The city's calendar is so regulated that jobs and offices
and ceremonies are arranged in a map corresponding to the firmament on that date:
and thus the days on earth and the nights in the sky reflect each other.
Though it is painstakingly regimented, the city's life flows calmly like the
motion of the celestial bodies and it acquires the inevitability of phenomena not
subject to human caprice. In praising Andria's citizens for their productive
industry and their spiritual ease, I was led to say: I can well understand how
you, feeling yourselves part of an unchanging heaven, cogs in a meticulous
clockwork, take care not to make the slightest change in your city and your
habits. Andria is the only city I know where it is best to remain motionless in
time.
They looked at one another dumbfounded. 'But why? Whoever said such a
thing?' And they led me to visit a suspended street recently opened over a bamboo
grove, a shadow-theatre under construction in the place of the municipal kennels,
now moved to the pavilions of the former lazaretto, abolished when the last plague
victims were cured, and--just inaugurated--a river port, a statue of Thales, a
toboggan slide.
'And these innovations do not disturb your city's astral rhythm?' I asked.
'Our city and the sky correspond so perfectly,' they answered, 'that any
change in Andria involves some novelty among the stars.' The astronomers, after
each change takes place in Andria, peer into their telescopes and report a nova's
explosion, or a remote point in the firmament's change of colour from orange to
yellow, the expansion of a nebula, the bending of a spiral of the Milky Way. Each
change implies a sequence of other changes, in Andria as among the stars: the city
and the sky never remain the same.
As for the character of Andria's inhabitants, two virtues are worth
mentioning: self-confidence and prudence. Convinced that every innovation in the
city influences the sky's pattern, before taking any decision they calculate the
risks and advantages for themselves and for the city and for all worlds.
the buildings and the places of community life repeat the order of the
constellations and the position of the most luminous stars: Antares, Alpheratz,
Capricorn, the Cepheids. The city's calendar is so regulated that jobs and offices
and ceremonies are arranged in a map corresponding to the firmament on that date:
and thus the days on earth and the nights in the sky reflect each other.
Though it is painstakingly regimented, the city's life flows calmly like the
motion of the celestial bodies and it acquires the inevitability of phenomena not
subject to human caprice. In praising Andria's citizens for their productive
industry and their spiritual ease, I was led to say: I can well understand how
you, feeling yourselves part of an unchanging heaven, cogs in a meticulous
clockwork, take care not to make the slightest change in your city and your
habits. Andria is the only city I know where it is best to remain motionless in
time.
They looked at one another dumbfounded. 'But why? Whoever said such a
thing?' And they led me to visit a suspended street recently opened over a bamboo
grove, a shadow-theatre under construction in the place of the municipal kennels,
now moved to the pavilions of the former lazaretto, abolished when the last plague
victims were cured, and--just inaugurated--a river port, a statue of Thales, a
toboggan slide.
'And these innovations do not disturb your city's astral rhythm?' I asked.
'Our city and the sky correspond so perfectly,' they answered, 'that any
change in Andria involves some novelty among the stars.' The astronomers, after
each change takes place in Andria, peer into their telescopes and report a nova's
explosion, or a remote point in the firmament's change of colour from orange to
yellow, the expansion of a nebula, the bending of a spiral of the Milky Way. Each
change implies a sequence of other changes, in Andria as among the stars: the city
and the sky never remain the same.
As for the character of Andria's inhabitants, two virtues are worth
mentioning: self-confidence and prudence. Convinced that every innovation in the
city influences the sky's pattern, before taking any decision they calculate the
risks and advantages for themselves and for the city and for all worlds.
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