Build-A-Lot 2: Town Of The Year

Build, buy and sell houses in Build-a-lot 2: Town of the Year! Use your keen eye to pick the right locations to build parks and shops. Further increase curb appeal by painting and landscaping your houses! Flip houses for big profitsPaint and landscape houses to increase curb appealBuild fun parks to help beautify the neighborhoodConstruct fancy shops and earn profit sharingBuild-a-lot 2 is a fantastic strategy game in which you are a civil engineer who has to help the Mayors of 8 towns get the towns ready for the contest called Town of the year. The game is the second release of the sequel and includes great improvements and amazing new features. Your goal is to complete assignments following the requirements and indications of the mayors in order to get to the next level. You have a certain amount of time to finish your goal and the goals include building certain type of houses, upgrade them, repair if necessary, build shops, parks and other buildings to make every neighborhood much more attractive. This game offers different styles of houses ranging from small bungalows to huge palaces, with brand new designs and the possibility of painting them in any color you wish or adding flowers to beautify gardens. The main challenge in the game is how to manage your resources and find a way to earn money by selling houses, collecting rent, owing coffee shops, having your money in the bank, etc. Unlike the first game, you won't be charged any taxes, which is great because that was a huge loss of money. The game also includes a sandbox mode that allows you to play freely in any town you want and build whatever you wish without following any orders. Build-a-lot 2 is challenging and addictive game that definitely deserves a try.

Build-A-Lot 2: Town of the Year

Build-a-lot 2 - Town of the YearDeveloperHipsoftRelease dateApril 22, 2008GenreArcadeDevelop your own real estate empire in this eagerly anticipated sequel featuring new towns, new mayors, and new surprises! The Town of the Year competition is in full swing and eight exciting locations are in the running. Use your resources to construct homes, parks, shops, and more! Apply a coat of paint, landscape the yards, and upgrade your properties to add appeal and maximize your profits. When you're finished, case your vote for Town of the Year and play thrilling bonus rounds! There's so much to do and so much fun to be had in Build-a-lot - Town of the Year. Welcome to the Neighborhood!

Local restrictions typically prohibit expansion of nonconforming uses and structures. Nonconforming uses usually lose their legal status under local regulations if they are discontinued for a particular period of time, such as six months or a year. Nonconforming structures typically lose their legal status if they are destroyed, such as by fire, in whole or in part.

Communitiessuffering from declines in farming, mining, timber-work and manufacturing arenow begging for prisons to be built in their backyards. The economicrestructuring that began in the troubled decade of the 1980s has had dramaticsocial and economic consequences for rural communities and small towns.Together the farm crises, factory closings, corporate downsizing, shift toservice sector employment and the substitution of major regional and nationalchains for local, main-street businesses have triggered profound change inthese areas. The acquisition of prisons as a conscious economic developmentstrategy for depressed rural communities and small towns in the United States hasbecome widespread. Hundreds of small rural towns and several whole regionshave become dependent on an industry which itself is dependent on thecontinuation of crime-producing conditions.

Since1980, the majority of new prisons built to accommodate the expanding U.S.prison population have been placed in non-metropolitan areas, with the resultthat the majority of prisoners are now housed in rural America. By contrast,prior to 1980, only 36% of prisons were located in rural communities and smalltowns. Calvin Beale, a senior demographer with the Economic Research Serviceof the U.S. Department of Agriculture, reports that throughout the 1960s and70s, an average of just four new prisons had been built in rural areas eachyear. During the 1980s that figure increased to an annual average of 16 and inthe 1990s, it jumped to 25 new prisons annually.[3] Between 1990 and 1999, 245 prisons were built in rural and small towncommunities -- with a prison opening somewhere in rural America every fifteendays.[4]

Despitea lack of studies documenting the effects of prisons on rural areas and smalltowns over time, prisons are now heralded by economic development professionalsand politicians of all stripes as beneficial economic engines for depressedrural economies. Along with gambling casinos and huge animal confinement unitsfor raising or processing hogs and poultry, prisons have become one of thethree leading rural economic enterprises as states and localities seekindustries which provide large scale and quick opportunities.

Thecounty economic development director in the small New York town of Romulus, forexample, states that economic development experts throughout the state considercorrectional facilities to be positive contributors to local economies,providing good-paying jobs and benefits in communities where employment isscarce.[6] Ernie Preate, a former PennsylvaniaAttorney General and member of the advisory board for NortheasternPennsylvania's economic development council, says "it is policy in Pennsylvaniato pursue prisons as economic stimulation for depressed rural areas."[7]When announcing the potential siting of a federal prison in NorthumberlandCounty, Pennsylvania, in August 2001, Congressman Paul Kanjorski called theprison "the single largest public works project in the history ofNorthumberland."[8]

Prisonofficials go to great pains and often great expense to convince ruralcommunities of the economic benefits of prisons. It is common for localofficials to sponsor town meetings where prison officials and their supporters are invited to extol the benefits of prisons to communities. When proposedprisons are on the table, local newspapers are filled with articles reportinggrand claims for economic salvation and flyers flood into local coffeeshops,general stores and mini-marts. The purported benefits are described by aCalifornia Department of Corrections official who states that "Prisons not onlystabilize a local economy but can in fact rejuvenate it. There are no seasonalfluctuations, it is a non-polluting industry, and in many circumstances it isvirtually invisible... You've got people that are working there and spendingtheir money there, so now these communities are able to have a Little Leagueand all the kinds of activities that people want."[9]

Asa result of such claims, the competition for prison "development projects" has become fierce and political. In order to be considered competitive in thebidding wars for public prisons, rural counties and small towns give up a lotto gain what they hope will be more: offering financial assistance andconcessions such as donated land, upgraded sewer and water systems, housingsubsidies, and, in the case of private prisons, property and other taxabatements.

Inthe all-out contest spurred by New York Governor George Pataki's 1996 proposalto build three new maximum-security state prisons, the rural town of Altamontset aside 100 acres of land to entice the state to locate a prison there. Antwerp, another small community in northern New York, applied for a $600,000federal grant to rebuild their water supply system to increase their chances ofwinning a state prison.[10]

Themajority of public prison jobs, for example, do not go to people already livingin the community. Higher-paying management and correctional officer jobs inpublic prisons come with educational and experience requirements which many ruralresidents do not have. Seniority (and in some cases union rules) in publiccorrections systems means that these prisons are typically activated with largecadres of veteran correctional personnel from other prisons. In addition,competition for jobs in depressed areas is fierce, so rural residents competein a wider than normal market for available positions. The distances peopledrive to work at prisons are quite large, in most cases nearly double theaverage commuter range, according to Ruth Gilmore, a professor at UC-Berkeley. Gilmore's study of prison towns in California shows that less than 20% of jobson average go to current residents of a town with a new state prison. Whileover time that percentage increases, it is below 40% for all of California'snew rural prison towns.[11]

Thefindings of Gilmore's study in California are echoed in reports fromdisappointed local officials in prison towns across the country. The 750 jobsthat a state prison opened in 1999 brought to the tiny rural town of Malone,New York went mostly to people from outside the town because of prison systemseniority rules. According to the village's director of the Office ofCommunity Development, "Did we get seven hundred fifty jobs? We didn'tget a hundred"[12]

Anticipatingthat prisons will both attract new people to live in the host community andthat locals with prison jobs will be able to afford better housing, developersbuild new housing. But because today's prison employees often choose not tolive in small rural towns, opting instead to commute from urban and suburbanareas, speculation in housing development can end in disaster both for thespeculator and for the town, as happened in the prison towns of Corcoran andAvenal, California.

Prisonersthemselves may also displace low-wage workers in struggling rural areas. Oneresearcher assessing the impacts of prisons on host communities noted that "Prisons as industries do have the added plus of a captive workforce availablefor community projects."[17] Work projects performed by prisonersfor local government, churches, hospitals, libraries, and many other kinds oforganizations are very common in prisons located in rural communities and smalltowns, and prison officials tout them as good "community relations." This canlead to competition within the community for the services of inmates workingboth inside and outside the prison. In Coxsackie, New York, home to two stateprisons and 3,000 prisoners, work performed for the community varies widelyaccording to the prison guard coordinator of the inmate work crew: "We'vedone a lot of painting this year, painting a community center building inAthens, painted the inside of a church parish hall, put a roof on the town ofNew Baltimore town hall, had them sealing blacktop...just about everything.They get an industrial rate which amounts to 42 cents an hour."[18] Though local governments and other organizations save money on work they wouldotherwise have had to contract out to workers at a prevailing wage, prisonlabor may result in displacement of workers in these communities and can deepenlocal poverty.[19] 041b061a72