SimCity can be used educationally, but not in the sense of literally training people to be urban planners or mayors.

It's more useful for "Constructionist Education" and "Design Based Learning", as practiced by Seymour Papert and Doreen Nelson.

Constructionism (learning theory):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructionism_(learning_theo...

>Constructionist learning is when learners construct mental models to understand the world around them. Constructionism advocates student-centered, discovery learning where students use information they already know to acquire more knowledge. Students learn through participation in project-based learning where they make connections between different ideas and areas of knowledge facilitated by the teacher through coaching rather than using lectures or step-by-step guidance. Further, constructionism holds that learning can happen most effectively when people are active in making tangible objects in the real world. In this sense, constructionism is connected with experiential learning and builds on Jean Piaget's epistemological theory of constructivism.

>Seymour Papert defined constructionism in a proposal to the National Science Foundation titled Constructionism: A New Opportunity for Elementary Science Education as follows:

>"The word constructionism is a mnemonic for two aspects of the theory of science education underlying this project. From constructivist theories of psychology we take a view of learning as a reconstruction rather than as a transmission of knowledge. Then we extend the idea of manipulative materials to the idea that learning is most effective when part of an activity the learner experiences as constructing a meaningful product."

Chaim Gingold's PhD thesis "Play Design" deeply analyzes SimCity, and also has an entire section about Doreen Nelson's lifetime work on "City Building Education".

Not only did she write the SimCity 3000 Teacher's Guide for Maxis, but long before SimCity ever existed, she developed "Design Based Learning", which in 1974 she originally called "City Building Education", in which kids built cities out of cardboard instead of pixels.

Chaim Gingold's thesis on "Play Design":

https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1806122688.html?FMT=AI

page 366> Play has a complex relationship to what is not play. Depending on who you ask, SimCity, the
software toy, is either a frivolous diversion or an earnest model—and sometimes both. Right
from the start, SimCity had appeal as an educational tool, a quality that Maxis tried to capitalize
on. According to Braun, “It was never our intention to go into the education market, but the
education market came to us and said: ‘This is what we need if you’re gonna work with us.’ ”
What the education market wanted was teacher’s guides that translated and adapted SimCity
for classroom use. It didn’t hurt that Brøderbund, Maxis’s publishing partner, was deep into the
then hot educational software market, and that along with the investment Maxis received from
venture capitalists in 1992, came a hunger for aggressive growth into new markets. Wright,
of course, was busy making titles like SimEarth and SimAnt for an uncertain market. Maybe
that market was education?

>[...] One of the teachers Curtin hired was
Doreen Nelson, a brilliant and innovative educator who had developed a pedagogy called City
Building Education, in which students collaboratively built cities out of craft materials and role
play. Nelson become a regular visitor to Maxis, and Curtin made some trips to Los Angeles to
see City Building in action, where she found the experience of “watching a classroom actually
go through a couple of days worth of creation” to be “very inspiring. … I will never forget that
experience” (Curtin 2015; Nelson 2015). [5]

[5]> This translation took the form of a short teacher’s guide, a pamphlet, really, written by Michael Bremer, and
published by Maxis in 1989—the same year SimCity was released, explaining the limitations and applications of
SimCity, and offering curricular questions and scripts. Within a few years, Maxis became more serious about
tackling the education market, and hired Claire Curtin, in 1992, as their first educational product manager, charging her with finding ways to package SimCity, SimEarth, and SimAnt for the school market. Prior to joining Maxis,
Curtin had been the senior producer of Brøderbund’s hit educational franchise, Where In The World Is Carmen
Sandiego?, a job she had started in 1988, immediately after finishing graduate studies at NYU’s Educational Communication and Technology program, where she had studied with the noted education technology researcher Roy
Pea. Over the course of her career at Maxis, Curtin shifted roles and projects, a result of Maxis’s fickle focus
and its inability to produce hits beyond SimCity (chapter 5). Later, when Maxis defocused on a hard to reach
education market, Curtin would go on to co-design or co-produce the kids’ titles SimTown (1995) and SimSafari
(1998). Curtin collaborated closely with Roxana (“Roxy”) Wolosenko, and after Maxis decided not to do any more
kid specific titles, the two of them were shifted to Wright’s “Dollhouse” project—a title that was not spoken out
loud due to its gender connotations—where they were instrumental, as Wright’s co-designers, in evolving the
design focus away from time management and towards people and interactions inspired by everyday life. It is
this more human centric vision of Dollhouse that eventually saw release as The
Sims, which became, at long last,
the second commercially successful Sim title (Curtin 2015).

Design-based learning:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design-based_learning

>Design-based learning was developed in the 1980s by Doreen Nelson, a professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and the Art Center College of Design. Her findings suggested that kinesthetic problem-solving helps students acquire, retain, and synthesize information in practical ways.

Doreen Nelson's SimCity 3000 Teacher's Guide:

https://studylib.net/doc/5921300/simcity-3000-teacher-s-guid...

Here's a transcript of the HAR2009 talk I gave about "Micropolis: Constructionist Educational Open Source SimCity", which explores some ideas of applying Constructionism to SimCity.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/har-2009-lightning-talk-trans...

Here's some more information on the design of SimCity:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18760822