On the Cities Unlimited homepage a new blog by developer David has been published, which focuses on the controversy encountered on the official forum surrounding zoning and plopping. Monte Cristo is now showing us a bit of the ideas they have in that area. They are currently working on a Mass Placement Tool.

What will the mass placement tool allow? It will enable players to select a zone and the set of building tags they want to see appear in that zone. The result should be that the buildings which appear in the selected zone correspond to the functions and other characteristics expressed by the tags. The tags will be used as a kind of sorting system: by selecting a set of tags you will actually be selecting a set of buildings.

If you want a particular building to appear in a specific place, rest assured:

Nevertheless for the plopping fans we will allow selection of specific buildings to precisely place any single one of them in any given spot.

The ultracool thing is that a Monte Cristoan by the name of Mathieu created a Java applet to demonstrate the concept David is talking about. Go on over to cuplanet to check it out, and discuss it in the forums!