How realistic is Cities: Skylines?

Cities: Skylines employs an agent-based modeling approach where individual citizens (called Cims) function as autonomous agents with personal characteristics such as home locations, workplaces, ages, education levels, and health statuses, enabling realistic urban simulation through emergent behaviors rather than pre-scripted patterns; this contrasts with statistical models used in professional urban planning software like UrbanSim, which simulates land parcels, households, and jobs through interconnected models without individual agent representation, demonstrating how game design balances computational feasibility with realistic urban dynamics.