I dont think the requirement for road access or the US-style zoning or the only way to stop low wealth apartment towers popping up next door to shiny condos being to raise taxes on the poor or the impossibility of centrally planning a housing development without using a cheat/mod was down to computational limitations, especially not by SimCity 4 in 2003. It was a game based on a US vision of what a city is and how (un)involved its planners are, and ideology certainly shaped city planning in the US, if not Will Wright.