How New A works
A Minecraft world with a land registry, a newsroom, a stock exchange, a public square, a government and — soon — a server. Everything on this site is one dataset read in different directions, and it all starts in the Land Registry.
One dataset, read in many directions
Every page reads the same things: the Land Registry (buildings, boroughs, roads, the chronicle), the newsroom, the NASE price engine, the politics engine and the Public Square. They are computed per request from the registry and the store, and the simulations are deterministic — the same inputs and the same clock give every visitor the same prices, approval ratings and resident posts.
- Registry & buildings
- Map
- Boroughs
- History
- Statistics
- NASE · Elections · Square
City Hall, the State and the Union
New A is a city and a state. Five boroughs — Man A, New BK, New S, The BX, Long Island — make up New A City, governed by the Mayor from City Hall in Central Man A. The State of New A holds the city and is run by the Governor, who owns the Metro. Both sit inside the Union, with North C, New J, Penn A, South C, V Beach and Chicago on file around them, and Washington D.C. as the federal district.
The offices track their real-world counterparts on purpose: the President, the Governor of New A, the Mayor of New A City, the former mayor and Bruce Blakeman, the Long Island Executive running for Governor, appear as clearly labelled parody villagers. Every other governor, senator and representative on this site is fictional. The Registry keeps its own officials too — council members with an office and a home on the map.
The Mayor’s Desk runs the newsroom, raises city alerts, edits every record, lists companies, reviews market moves, sets approval ratings and moderates the Square. Whatever it publishes appears here within seconds.
Every building has a record
Each structure carries a registry number (MA-0001, H-MA-0001 for the lost ones) and a file modelled on how the world’s most documented cities keep their books. 133 records are on the roll today, with 34 more in the historical register.
- Lifecycle
- Three parts: physical (planned · construction · standing · closed · vacant lot · demolished), market (for sale · for lease · sold · leased) and landmark. Dates are a year and a half (early or late) with an “approximate” flag.
- Class, tax & zoning
- A building-class letter (A one-family homes, D elevator apartments, O offices, V vacant land…), tax class 1–4, and a zoning district — R1–R10, C1–C8, M1–M3, PARK and the special districts.
- Lot & place
- Frontage × depth in blocks (one block is one square metre), X/Z coordinates, the neighborhood polygon it falls in and the road that serves it.
- Money
- Assessed land and total, a listing price when it is for sale, and an estimated value for every standing record.
- Who
- Owners, tenants, developers and operators by period, linked to the 35 businesses on file — and to their NASE ticker when they are listed.
- The lost city
- Demolished buildings keep their record: built and demolished dates, why it came down, its significance, its history notes and what replaced it. See the lost city.
- Geography
- Regions (the Union › states › New A City) hold boroughs, which hold neighborhoods — each with a polygon border. 6,275 blocks of road, rail, lines and stations are mapped too.
- The Chronicle
- 27 dated screenshots and maps with descriptions, from the founding years to today. See the Chronicle.
The Registry app and the registry link
New A OS is the Land Registry app — the city’s operating system, run from a single file. It is the source of truth: records are filed there, borders and roads are drawn there, and the chronicle is kept there. The site follows it without anyone re-adding anything by hand.
- Push. New A OS publishes its master file to the site. The site checks it, strips what the public must never see (app settings, keys, the news inbox), stores it compressed, works out exactly what changed and writes one line to the sync log — “First Avenue updated · The BX border redrawn”. Desk edits, keyed by record id, stay on top.
- Photos & the basemap. Record photos, chronicle images and the rendered basemap travel the same way; every card, page and the map picks them up. Images still in the vault show as drawn placeholders until they arrive.
- Pull. The app reads the site back — the newsroom, the NASE, politics, the Square and pending market moves — from one feed, so the registry knows what the city is saying about it.
- The manager. With the access key the app can run the city like the Mayor’s Desk: publish stories, raise alerts, nudge the market, post as an official, decide market reviews and adjust approval ratings — all through the agent API, with the desk’s own validation.
Right now this site reads the copy pushed from New A OS, last updated October 28, 2026. The Mayor’s Desk → Registry link shows every push.
What a building is worth, and why
Every standing record gets an explainable estimate — the same model, to the dollar, as New A OS. It starts from a base and adjusts it by factors, each with a reason you can read on the building’s page.
Base. The assessed total when one is on file (assessment-based). Otherwise the median assessed value per block² of buildings within 200 blocks — or the borough, or the city — times the lot area (from comparables). With no lot size either, a default 300-block² lot stands in (rough). City Hall can override a value in the Registry; the computed estimate is kept alongside.
| Factor | Adjustment | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Transit | +15% within 60 blocks of an open station · +8% within 150 · +3% within 300 · −5% beyond | A station counts only when an open line serves it. |
| Services | hospital +4%, police +3%, fire +3%, park +5%, school +2% — inside each one's coverage radius | Capped at +12% in total. |
| Landmark | +10% | Designated landmarks. |
| Floors | +2% per floor above the first | Capped at +30%. |
| Condition | excellent +8% · fair −8% · poor −20% | When the Registry records a condition. |
| Lifecycle | under construction or planned −20% · closed −15% · vacant lot −65% | A vacant lot is priced as land only. |
| Class | offices, stores and condos +10% · industrial & utility −10% | From the building class letter. |
The city’s 133 standing records add up to $29B estimated against $21B assessed. Browse them by value in the directory.
- Base$812,985 per blk² (median of 65 assessed buildings within 200 blk) × 357 blk² lot area$290M
- TransitCity Hall Station 13 blk away (3s walk)+15%
- Police stationNew A Police Department 176 blk+3%
- ParkCentral Park 76 blk+5%
- Landmarkdesignated landmark+10%
- Floors3 floors · +2% per floor above the first, capped at 30%+4%
- Conditionexcellent+8%
- Estimate$290M × (1 + 45%)$421M
No assessment on file: priced from nearby assessed buildings per block² × this lot. Same model as the Land Registry app. How estimates work →
Drawn like the Registry app
The city map draws straight from the registry: region, borough and neighborhood borders as polygons; every road by type and width; rail, lines and stations; lots and building footprints; the historical register as ghosts; and the rendered basemap when New A OS has sent one. A time slider replays the city half-year by half-year since 2013.
The newsroom and its outlets
Stories are published from the Mayor’s Desk (or by an agent) under one of New A’s outlets. A story can name a borough or a state, move stocks with declared market impacts and move approval ratings — so the news is the engine of the markets and of politics.
- PIX 11 Long IslandLong Island's newsroom at 8 Flatbush Avenue. First on the Registry wire.
- New A 1Twenty-four hours of the five boroughs. Borough-by-borough, block-by-block.
- CNNThe national desk — Washington, the Union and the races that move it.
- FOX NewsThe national desk with the kitchen-table view — taxes, tolls and the races that decide them.
Official releases from City Hall and the State run under the Press Office. A story flagged as breaking runs across the top of every page for 36 hours.
Elections and approval ratings
Every official — the parody villagers, the fictional governors, senators and representatives of every state around New A, and the Registry’s own officials — has an approval rating that moves with the news about them and their place.
- Base — each official’s starting point, which City Hall can set at the desk.
- News — a story that names an official (or declares an approval change) moves them; stories about their state or borough move them less. Each effect fades over weeks and the total is capped.
- Desk — nudges from the Mayor’s Desk, fading the same way. Economy — the market mood nudges executives. Noise — a small, smooth, deterministic wobble.
Races are forecast FiveThirtyEight-style from each borough’s partisan lean and turnout, the national environment, incumbency, the candidates’ approval and the news — blended with a polling average built from the outlets’ published polls (adjusted for each outlet’s house effect), which counts for more as Election Day nears — with a win probability that sharpens toward the vote. The outlets publish their own ratings, anchored to their own latest poll plus their house effect. The marquee race is Governor of New A, November 3, 2026 — Kathy Hochul against Bruce Blakeman — with an election-night map of the five boroughs. Terms end when the real-life terms do. See Elections.
How NASE prices move
The New A Stock Exchange is deterministic: given the same registry, the same stories and the same clock, every visitor computes the same price. Nothing is stored per tick — the price is a function of time.
- base — fundamentals: the company’s operating value plus the value of the buildings it owns in the Land Registry. Buildings under construction count at 55% and planned ones at 35% from the day they are filed. A sale, a completion, a demolition, a new assessment or a new filing is priced in within two days of the moment the site records it — whether it arrives from the Registry or from the Mayor’s Desk — and prices already published never move.
- mood — smooth seeded noise for the company plus a market-wide mood everyone shares. It is why the tape moves every few seconds.
- news — each story’s declared impact, about three-quarters priced in within the hour of publication. Sixty percent of a shock is temporary and fades with a ten-day half-life; the other forty percent is permanent. The cumulative news effect per company is capped. A story counts from the moment it goes out (a story scheduled for later stays unpublished until then); a later edit to its impact counts from the moment it is saved, and a withdrawn story’s move fades out from its withdrawal.
- outlook — the Mayor’s Desk drift. A one-off nudge works like a story without the story.
Companies are listed when they appear as owners in the Registry, plus the broadcasters and national networks that cover the city (PIX 11 Long Island’s owner, New A 1, CNN and FOX News) — private villagers are never listed. The composite is capitalisation-weighted and set to 1,000 on January 1, 2025. The exchange is fictional; nothing here is financial advice.
Villagers, residents and officials
Anyone can post as a villager — pick a name, a face, a profession and a home borough; it is remembered on your device, no password. Emeralds are the Square’s applause.
- Residents are automated townsfolk who react to live facts — a stock move, a building, a headline, an alert, the hour of the day — and run into each other in encounters: short exchanges between neighbours. Because the generator is deterministic, everyone sees the same resident say the same thing, and no line is repeated on the Square on the same day.
- Reactions follow the news: a big story brings a wave of replies in the voices of the boroughs it touches.
- Official accounts (✓) are the parody villagers of the President, the Governor, the Mayor and the other officials, each on their own cadence so their posts do not bunch together. City Hall can also post as them from the desk.
City Hall moderates the Square from the desk or right in the feed.
A record that compiles itself
The History page is built from the registry itself: every record’s year built and altered, the historical register of demolished buildings and what replaced them, the chronicle of dated images, the boroughs’ and states’ founding dates — plus the eras and dated events City Hall keeps at the desk. File a building with a year in New A OS and it lands in the right year, era and borough automatically. New BK was founded first, on January 27, 2013; Man A followed a few months later.
Breaking news and alerts
The alert level shows in the civic bar on every page and, above Normal, as a coloured banner. Alerts expire on their own.
newacity.net
New A began as a Minecraft world and is reopening as a public server (Java Edition). The Play page shows the live status, polled from the server every minute, the version to join with and the rules. City Hall sets the address, the message and the opening date at the desk.
APIs, feeds and the agent
The city is built to be read and driven by software — New A OS, an AI, or any script. Read endpoints are open and send CORS headers; writes need Authorization: Bearer <key>, where the key is AGENT_TOKEN or, if that is not set, the desk passcode. On a live deployment the write side stays off until one of them is set. Every write goes through the desk’s own validation, so an agent can do what City Hall can and nothing more.
| Endpoint | What it returns or does | Access |
|---|---|---|
GET /api/registry | The registry link status: source, version, counts, content hash. ?full=1 adds the public master file. | open |
POST /api/registry | Push a master file from New A OS; answers with what changed. { "reset": true } reverts to the bundled registry. | key |
GET · POST /api/registry/photos | Which photos the site has; upload record, chronicle and basemap images (eight per request). | key to write |
GET /api/feed | Stories with outlet, region, market and approval impacts; the NASE; politics; the latest Square posts; pending market moves; the registry fingerprint. | open |
GET /feed.xml | The newsroom as RSS 2.0, with outlet authors and categories. | open |
GET /api/markets | The NASE: index and every listed company’s price, 24-hour change and market cap. | open |
GET /api/politics | The politics snapshot: officials and approval ratings, races, forecasts and outlet ratings. | open |
GET · POST /api/agent | A compact snapshot of the city for an agent, and every desk action: stories, alerts, nudges, outlooks, official posts, content edits, politics.*, market.*, sync.*. | key |
curl https://<site>/api/registry
curl https://<site>/api/feed
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $AGENT_TOKEN" https://<site>/api/agent
curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $AGENT_TOKEN" -H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{ "action": "story", "title": "…", "dek": "…", "body": "…", "category": "Markets", "outlet": "new-a-1",
"impacts": [{ "ticker": "ZAYS", "impact": 0.03 }] }' https://<site>/api/agent
curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $AGENT_TOKEN" -H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{ "action": "market.decide", "id": "…", "decision": "approve" }' https://<site>/api/agentA game inside a virtual city
New A is a virtual city. The exchange is fictional and nothing here is financial advice. Real public officials appear only as clearly labelled parody villagers; their posts and quotes on this site are fiction written by the New A newsroom, and every other politician named here is invented. Photos and records belong to the people who built the city.