To return to the actual game mechanics for just a moment... I kind of realized that roads are not so essential to my gameplay. Sure, we associate much of the city-simulator experience with building roads - but that's what I would like to challenge (just as I would if designing a real city)!
That's another interesting area where the time limit influences the creative thrust of the project - it forces me to think, "what can I get away with skipping, that will give me a better chance of expressing my idea?". I could spend the rest of the week making a program that lets you build roads, or I could get to the heart of my mechanics, which begins with building a factory:
(Yes, I took the icon from SimCity 2000. But maybe it could produce fewer emissions?)
There, fixed it. Green production! Because if we want the next generation to even have a chance, we've got to stop destroying everything in our path.
So we have a decidedly road-free city. I'll just say that the buildings are individually solar powered, so there will be no power plants necessary, or power lines.
So just to reiterate - the game is not meant to be about creatively designing the city and its infrastructure. The city building aspect is purely about choosing how many of each of the categories of buildings are present in order to facilitate your production strategy. Where they happen to be placed is irrelevant... for now, anyway. I can revisit this aspect once I have a game... and fortunately, development does not need to end when the Jam ends.