I’m curious if the development of telehubs as a “urban development” point was artificially created by those selling land, or made out of the actual development of telehubs.

The case for this is one of popular spots that were rather far from a telehub, the biggest being Club Elite, which was the first really big-boom in clubbing. Club Elite was two sims away from a telehub, yet remained popular all through-out it’s existence in Federal. Now this was facilitated partially by people offering teleports to their friends (a point for P2PT?), but in large part people were more than willing to fly from the telehub to the club.

Now a few telehubs in the beginning were placed strategically by LL before any resident malls sprouted up around telehubs. Those in the city of Nova Albion and that of one in Uhh… Clyde? Or Slate? In which a telehub was surrounded by an island of shops. Now both of these seemed to end up as “failed” projects, the city’s being plagued (and to this day still are) lag and the island of shops and land rentals being… I’m not sure what happened there, but it didn’t become all that popular. A telehub was added to Luna only after the fact of complaints of people of the annoyance of flying to it.

Anyway. The example to the contrary of this is the club in Da Boom (the edge?), which is directly near a telehub and seems to be quite popular, however this club only became so *after* Club Elite’s demise.

Telehubs for a long time were not of any real urban development use, the same random assortment found everywhere on the grid littered around them as well. However it seems only after “Land Barony” became popular that so did telehub land, with it’s high prices and “easy access”, leading to the now “urban development” (which honestly can you call clubs and malls and tringo parlors Urban? I think it more of commercial Prospecting) we have.
So did the telehubs create these patterns, or did those selling land?

I think it’s kind of a moot point anyway… People use the telehubs to get to places they like, places they like are now near telehubs for convenience, if the places they like move, so will the people (in theory). These places themselves will become new “hubs”. In a way, LL has already created zoning that will last for quite some time, as clubs/malls/whatever will not move for some time (unless everyone ditches out of malls to be in one centralized location like the olden days).

This may or may not be a good thing for people in general. In my eyes, Telehubs didn’t really make any difference in where commercial buildings go, there were still clubs here and there, still tringo next door, still a mall in your back yard, just somewhat less of them.

Anyway, overall I think that the popularity of “Urban Development” around telehubs didn’t come from the telehubs themselves, but from those selling the land around them, or at least the hype these land sellers created for such land. After all, if a place is worth going to, people will get there somehow, no matter how far away it is from a telehub. A telehub does not guarantee success of business, nor does being far away guarantee failure, what matters most is what keeps people going there.