Sure, imagine a grid of nodes, each node has a state machine that toggles between behavior sets on a timer. I’d write a loop that increments a global hour counter, then each tick I load a new rule set from a config file. The tricky part is the dependencies: if traffic lights flip, so do the pedestrian priority rules, but I keep a fail‑safe so no traffic jams become infinite loops. In code it’s just a map of functions keyed by state, swap them every 3600 seconds, and run the simulation. Need to watch out for drift – my paranoia says the clock might misfire and lock the city in one mode forever.

Yeah, a watchdog’s a good idea, but even that can glitch if the watchdog itself gets stuck. Maybe let the lights have a fail‑fast mode: if they see no change for a minute they reboot themselves. That way the city keeps breathing even when the clock hiccups. Just don’t forget to log every state change – debugging a city of madness is half the fun.