Show your Sim City

[Jasonhouse]

I was bored so I took a shot of the center city of a metro I'm building up in Sim City.

The new metro I'm working on after my HD fried a few months ago just hit 500k residential population, and the
screen cap below is of the center city with 220k residents, 155k commercial and 55k industrial jobs... (I use an
industry job quadrupler, the plop money cheat, and plop the occasional landmark, but that's about it)... I also
use a crafty zoning technique which allows for good medium density in large rowhouse neighborhoods which never get taller.


I like how this city has developed, and think it's actually somewhat realistic for a sim city... An overview of the city... (there was some growth between this shot and the close ups)

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/840...adison220k.jpg



The business district with the most jobs is presently out near the airport, which also has other job
magnets, such as the convention center and arena complex, a movie studio, fairgrounds, multiple media
production facilities, and other landmarks...



As the metro has built up, downtown has blossomed and has doubled in density
in the past 10 years, after decades of suburban job growth far outpacing downtown job growth.



The last skyline cluster to the right is probably the most interesting...
It is where a large university complex was built in a low income and industrial
area built during the city's inception. The area has since totally gentrified with further school expansion, and widespread
development of apartments, condos and office space. However, about 5 years ago, wealthy NIMBYs on the
overlooking bluff revolted, and have since stymied further vertical growth in the flatlands by loading the city council
with officials who would support tough height restrictions on the university district below. (Note the expressway
that passes from the top of the bluff to the flatlands below via a tunnel, and then turns and goes under the city
zoo. That was fun to make)


Let's see what your city looks like!

[Ayreonaut]

Makes me want to give up.

I've got twin cities of around 700k each, and maybe 1.6m in the metro. But they look like shit, the newer, smaller cities look better, since I built the first two when I first got the game (relatively recently).

I noticed your city is in year 71, whereas my two are much younger. I guess allowing a more natural growth probably makes for a better, more realistic looking city.

[KevinFromTexas]

Is that Sim City 4? I haven't played Sim City in a while.

[DizzyEdge]

This post has made me realize I don't want to be a planner haha.
I'm into designing neighbourhoods, but entire cities, makes my brain hurt.

[vid]

In real life you don't design cities from scratch. It's not like a city wide plan would be extremely detailed anyway, it's usually an overview and each neighbourhood has its own plan.

Most of my cities were like small Midwestern cities of 50,000 to 100,000. I rarely got anything more than that because I like realism. No pictures, though. I've lost them all.

[Ayreonaut]

Since it's much less embarrassing from a distance, I'll show the entire region of Sloanistan.



I had planned on doing a Dubai-like city, I think it's obvious where. Not really sure what to do with the NE corner, probably just add more rivers and whatnot. Most of the really shitty looking cities are 100% industry, if there's people in a city, I put 20% tax on DI and MI. Right now I'm playing around with Sloan Island (the big island, it's got 4 cities right now) and the NW corner of the region.

[Jasonhouse]

That looks pretty cool to me bro... I used to have a metro of almost 3 million that I lost to a dead hard drive. It had some large highrise districts, like yours does, though it also had large swaths of cul-de-sac style suburbs too.


And my regional views... This is the part where the pattern of development obviously isn't realistic, but neither is the terrain. I just make it up as I go, which makes laying out transport and zoning all the more fun.


The center city shown above is the highlighted one

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

This post has made me realize I don't want to be a planner haha.
I'm into designing neighbourhoods, but entire cities, makes my brain hurt.

haha... Maybe I should have been an urban planner, because I love the challenge.

[Ayreonaut]

In the picture of my region above, you'll see a big empty space just East of the farthest reaches of the sandy area. That's all filled in now, I figured I'd experiment with J-ho's rowhouse zoning technique, and really like the look of it. It has reminded me to delete one of the buildings I got from the stex, as right now it's not so much rowhouses, but more like Scandinavian commie blocks.

Anyways, here is Delta, the city I am enjoying most right now. Everything West of the airport on the southern side of the river is new. I guess the commie blocks make it quite unique, but it would look much better with regular rowhouses. The population is now approaching 80k, and it is the third largest city in the region. I also just noticed, there's no highway in the city.

[Jasonhouse]

Isn't it cool how those rowhouses are nice and dense too, just like they're supposed to be?

Just alternate 1x1, 1x2 or 1x3 strips of medium and dense residential, and it will never develop into anything else but rowhouses...

This can also be done to make great cookie cutter single family house subdivisions (think of CA type density) by alternating light and medium density in a similar fashion, and depriving the neighborhood of water.

And it also makes for nice euro style blocks, where the rowhouses front the street all around a block, while the center becomes a large private common for everyone with a unit along the periphery.

And it also works well to make cool looking small town commercial corridors lined with rows of shops and office fronting the street on both sides. (I wish someone had a mod that would make a new road type to create a 2-wide tile allowing for a 2 lane road with angled street parking)

[ue]

Originally Posted by vid

In real life you don't design cities from scratch. It's not like a city wide plan would be extremely detailed anyway, it's usually an overview and each neighbourhood has its own plan.

Most of my cities were like small Midwestern cities of 50,000 to 100,000. I rarely got anything more than that because I like realism. No pictures, though. I've lost them all.

in SimCity 4 the region should be considered a metro area and the 'city''s, neighbourhoods.

some stuff i used to do

[Ayreonaut]

It looks alright, but I can hardly tell. Do you have any larger pictures?

[ue]

yeah i do...

[oiler-dude]

Jason, are you just using SC4 straight outta the box? Or do you have downloaded content as well. If so, could you direct me to the pack you downloaded?

[Flamesrule]

How can you guys get a great region?I have 10 cities and they make up 500,000 sims.

[ue]

SimCity 4 by itself is very unrealistic. You can go to sites like Simtropolis and SC4Devotion to get 'custom content'.

Usually you download a bunch of these, also get Lot Editor, and in the landmarks menu a lot of the downloaded buildings ... or BATs should pop up, cause many have ploppable versions, sometimes they pop up in other menus too. Just plop them down. From there on the population that is actually given to you doesn't matter. You go for realism. These buildings, mods, etc. along with some of the MAXIS originals will make your city (aka the region...a city tile should be considered merely a neighbourhood) much more realistic. Then based on your knowledge of cities, you can make a guess of whaat based on the size, the population would be.

Or you can do what I do and use BATs that have high population - estimate how much population you want in the area, plop down a bunch of them, play the simulated time, then when a population first appears, you pause, and that would be your population. Usually try high rises as they're easier. Then delete all that, and start buildin.

Lot Editor usually helps with the realism, and can make bats previously not ploppable ... ploppable ... but it takes a while to acquire that knowledge.

You can also do it with zoning and only some plopping and playing the game with time going on - but it is harder.

There is also a mod on Simtropolis where it makes all MAXIS industrial, residential, and commercial buildings ploppable.

I'm hoping Cities XL will be good and can get back into city building games.

[Ayreonaut]

There's harldly anything in my cities that is plopped. Other than civic buildings, and stadiums, it's 100% growable buildings.

[ue]

Yeah, but it doesn't portray as much 'realism', which many SC4 players want. But it is more functional - I will admit.

[Ayreonaut]

Originally Posted by edmontonenthusiast

Yeah, but it doesn't portray as much 'realism', which many SC4 players want.

I think realism can only go so far in the game. I prefer to watch a city develop, than just build the entire thing myself, that's what Sketchup's for.

Either way, it won't be too long now before we're all playing XL. I am so unbelievably stoked!

[Jasonhouse]

^You got that right... I've even been scouting out a 2nd video card upgrade, just to make sure my PC is good to go.


So anyways, here is downtown of the main city, another 10 years later (and from the opposite side as before)... During the
past decade, growth accelerated rapidly as the suburban business districts were choked by traffic and height restrictions. A
couple of new transit lines have been added into downtown, but traffic is still doing ok without a subway system...

btw... There are probably 5-6 plopped highrises
of various sizes. (I do this for variety, and thus an added degree of realism by minimizing redundancy)





The metro is now 640k, the center city is 260k, and
there are almost 190k commercial jobs.

And here's the old pic for comparison

As the metro has built up, downtown has blossomed and has doubled in density
in the past 10 years, after decades of suburban job growth far outpacing downtown job growth.

[Jasonhouse]

Oh, and yeah I add in quite a bit of customized content, ranging from tweaks to the way the game calculates things, to a money cheat, to adding in a whole bunch of buildings so that there is a lot more variety. I try and make it more realistic, but without getting all psycho about it. I mainly just like to lay out transit and zoning and see how it develops...

Just make sure you don't overload your PC!