The Back Bay Experiment

[AndyAndyAndy 1]

Hello everyone, this is a great community.

This is (obviously) my first CJ, and pretty much the first city I started with all my "tools", those being the NAM and various other lots and tools I didn't have.

Anyway, this city is plainly entitled "Cambridge / Back Bay", representing the region it occupies in real life (Boston, Mass.). This place is home to Boston University, MIT, The Prudential Center, Copley Square, The Old South Church, and Fenway Park.

I decided that in this city, I would attempt to plan out a huge section of the city before anything was built. I usually do this, but only for a few blocks or so around the main expansion.

I figured that at the least, the city would do fine, since it is connected to the right by a huge city that is doing great.

Roads

I started out by placing avenues, streets, and roads in a pattern that allowed for 6x6 development squares. I did this over and over, until I realized that I spent over §10,000 just for construction.

Transit

I then used bus stations and subway stations in opposite angles to the center of each 4-block by 4-block intersection, providing uniform mass transit.

Zoning

I wanted to plan an equal amount of residential and industrial zoning, so I used each 4-block by 4-block square created to act as one piece in an "L" shaped zone. I flipped the zone over and switched to industrial, which left me a perfect square with an empty center. I filled in the center 4 blocks with commercial, but left part or the entirety of one of those blocks empty, for the future placement of large elementary schools.

Utilities

I used (for the sake of having a kind-of stable budget to begin with), the Electric Power Plant  Transformer (cost §50/mo) and two water pumps that I placed in the upper corner of the city.

Fire, Police, Hospitals

Along the central avenue - that devided the city into halves - I placed 3 hospitals , 1 police station, and 2 large fire stations. (I used the "cgh very large fire station" from the STEX, and the "new police station" from the STEX... Their coverage zones are larger, but I could have just used more than 1 and 2 normal stations just the same). Sure, their zones overlapped each other, but this would come in useful when the residential zones max out and fill the hospital. I also left space along this avenue for a large high school (which, with cranked up bus funding, covers 95% of the city so far.)

The coastline

At this point, I'm running out of money faster than I thought. I develop only 75% of the coastline that the city actually connects to what I already built. This is probably my favorite part of city-building: the commercial zones. I used the sea wall pack I found on the STEX, but I'm still horrible at it, so I ended up using most of the money left over trying to even out the coast and get the right pieces in to look good. Here's where I used "weaknesspays" to get about §10,000  to cover up my §-eating mistakes. I attached a ferry terminal and some waterfront commercial zones, and that was about it.

===This is what I was left with after about 1.5 hours of work===

....a zoomed-in shot:

The downtown area:

So, I hit the >>> button and kinda bit my lip, and.........

The first signs of development, were, suprisingly, on the far side of town, not near the borders.

Though, all areas were starting, it was suprisingly slow.

After a year (in game haha):

And so things finally balanced out financially, and I realized that they weren't even close to what was going to happen. It was at this point:

...that everything balanced out. Soon after, I began earning over §5,000 in profits per month. I stopped playing when I regained my entire starting amount of cash.

Well, this is the first chapter in what appears to be a successful experiment.

Thanks so much for looking, this took me quite some time to make and write about!

If you have questions, I'll be more than happy to field them!

Andy

[SC4Noobie 5]

Looks good, and you are putting much effort into this, i can see, but you don't want an industrial area combined with Com/Res ares. This is not good for growth and just unrealistic. I suggest making a port downriver for industrial areas. Otherwise, it looks pretty good, as a good start with the seawalls. You even created a ped mall area, and you are using several good BAT's and Lot's. Looks good, and cant wait to see more!

[cityhawk 12]

I'm happy that you got development, but a more diverse city would partly break away from the grid system. However, if you like it this way, then don't listen to me, but great job anyway!

[pickled_pig 7]

There are many areas in Real Life where Industrial and Residential collide. In many New England mill towns, that is certainly the case; I was on Saturday in an area of Providence where, surrounded by tenements, there was a small industrial area.

But if you're wanting to do the Back Bay, you got to prepare to attract a ton of R$$$. INdustrial won't cut it.

Are you going for accuracy? I hope so (but looking at how your grid is in relationship to the river, I bet not). The back bay's an interesting place.

[Equilibria 16]

I'm glad to see that you're putting a CJ together. Some tips:

First, yeah, don't zone that stuff right next to each other. I know that that's the traditional way to do it, not to mention it really cuts down on traffic, but it isn't particularly realistic. It's fine to do it that way if this CJ is going to be experimental, but from a realism standpoint it isn't optimal.

Second, if you do put the industrial right in the middle, raise your taxes to the max on dirty and manufacturing industry. It allows only HT in, and it does show up rather quickly. The Industry Quadrupler Mod will help you make the most of the space.

Third, avoid showing your toolbar in your CJ pictures. It's simple to avoid this. Take your screenshots at the next-to-largest frame size. This is actually 800x600, so it also saves you the trouble of changing the size later for the web.

Fourth, take a look at the various texture and tree mods available (I see you already have a water mod, and a decent one at that). This isn't a must, but it does look cool.

You seem to have put some work into this, and you have a fantastic start. Best of luck.

[AndyAndyAndy 1]

Thanks!

Yeah, it's not exactly realistic, but I never really could integrate the I with the R and C very well.

I forgot to mention I was leaving a large plot open to the left of the ped mall where I plan to place a large arena, possible HSBC Arena, from the STEX.

(heh, of course, stolen from the city of Buffalo)

Stay tuned!

[diablo_del_bano 3]

is the back bay the one they filled in? Just wondering. Nice start though, but for boston it seems like you would definately need to break from the grid.

[AndyAndyAndy 1]

P.S. (sorry for double-post)

Yeah, I forgot to mention!

The I-D and I-M taxes are at 15%.

I left I-HT at 9%, and that's all that is building all around.