Recent problem with No-Job Zots/Abandonment

[dussin23 1]

I use SC as more of a creative outlet than a game, so I've got a bunch of mods to help me do what I want to do.  I've been doing this a while, but recently I've started having residential abandonment/dilapidation preceeded by no-job zots.  When the houses abandon, they say ti's because of commute time.

That's pretty ridiculous to me.  The graph says commute time is like four minutes!  Occasionally I'll get a random house with a long commute time, and it will begin repeating a cycle of no-job zot, abandonment, and repopuloation over and over.

This is a new region with only two cities.  I typically try to build realistically, so I started with having a proporttional jobs to resident relationship.  However, when I started getting the zots I starting zoning for more commercial and industrial jobs so I have a big surplus in both cities.  It's definitely not that there's no jobs for these people, because there are.  Believe me.  And they're not far away, either.

Right now the two cities are connected only by an avenue, but it's operating at nowhere near capacity.  Most of the people from the smaller city are commuting to the medium city, and most of them aren't having a problem with it.   I built a sizeable industrial area in the small city in order to give the no-job-zot people a place to work, but they will not work there.  Only a few of the commuters got a new job in the industrial area...a grand total of 58 people work in it.

Before this started happening, I reinstalled the NAM with perfect pathfinding.  Could it be that?

[sendarrow 3]

You have a bunch of mods, so maybe it is one of those, I guess.

[dussin23 1]

Well, it was all running fine until I reinstalled the NAM with perfect pathfinding.  I'll try to use another option and maybe it'll stop it.

As of right now, my SC4 is unplayable.  Whole areas dilapidate.  While ago, in a city of only 15k, I tried putting  a subway line directly from the dilapidated neighborhood to a new industrial area.  The problem residentials were medium wealth, and the industrial sector developed as high tech.  There should've been more than enough jobs for them but they would not go.  I tried other infrastructure improvements and nothing would work.  I tear down the houses and they rebuild and IMMEDIATELY do the same thing, even with the subway line in place.

It makes no sense whatsoever.

[Sam 163]

A picture of the problem would be helpful to provide more information.

If you suspect the NAM, it might be wise to check that you installed all the needed components, and that there is not another mod conflicting with it.

Also, the commute time chart is just a city wide average. There may be parts of your city that still have a long commute time.

The problem may also be caused by an imbalance in the kinds of jobs available and the kinds of residents available to fill them. Sometimes when the lots say "abandoned due to commute time" it actually means that they can't find the right type of job. It may be that you don't have the right kind of job in your city. It usually takes careful balancing of the tax levels, zones and facilities to get the mix right.

For residents of a specific wealth and education level they need a specific distribution of job types. For example you mentioned that you had medium wealth residents linked by a subway to high tech. According to the Prima Guide, Medium wealth residents need the following proportion of jobs:

R$$/EQ1 - Cs$ 10%, Cs$$ 15%, CO$$ 20%, ID 20%, IM 35%

R$$/EQ2 - Cs$ 5%, Cs$$ 20%, CO$$ 30%, ID 10%, IM 30%

R$$/EQ3 - Cs$$ 25%, CO$$ 15%, CO$$$ 15%, IM 10%, IHT 25%

R$$/EQ4 - Cs$$ 20%, Cs$$$ 5%, CO$$ 10%, CO$$$ 30%, IHT 35%

(EQ is Education Quotient, in four bands 1-low, 2-med-low, 3-med-high, 4-high)

So for example if you have an R$$ dwelling at EQ2 with 40 Residents - 20 Jobs will be needed (only about half the sims are assumed to be in the workforce). Of these you will need 1 Cs$, 4Cs$$, 6CO$$, 1 CO$$$, 2 ID and 6 IM jobs. So if your Industrial and Commercial sectors can't supply the needed jobs you may have problems where your sims become unemployed and leave the city and the buildings delapidate.

You may need to use your tax rates and education buildings to fix the problem. For example, I often find that for smaller cities, setting the R$$ and R$$$ taxes high helps maintain the right balance.

Also check the desirability of your industrial zones as you may need to make some changes their to increase the number of jobs being provided (eg lack of water lowers the desirability, as does greater distance to a city border)

[Bones1 96]

I suspect it's a buggy mod. If you have a commute time of only 4 minutes, something is wrong! Usually, I find commute times are anywhere from 60-180 minutes in my cities. I've never seen anything as low as 4 minutes. Lowest I've seen is maybe 20 minutes or so.

I use NAM with the perfect pathfinding plugin, but no commute or capacity or speed plugin. If you're using one of the NAM cheats (the commute or capacity or speed modifiers), then maybe that's messing up your city. It certainly seems to be messing up your commute graph, or something is anyway.

Dump your plugins, and start reinstalling them slowly to make sure they work. If NAM is the culprit, make sure you've installed it right. It works, but installation isn't as easy and copy & paste. Read the documentation that comes with NAM!!!!!

[bristowcitybuilder 0]

Im having the same problem, although my two cities are much larger, im also finding where shops should develop will develop as offices instead, creating traffic problems and causing the surrounding house to dilapidated.

[dussin23 1]

I'll looik into what's been discussed here. Thanks for the replies.