Positive R demand and negative C/I demand

[dmrsunz 2]

My city of about 70k was experiencing positive demand for all R, C, and I (except Ag) for all of it's 180 years. I was always hearing from the advisors about zoning more commercial (I did zone C sparingly) and R$ and R$$ demand was at over 5,000 each (maxed out on the graph). In the meantime I was trying to address NJZ (commute time) issues in certain areas. But then all C and I demand plummeted very quickly after Simgoober supercenter grew (700 jobs) and I rezoned a few (under 30) mid-density tiles to high-density. Only Cs$ and IHT remained barely positive. R$ and R$$ demand remaind as strong as ever.

What does this mean?

Is all that R demand for jobs in neighbor cities?
How can I give those sims jobs if demand for C and I is negative?
It would be quite tedious to query all C to determine occcupancy, does high R demand and negative C/I demand mean low occupancy in existing C/I citywide?

I'm not sure how to proceed.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

If I understand what you're saying right, your problem is that you have too many jobs.  R demand is up because it wants to fill the jobs, and C and I are down because they're trying to get rid of jobs.

You can either bulldoze C and I, or zone more R.

-I think demand spills over across city boundaries.

-There are already a lot of jobs for them to work at.

-Yes.  As a side note, I wouldn't bother too much with the building's occupancy (unless it abandons, or downgrades into a lower wealth).

[dmrsunz 2]

Thanks Jasoncw (and I'm a big fan of your BATs).

Too many jobs yet I have NJZs? I suppose I've got transit network issues, huh?

Just to make sure my head is screwed on correctly I have some numbers from the Job and Pop Graph:
Population(Workforce): R$:14K(7K), R$$:50K(25K), R$$$:6K(3K)

I totalled up the C/I numbers and, using the Prima Guide's wealth-type distribution percentages came up with these numbers:
R$:18.6K, R$$:21.4K, R$$$:4K.
This, I suppose is how many sims are employed in the city regardless of what city they reside in.

From this I assume that 11.6K R$ and 1K R$$$ are coming into the city to fill jobs and 3.6K R$$ are going out of the city to work (or are unemployed?).

Is my thinking on target or not? Thanks for the help.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

heheh, thanks!

yeah, the no job zots are probably transit issues.  I think that happens when the closest job is out of the sims range, but I'm not sure.

It sounds like your thinking is on track, but I don't know much about that part of how the game works.

[SC4BOY 20]

NoJob zots i'd say are far and away caused by bad transit then anything else.. you may well find abandoned buildings as well that say "commute times too long" too.. Really to most beginning players this is actually a very confusing message... I sometimes think Maxis wrote some messages and thought "man that will really make em think.." and went off to coffee with a good laugh..

As a loose guide if you look at buildings capacity/jobs figures and the route query does not show numbers in generally the same range of values, you have transit problems.. most people don't even realize what MASSIVE trips can take place.. (assuming of course that you have not slapped down a bunch of zoning or the city is in a heavy development phase...)

[DOXXP29 5]

I don't know how you have your region set up, but looking at your numbers, here's a thought: Bulldoze your neighbor road connections for a minute and see what happens. Sometimes when I get a flood out of my city, I'll do that until the city stabilizes itself, then I'll reconnect them in the future. Did that with one city that was leaking badly, left it for like 20 or 30 game years, and reconnected the transportation bit by bit. Now it has 750k and is going strong.