Suburb building

[kenkoo1987 0]

Yo!

not sure if this is already on the forum, but was wondering, how do you do the layouts for suburbs ie. low density residential? grid layouts aren't really good, what with all the congestion and inefficiency and all that. here (melbourne!), the suburbs tend to be in a sorta rudimentary grid but you get loops of road inside the grid. Also, without any mods or anything, how do you get commuters to go by the big roads eg. highways/avenues rather than by small side roads? i noticed that even if the path is SLIGHTLY shorter by the smaller roads, commuters still tend to go by those paths rather than the great big highway (toll-free) just a few tiles away. maybe by isolating the segments?
Cheers!

[bourneid 13]

My best advice....search though the CJ forums and see what others are doing.....

Alekings journal, as he has some great suburban layouts  https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=36&threadid=71043

also ShadowAssasion has done a great job with his Savanna Way journal

https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=36&threadid=69717&enterthread=y

but there are a lot more so have a look around.

Also...two other great sources....  Gooogle Earth and http://local.live.com/ are a great way to see realworld suburbs for which you can imitate in the game.

[masochist 111]

Also, you might want to check out the "Show us your Suburbs!" thread in this forum ("City-Building Concepts"). There are hoards of good examples of suburbs in there!

[patrix 1]

Dead-ends are your friends, for suburbs. When you want to do those loose street layouts that twist and turn (like in most modern suburbs), make sure that to get wherever they want to go, the sims need to go onto a road or avenue at some point. You basicaly direct the traffic that way, and give very little opportunities for sims to take a shortcut through streets. Pretty much like they do in real life, except even more constrained. Works well for me

[ThePeoplesPerson 3]

Google Earth is absolutely the best thing you can look at for suburbs, it's what I'm using. What I've found is that suburbs are developed inside large grids (county blocks we'll say, for lack of a better word). Inside these large grids are all the loose curvy roads of the suburbs. Also, every one of these large blocks seems to have a park or two as well for the people living in the area.