Degenerate buildings

[landen99 0]

I have high wealth buildings occupied by lower wealth sims, and they look ugly.  How do you fix it without bulldozing?  I think that poor buildings look better than high wealth ones with mid-wealth sims in it.  How do we restore the high wealth ones to high wealth sims and get the lower wealth sims to live in the right buildings which correspond to their wealth level?

[Constantina 5]

You could beutify that area and add commercial zones very near to them, meaning local work for residents that may move in later. Make sure that there is low pollution.

[landen99 0]

Does this mean that a building can house a mixture of high, medium, and low wealth sims, and the blg classification simply reflects the class with the majority of its residents? Or that the entire class moves out at the same time that another class moves in? For instance, a high wealth building seems to first be abandoned for some reason before lower wealth sims can move in. Do I have to remove road access and force the tenants out, once the desirability is right, before high wealth sims move back in? Do these tenants find another place to live in my city after their building looses road access to work places, or do they move out of the city altogether. Correct me if I'm wrong, but demolishing a building removes all tenants from the city; they don't just find another building to live in, for instance somewhere that is closer to work.

How about commercial? If a high wealth commercial turns into a medium wealth commercial, will an increase in high wealth sims, land value, desirability, and air quality (etc.) restore it to high wealth?

[Sim shady 12]

To your 1st question: yes, buildings host multiple wealth classes, ( res, comerce, and indust), to restore the building without demolishing, just increase the desirablity of the surround are ( lower traffic noise, parks, better education), once a building becomes abondon i think you have to demolsih it because tenants will not move back in- not sure on that one though. and yes demolishing buildings permanently removes those tenants.

The same applies for commercial

[sumwonyuno 42]

You actually can regain the previous wealth-level occupants. For the dreaded mansions and high-wealth condos, they usually get built, the rich leave, and poor sims come. It is usually because there is an surplus of $$$, with not enough jobs available [not CO/CS$$$ buildings]. At most, which is the CO$$$, a building can have 15% of its employees as R$$$.

For the short term, I usually run down the "everything a [rich] sim might ever want" checklist (i.e. funded and non-striking police, fire, hospitals, K-12 schools w/ colleges, parks, water, streets or barely used roads, low traffic... in a higher elevation part of the city).  It's best if you have a dedicated area for the rich, so you don't have to go hunting with the bulldozer all over your city.

If an area has all of that, but has dilapidated mansions, I pause and plant trees on the lawn of the mansions. This will bump up the wealth of the building, temporarily; you have to make sure they can work at a job in order for the building to not "degenerate". For long term prevention of dilapidation, I tax the rich 11-12% so they only appear when needed.

Personally, I use the less abandonment mod [i think created by Bones1]. It raises the % requirement for desirability for R$$$ buildings to appear. [it also includes all other wealths and zones]. However, this alone does not guarentee it... you have to do whatever you can think of because high-wealth sims are the hardest to keep in your "non-cheating" city.

[landen99 0]

How do you get streets with high density wealth R$$$? Seems that you have to make up for noisy roads with the other items on the checklist. I'm concerned mostly with commute times, so I guess I should worry about the rest after I fix that. I imagine that the rich only move in when there is available capacity, either when tenants move out or when they die (80+ years). I wish that tenants would move to open spaces in buildings nearer to work every few years or so.

[RushHourFreak 1]

I had that trouble too. The conclusion is that a high density building $,$$, $$$ should be on a road or avenue, because the residents have too many cars. For beautifying, increase desirability and place parks, plazas, and a mass transit system. For begin place bus stops every 10 tile on an avenue or road. Good Luck

[Michael1980 0]

What about social conditioning?

I.e. all new luxury developments in certain countries (Britain for example) are required to have a part of it dedicated to accomodating low-wealth people. Apparently if you house people who want to steal and people who have things worth stealing, the former will get reformed

[landen99 0]

Surely you must be joking! Social conditioning? Sounds like you are talking about theft to me. The poor get reformed to become what, better thieves? If I had wealth, I would not move into any of those kinds of "luxury apartments," and if I was forced to do so (conditioning?) then I would either secure my possessions from theft (with locks, weapons, and guards) or liquidate them (sell them) and send their monetary value away to a more secure location or financial institution. And if I could not secure my wealth while being forced to live in a "luxury" prison without law (allowing theft) then I would cease to increase my wealth and devote all of my attention to fighting my way out; it would drive me to rebellion and escape. Unfortunately, the popular income tax modelled in SimCity4 represents a legally-sanctioned form of this kind of theft.

So my question is: What about social justice, where fairness and impartiality rule? I would like to see SimCity5 allow for different types of taxation, including flat taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes.

[dusten 0]

I can see it now landen99 living in an empty apartment with a shot gun in hand, sitting on the floor. About to shot anyone who knocks on his door. Shaking his fist after Yelling" Thats right get outa here, you hoodlims"

[landen99 0]

Hey, you got a sense of humor I see.

Honestly, I have been things to do with my time than to live in poor, crime-striken neighborhoods and worry about safeguarding my possessions.

So I choose to live in a nice neighborhood with an accessible, but hidden, unloaded, but easily loadable handgun, just in case I might one day need it.  But the weapon usually remains untouched because I live in a place where I haven't ever needed it.

Perhaps we should have a new city ordinance added to SimCity5 called the firearm ordinance which promotes the purchase of and education concerning firearms and their use against crime, which has the effect of drastically reducing crime and increasing the effectiveness of police civics.  Now there is a good idea.  It should even have the effect of lowering the number of criminals in the city jails by several different mechanisms, including lowered inclination to commit crimes.  SimCity really could use a fair amount of diversity in the mayor's powers to manage it and its laws.  Nevertheless, it's still a great game despite those substantial deficiencies.

[DOXXP29 5]

Interesting proposition, Landen99! I'd be curious to see what the results would be if you arm them without modifying the simulator. The number of road rage cases would probably be incredible! At least the commute time would go down since half of the driving sims would probably kill each other off in no time!

[SC4BOY 21]

Originally posted by: Sim shady To your 1st question: yes, buildings host multiple wealth classes, ( res, comerce, and indust),quote>

This statement, though possibly true in an absolute sense, is misleading. A Residential building CANNOT MIX RESIDENTS. They are purely what they say (ie $$$, $$, or $)  For Industry and Commerce it is true.. they do have a mix of workers based on pretty well known ratios  

Chart:
____\_Jobs Provided
Jobs_\R$___R$$__R$$$
CS$___100%_0%___0%
CS$$__68%__27%__5%
CS$$$_62%__30%__8%
CO$$__40%__50%__10%
CO$$$_20%__65%__15%
IA____100%_0%___0%
ID____100%_0%___0%
IM____50%__45%__5%
IH____10%__80%__10%

The only way a RESIDENCE can have other than the stated class, is to "degenerate".. the ugly case you mentioned.. and it is clearly labeled as to what class is living there.. and whatever the label is, it is 100% that class.

[landen99 0]

DOXXP29:  Hate to break it to you, but sims don't get mad or sad or happy .. they just run programmed.

But even in America, where her citizens are armed, you don't see people killing each other off because of road rage.  Firearm casualties here are usually the result of hard crime or more often, accident (firearm mishandling),

So any simulator which made sims employ their firearms at the slightest rage would be an entertaining fantasy of the programmer, or a model of some third world or of some Middle eastern country, like Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan.

A fellow comrade soldier told me of a brother in Afghanistan who was brought to him for medical treatment for several gunshot wounds inflicted as a reminder by his brother for each room in the house he built for his brother because he built the house with one less room than requested.  Try and program a simulator for that kind of culture, if you can.  That's just crazy.

SC4BOY:  I had a feelin that residential was purely one class, while the others hosted multiple classes.  I'm trying to figure out how to separate wealth classes using regional play (by cities), since I haven't had much luck zoning specific wealth classes.  Trying to model the reality that wealthy people purchase real estate near other wealthy people, partly for status and social identity, partly for security, and partly for the view (nicer to look out your window at a beautiful mansion, than a rundown trailer, or any kind of industrial building, even if the land value is made to be high in that area.  It always feels wrong when I see a towering poor building next to a dense, rich building.  That just doesn't seem to happen naturally in reality. 

[DOXXP29 5]

Yeah, Landen99, I was just being facetious and entertaining a fantasy with the "road rage" comments. I have to keep reminding myself that they're not real to keep from shooting them myself when they drive next door to work on an adjacent lot! (I'm not exaggerating!)

As far as seperating wealth in your region, I think the best way to do what you're attempting to create is by modifying the tax structures. If you want a R$ city, you can tax out the others (eg: R$ 8.5%, R$$ 20% & R$$$ 20%) or stagger them to keep a little mix in there (eg: R$ 8%, R$$ 12% and R$$$ 15%) I've had good luck doing this. Another way I can control the regional wealth levels is by transportation. If I have an industrial city that's predominantly ID and needs R$ workers, I'll run a good subway network in the industrial city and connect it to the R$ neighborhood(s) in my residential city. I make sure there are no stops in the wealthier neighborhoods. You may have to sever some road connections or reroute them to avoid the riched sims from coming over and turning the ID into IHT. (Taxes help here too, as I tax out the IHT to keep my ID and IM cities intact.) I find a combination of tax maneuvering and transportation hookups works best, and I can usually keep the areas stable and with a majority of the wanted wealth class for a long time.

[landen99 0]

okay, so building degeneration seems best managed by "wealth zoning," which leads me to some interesting problems in a few of my cities, .. well, all of them, actually. My poor city seems to have a demand cap for the poor on it, so that there exists no more demand for poor even though there is high demand for poor sims in adjacent connected cities. In fact, a great flow of these poor sims go into these cities, yet the bar for the poor sims in the poor city is flat. Now, when the taxes go down and allow other wealth sims in, the cap for poor sims seems to be raised for some reason.

Also, this poor city has two large water pumps, but there seems to be some kind of cap (about 230,000 to the industrial city) concerning the amount of water which can be sold to a neighboring city so that the poor city has to sell 130,000 to a neighboring city which sells most of it to the industrial city to fill its water demands. I wonder if there is also a cap on the amount of garbage that one city can buy from another, or simply a flat import limit, given that neighboring cities cannot sell garbage to the industrial beyond a certain amount, and can sell it to other cities.

[DOXXP29 5]

Landen99, there's a mod on the STEX which I find very useful that will give you the demand cap info on each wealth level when you click the query tool over a building. This might provide some insight as to what's going on with your individual numbers. For water, garbage and power, the formula is something like this: the supplying city has to have enough for itself plus a 25% (I THINK) surplus to provide to the neighbors for five years. The city buying the water (or whatever) has to have enough in the budget to sustain the deal for five years. It's been some time since I actully looked at the formula, so my numbers could be a little off, but that's the gist of it. Obviously, if a city is supplying more than one city, it has to have enough reserve to provide for each city it supplies.

[justanotherhiddennow 0]

The trick is to resist the urge to build up all of the region cities. The role playing cities are important as well. (i.e. agricultural and landfill cities). Not all cities can be a metrolopolis. My city is 20 years old, 13,000+ population, and contains no trash, very little dirty industry, and very few poor people. Also pollution levels are low. I picked the large coastal city, with a small town to the west being low wealth residential and agricultural, a medium "evil" city south of the border, which constitutes of some residents, an Evil Area 5.1, toxic waste dump, and landfill services. My city to the north is medium-sized, with 43,333 people and the entire city pretty much covered by low density residents. My dream city (the first city) is mountainous, has lots of water, is beautiful with a large "M" running through the middle of it, and has a metropolis future.

[landen99 0]

The dillemma is like this: My industry city needs workers for ID demand to rise, my poor city has no demand for poor sims like the industry city does and its population is around 40,000 (no medium or high wealth at all). The medium wealth city developed to a point without poor sims, but imported a lot from the poor city, and stopped developing until I lowered the poor tax to allow poor sims in. It takes poor sims whereas the poor city will not. The poor city does have two libraries and no other educational civics, and I fear the libraries may have educated them too much to work so much ID as they used to. There is no poor bar in the poor city either up or down, so it may well be that either there is perfect equilibrium, not likely with neighboring cities seeing high ID job demand from my ID city, or there is a cap to the distribution of sims or something I don't understand.

The poor city couldn't sell more than 230,000 water, but when a neighbor city needed water, it could sell an additional 130,000 to it. The neighbor city could sell 110,000 water to the same ID that was capped for the poor city at 230,000 because it really needed the water. I put multiple pipe connections between the poor and ID city just in case there was a water pressure issue with the pipes and connected those pipes through to the other side of the city to allow the pressure to distribute evenly .. made no difference on the neighbor connections.

[::YELLOWCARD..FAN:: 0]

hey,

can anyone help me?? i have good jobs both commercial and industrial and good funding for schools and everything is good but all my houses are going black and when i hover over them it says that they were abanded because of commute time!!!! but all my roads are green minus a few intersections that are orangey!!! why is this???

[CDB 3]

Landen99 There's a Mod, on the stex ( https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=14931 ) that may help you with the abandonment problem. It isn't a cheat, let's call it a bugfix.

::Yellowcard..fan::

First, what kind of jobs do you provide (look ath the chart posted by SC4boy)? Are you sure that you have enough jobs for the wealth of the sims that are abandoning your city? What's the distance between the residential area and the industrial or commercial zones?

Dou you have the NAM? It increases dramatically the distance that a sim can travel to reach his job.

Have you tried to put some new mass transit option?

[landen99 0]

Higher wealth sims seem less likely to travel far for their commute. Higher taxes could be driving them away. Lower taxes will pull them in. Police and fire and water coverage is important to higher wealth sims. Also, look at the education charts and the commute time charts. Look at the education view. Less educated sims will invite only basic industry and commercial jobs. Better businesses come with more educated sims. I try to keep the rich out until the education has risen somewhat and I can meet their needs for fire, police, and fast commute (highway).