occupancy gives me heartburn

[rodent1989 9]

Residential demand in my region is staggering, maxed out for all 3 developer types.  however when my new residential  zones develop the occupancey is pathetically low.  like 3/36, and 12/100.  If demand is so high why is occupancy so low?

[wmthor 0]

That cuz theres no place for occupancy.

[rodent1989 9]

wmthor i'm not sure if that answer makes sense to you...but it makes no sense to me, lol

[wmthor 0]

I'm not sure what you mean but there demands are high for occupancy (commercial) but but if they don't have commercial zones, theres no occupancy. Get it?

[rodent1989 9]

o i see where you got confused, demand for Industry and commercial have been mostly suppressed, so as a result the demand for workers (residential) is sky high.  When that happened I zoned more residential but when the residential developed it was all dark.  so i queryed the buildings and found that they weren't full.  3/36 and 12/100

[wmthor 0]

Dark Residential building are abandoned buildings. Commercial zones  mostly starts to build up when population is about 60000. If you raise tax for industrians to 20%, not one will work there and demands for commercial is higher so the'll start to build up.

[dusten 0]

The resoan why that your buildings aren't being used to there maximun effect can be a lot of things.. are services near by.. parks.... how about jobs. are there some jobs near by... is there easy access to mass trasit. If none of these are nearby the sim's won't move in the the neiborhood

[wmthor 0]

Park are not really fully neccesary. I got my population to 70,000 with only a few parks in the middle of the city.

[rodent1989 9]

maybe it was just an anomoly within the simultaion.  because io started it back up and after 10-20 years the zones filled and eventually occupancy maxed out.  It's rather odd that it took so loooong for that to happen.

[Sam 163]

Its a desirability problem. You can have maximum demand, but if the area you zone is not desirable, then you won't get many sims to live or work there.

If you are looking at the occupancy rates on the query then they are a little different to what you might think they are. They actually represent how desirable that particular location is. For example if it says 9/10 then you have done pretty well. But if it says 5/10 then there is something wrong, and the sims don't want to live there.

In this case you should check all the other things mentioned on the query eg for residential check garbage, commute time, traffic noise etc. If any of these are high then that will lower the desirabilty and affect the occupancy rate of the building. Fix those, and anything else that will lower desirability (check schools, health care, parks etc for residential) and the problem should go away.

[SC4BOY 21]

I agree with sam.. The first number is the occupancy, the second number is the POTENTIAL occupancy for a perfect building of that type. If you look at it as a fraction you will have an idea of the "desirability factor".. for example 112/121 is a very good location tor this building. .. but in your case of 3/36 for example indicates there is some real problem for that building in that location.

An added note is that if demand IS RED HOT the simulator will "overshoot" on the build type and make a much higher level building there than would normally be built. This results in low occupancy.. then the simulator eventually figures out "OOOOPS* and resets the building type/level and then proceeds to properly assign size/type and proceeds normally.

[DOXXP29 5]

Agreed, SCBOY. The problem you describe about the simulator overshooting demand and then saying "oops" is one of the biggest problems I was constantly having. I was able to eliminate it to a very large degree by installing the Anti-Abandonment Mod. (I like Bones1's for its realism and ability to select types, but there are others out there). It keeps the buildings from overdeveloping in the first place and therefore stops them from becoming dilapidated or abandoned as soon as the simulator figures out what is going on. I highly recommend it to anyone having this problem. It's one of the Mods that doesn't affect the game in an unrealistic way (for me, at least) and keeps the balance in perspective as well as cutting down on the number of headaches as well as bulldozing costs.