On Balance: Adjusting Demand or Adjusting Desireability?

[lestatdl1 0]

My cities often end up with a high demand for R$ sims that is never satisfied. I always create a ID/IM city and have a main city where I build out at low density until I have the tax revenue to afford a strong education system. Then I end up with an influx of educated R$$ and R$$$ sims. Meanwhile, their demand fluctuates but R$ demand remains high, due to the ID/IM city.

Should I...

(A) Maintain a strong education system that covers the whole city and slowly evolve the ID/IM city into a IHT city, or...

(B) Maintain areas of my city that have poor conditions (i.e. poor R$$$ desireability) such that I can satisfy R$ demand and keep ID/IM/R$ as a portion of the region population.

Do the various CS and CO require some R$ sims to develop? Ultimately, does giving all of your sims everything they ask for end up stifling growth when you don't have R$ areas to develop (as they're all replaced by R$$ R$$$ sims who like to move in and then abandon)? In other words, do I need R$ sims to grow those big CS and CO buildings that require a small % of R$?

The answer seems to be that you need balance among the developer types within a zoning type, but it seems counter-intuitive to me that you shouldn't give all sims what they want; that you should have an area with no police coverage or schools (R$), an area with some coverage but no recreation (R$$), etc.

Thoughts?

[dusten 0]

A very good question.. I end up giving the sims everything they want.. and i still have a huge population of R$, they may move outa there small shacks and into apartment buildings.... what i tend to do is put my R$ taxes .1 - .5% above the rest of the Res. This will stop the demand to keep rising. but not enough to lower it and you make a little more money.

R$ will find there way into any city if their taxes are right. Now i have a city that loves me 100% education 200. nothing but HT-I with a population of 250,000 sims. and 100,000 are still R$ but i don't really have any slums... they are just scatered all over my city in those ugly brown apartment... and other R$ buildings... IF you check out your pop and job chart you will see that even with the look of no R$ in your city. is that they are still there.. and in a strong force..

[DreTitans23 2]

Does anybody know the average percentage of R$ I should have in an average city?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Yes, you need R$ to fill jobs.  Even a CO$$$ has $ jobs in it.

If a part of your city already has low desirability you might as well put them there.

[DOXXP29 5]

I usually try the (B) approach above. I keep desirability down by installing NIMBY lots. This way, I can still educate the city, but keep areas more ghetto-like to have enough R$s to fill the jobs. Also, I might add that I keep and industrial city and a commercial city abutting my mostly residential city.