commute time and black buildings

[kimbrchick 0]

I've been playing for quite a while now but I always seem to have the problem of my medium and dense residential buildings becoming black because of abandonment and because of decrease in wealth. Most of the time it says that it's because of  commute time. I feel like provide good enough mass transit but then it seems like there is a low amount of people using it. So then I just start building commercial right next to my residential so it would just be closer instead of having a business district and have them commute. No matter what, I seem to get a lot of black buildings.

Any thoughts or tips?

[DOXXP29 5]

Welcome, Kimbrchick! I swear by the anti-abandonment mod which keeps the demand in perspective before the buildings are built. You're never going to win with commute time, unfortunately. They can be two tiles away and have it be a long commute. Best bet is change the pathfinding in the NAM to better or perfect. This will make a noticable difference. And keep building mass transit with close station access. Good luck.

[kimbrchick 0]

Thanks. I'll have to check out that anti-abandonment mod.

[JayStimson 212]

kimbrchick: You might find the following thread useful. There's an attached file at the end you might want to try. The .dat file inside the zip file can go anywhere in your mydocs/plugins folder.

https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=41&threadid=65994

[SC4BOY 21]

If I am not mistaken, the ANTI-ABANDONMENT does nothiing to the real problem, it only masks it by keeping the building from LOOKING like its abandoned.. though since I don't use it I may be wrong.

Long commute is a misleading message, Experiments have shown that that message is a general one used for a pretty wide range of actual problems. But I find the absolute best approach, at least once you get the city over 20k or so, is very good transit..

although I admit I am generous with providing mixed residential/commercial just like in real life. I use COMMERCIAL on the heavy travel routes for auto/bus and the entry points for other mass transit, and keep the residential back off the heavy routes.. they hate it anyways, so why put em there?

Oh and as I GROW I think nothing of WHACKING a patch of R to get C / TRANSIT areas. I am merciless. R regrows at phonemal rates once demand is up, so why worry?

[RushHourFreak 1]

You have to design a nice mass transit system on your city, kimbrchick, you'll need to build bus stops, (at tghe first time) every 6 tiles, people wn't walk more than that distance is.

Here is a little chart:

0 to 10000 inhaitants: Bus stops every 6 tiles

10000 to 35000: Some mnorail or elevated rail in your city's heart

35000 to 60000: a subway system.

Along with it, you shold designa large rail system, (freight and passengers) 

Hope this helps you.

[Vivicas X. Strom 1]

It's an old thread i know, but it's such a recurring theme that i thought i might add my own experiences.

'Tho i have had SC4 RH since it came out i've been patiently working on a city (yes...just one large map...not the region except for one trash city) since last October. I was determined to finally work out this problem and i think i may have come across one of many possible approaches.

First. I used the Radical Ordinace modd. Utter Rubbish. It plays around with the algorithim so badly that my city stalled. Development took months...in real time. Ran traffic cop simultaneously... limited results. Got rid of both.

Tried super demand modd. Had nothing but CO$$$ and Dirty Industry swamp my city (hello...why didn't the other sectors a foothold despite their demand bar through the roof? Sigh...).

Thought it was time to finally install NAM. Set all the values to max except for the visual traffic (too much for my 1.25G AMD 512MB Shared 64MB Video to handle)....and BANG! Everything switched on its head for the better. Suddenly i had just as many people using mass tranist as my one and only freeway.

Like a mad man i installed Arterial Freeways and Loop Freeways (like a spiderweb) all funneling traffic into my CBD. While the majority of my city is 1x3 med density, 1x3 high density alternating, i have entire stage 8 Apartment complexes (R$$$) on the edge of my map that actually travel and work right in the centre of my city.

Tho as i completely filled my map with development i noticed areas would alternate in abandonment. That's when i stumbled across the population halver.... insane you say? Ahh...there's method in my madness!

The modd keeps the Tax Income and Population figure in the left hand corner the same but on the graphs you can clearly see a halving of population. So despite development off the entire map its population density is half of the default maxis setting. i believe this creates a 'livibility factor' something i once read on simtrop.

The outcome? No 'No Job Zots'...barely a couple of houses abandoned...mass transit and major freeways share the burden and a city that finally looks like its alive! Although the Pop. Figure of 280,000 is really only 140,000 the city is fully developed, balanced and harmonised. Given that a large map in reality is only 16 Square kilometres (or around 6 Square miles for the imperialised readers) thats not too shabby..

[DOXXP29 5]

There are a couple of anti-abandonment mods out there and I think they work differently. I use the one by Bones1 and it doesn't let a building develop unless there is going to be sustained demand for it. It will still abandon. This looks like it works from the front end instead of the back. I swear by it. I don't have R$$$s moving in and then dilapidating five minutes later when they can't find jobs.

[Mystrelia 57]

Whoa! I didn't realize there was a mod like that. How many people do you know of who move into a city without a job first? Especially 200+ of them? LOL

No wonder I never saw it before--it's in STEX rather than Modds and Downloads. Thanks so much for posting about that! This ought to seriously help save my sanity!

Just read the description of this mod and it looks awesome!  It means I'll actually have to work to bring in those high-wealth buildings which is the way it should've been all along!  Yeah!!!

[Vivicas X. Strom 1]

STEX...thought i was going mad looking through modds and not finding it.

[smstevenms 7]

The best solution to most problems is patients. I kid you not. One thing I've learned is R is almost always in high demand in the beginning (usually $R), if you start out with $R you'll have to cover large areas right away (which means destroying later, which you may have trouble doing). If you zone a mix of all three (saving the hassle of rezoning and road planing later) you'll still have a consistent demand for $R but pay no mind to it (they grow as more jobs are provided). If all your R hasn't grown, putting more R will only create a negative demand until your Sims are educated, healthy, and protected (police/fire). After this there will be plenty of great jobs and you'll see those lots building faster than you can lay'em down. Of course it helps to start out with bare min. to earn money without headaches.

[Mystrelia 57]

Well, I've given that mod a good shot over the past week, and while it does help somewhat it doesn't solve the problem of R$$$ moving in without proper jobs. In my farm city I had plopped the mayor's house and the church in the rather small R$$ residential area. Within minutes all those houses had upgraded to R$$$, and sure enough, there weren't nearly enough jobs to go around. I was thinking I might actually have to work to get those kind of housing to develop with this mod, but they still come way too easily. As I said, though, I'm not seeing quite as much develop into R$$$ so it is at least somewhat helpful.

By DOXXP29's description, I was hoping that it made them know whether jobs were available or not. The Read-me, however, is quite different. The desirability factor for R$$$ (as well as some other zoning) has actually been increased, so they won't build in areas of lower desirability. So, if you have good desirability, they're still going to move in, come hell or high water.

[DOXXP29 5]

Hmmm...that's interesting, Mystrelia. Maybe it's differing playing styles (I don't do farms very often, for example). Since I installed that mod, my R$$$ abandonment/dilpidation had dropped at LEAST 90%, and when they do abandon or distress, it's after quite a long time when other factors have come into play. I can look at my cities and see a huge difference in the ones I made before the mod and the ones I made after. If you put some other factors into the equation, for example, making your R$$$ taxes lower than the others, I don't know if that would offset the effects of the mod. Also, if you're using it in conjunction with another radical demand mod, it may skew the results. Try it by itself and with R$$$ taxes the same or a little higher and see if that solves your problem. Or, you may want to ask Bones1 if there are some other ways to use it more effectively. Good luck. I really hoped it would work as well for you as it did for me and for several others who have posted and noted great results. Keep us posted. (If you really want to keep them at bay, tax them at 1.5 to 5% over what you tax the others and that can also work well to keep them from moving in too quickly. Keep the C$$$ taxes normal so the jobs will develop before thy move in en masse.)