Big Cities - Small Zones

[Jerimiah 0]

Hello everybody. Jerimiah Pendergraff here.

Although I'm fairly new to ST I've been playing Sim City since the beginning. Over the past few months I've been browsing the forums and one conecpt in particular really caught my attention.

frndofyaweh has done a spectacular job of exploring the world of grids within Sim City. I applaud your efforts and achievements.

Then there is CautionNYC's developments. Unfortunately the images are not available so it's difficult to verify how large the population became.

So, since grids are my forte, I offer my work for consideration.

Townsville is the only tile with resdential population. The neighboring tiles are industrial.

Current Statistics:

Population: 1,015,178

Res Zone Density: 30 residential blocks each containing three 4x4 housing buildings

A large tile consists of 65,536 square units of area. (256x256)

One 4x4 condo = 16 square units

Three 4x4's = 48 square units

30 blocks of 48 square units = 1,440 square units of residential home area

1,440 is 2.197% of the total area (65,536) available

1,015,178 people occupying 1,440 sqaure units results in 704.9 people per square unit

A quick view of the zone map shows:

At no point during the simulation of this metropolis were any cheats, mods, plugins or exploits used. This is partly because I couldn't download them if I wanted to (I've tried to download a few of the buildings, the microwave generator for example, and nothing works) but also because it's really not that hard to grow a large population city. Keeping it profitable can be tricky but with patience and proper planning, nothing is impossible.

Total time to grow the city was 38 hours over 4 weeks.

Yes, the city is profitable. At the moment Townsville nets almost 5k a month.

And now I leave it to you for your thoughts and comments. If there is enough interest I can give a rundown of how the city was built or CJ it from start to this point again.

[dillyhox 1]

thats pretty good work there....keep it up...i would reallly like to see some zoomed in shots of Townsville if you could

[DOXXP29 5]

Interesting, Jeremiah. You've got some serious gridding going on there. I also would be interested in seeing some close up shots. I do a lot of gridding myself, though probably not as precisely as you have done. Cheers!

[Jerimiah 0]

At first I wasn't sure if anybody was interested in this type of setup. That being the challenge of high density areas. I put Townsville on hold waiting for any replies.

My apologies for being so late to respond, life has been quite, hectic. Ultimately I will continue this city to see how far I can take it. When I started the goal was 4 million people in a large tile. I reasoned if I could obtain 1 mil in a small fraction of the area, 4 mil would only be a matter of expanded logistics.

I will be more than happy to snap some close-up shots. Anything in particular you'd like to see?

Jerimiah

[Evil_Someone 1]

yeah i would like to see Townswille's city center, EQ graph and are u using subway or rail to connect industrial cities with Townswille cuz i don't know is it worth it

[GMT 389]

interesting idea...

[tbugge 0]

it could be cool to see some pictures of your metropolis.. just take some randoms? I would like to know how you can obtain a high number of customers when your shops it located so far from the living areas? (yes im a rookie so I dont know all the terms)

thanks

//tbugge

[Jerimiah 0]

Alright. After spending 15 minutes snapping random shots, 2 hours fixing them up, we finally have something to look at.

I don't like how my screen capture blurs the images even in a straight BMP dump so I've used Paint Shop to sharpen them a bit.

First the various graphs:

An expanded Budget view:

The total list of ordinances in effect. Note: The list is normally scrolled in game. I simply tacked the bottom of the list to the top.

The bottom status bar. You can see here it took 153 years to reach 1 million citizens. It can probably done quicker but an important part of growing a successful city is time and patience.

And not to forget, some random shots:

And now to address the questions.

No rails, no subways, no highways. Anywhere. The only mass transit system in place are Bus Stups. The only roads in use are Avenues.

As far as commercial zones are concerned, or industry for that matter, as long as you keep commute times down below 2 hours and keep a steady supply of Com and Ind zones available for tenants, there is no problem.

The basic city block looks like this at the beginning:

Hold the control key while painting the zones to extend them beyond the current demand in that area.

Here's what the block ends up being after some years of ugrading to larger housing. You may find that you want to force the zones to ugrade faster. Simply de-zone the small zones and replace with a completed 4x4. A word of caution about doing this too early. If there is no demand for high rise apartments the zone will sit empty until such time. If you replace too many zones too quickly you'll drive people out of the city and they won't return.

Usually I give a particular area 20-30 years of natural development before considering any forced zone size increases. Here is a final view of the 4x4 zones inside the city block.

You can see here where the Bus Stop is located. It is the same in every block. The highlighted yellow area is for entertainment. At first I start with a med park. Slowly through the years I add other features such as tennis courts, basketball courts, gazebos, small parks, grassy areas with trees, ect. You should play with it and see what works best for the class of citizen you want to attract. You might even try adding in subways here.

Commercial zones are setup the same way. No bus stops though. Instead I use large plazas in the top right corner. Later on you can add more small plazas for other smaller features or a combination of sizes for esthetic value.

That about wraps it up I do believe. I hope you enjoy. I'll get around to playing this one some more eventually and I'll add new images as I can.

[jce132 0]

Love the grids, but I'm wondering about all the open spaces.  If you're trying to max out your population in the smallest area, why not drop in more residential in those areas?

[thundercrack83 0]

I second the question by jce132. Are the blank lots reserved for landmarks, commercial zones, etc., or are they just blank?

[IGGYMAN 101 1]

I like your idea. It is reduce a long commute time for a Sims. It is a good arrangement. If you plop a residential BAT with a capacity of 50,000 in many times, in a few minutes, your city becomes 1,000,000 in your gameplay history. I will try this in the past in the help of plopable BAT files.

Good Idea!

[IGGYMAN 101 1]

I like your idea. It is reduce a long commute time for a Sims. It is a good arrangement. If you plop a residential BAT with a capacity of 50,000 in many times, in a few minutes, your city becomes 1,000,000 in your gameplay history. I will try this in the past in the help of plopable BAT files.

Good Idea!

[football_fever 6]

man, over a million people in that little corner of the map...that's amazing

[Emerikol 0]

Bah.....I wanted to see pictures but I guess I am too late

[tjperry88 24]

Mmhmm, I wanted to see this but I guess I am too late also. Upload the pix again please. thanks.

[Bullfrog 0]

Very impressive!  I thought I was doing well when I got 100k in the same space.  I see I have a ways to go  Your work, along with frndofyaweh's, has completely changed the way I look at grids.  It's interesting to see the differences between 6x6 and 8x8 grid sizes, along with different ideas on bus placement.

On a side note, my name is also Jeremiah (spelled a little different, but not by much) I guess it's no surprise how I got the nickname Bullfrog ; )

[JohnTheMutt 3]

Hi all,

This is my first post here...used to play Simcity classic back in the day and have been playing SC4 like a crazy dog since I got it Right now I also have been experimenting with density as well.

I like your design for density Jerimiah. Here's a picture of my own experiment based somewhat upon your grid layout. This picture shows my commute time still looking good for over a million sims. I also use no mods of any kind. Not that I'm opposed to them at all, but I just am still having fun playing with the game engine au'natural so to speak. Heh

One big difference from yours is that I have a lot more residential zones, so yours is far more dense than mine and in my opinion much more successful. Based upon your numbers: 1 million+/ (90 4x4's)= ~11,111 per square. The only way I can see to do that is to encourage R$$$ stage6-8 development and then strategically alter the economy so that R$ or R$$ move into your Byall and Ong towers, etc. Dilapidation is your friend when going for high density

Since most of your income seems to come from C$$$ taxes and mine is mostly from toll booths...Every avenue leaving/entering the city has one. The mass transit income is HUGE. I use a large subway system however and I suppose the combination is what is keeping the commute time down.

Sigh...I wish this thing had a preview button so I could get this right...give me a little bit and I'll eventually get it...

Yikes! I guess I don't understand how to put in clickable thumbnails. Can anyone tell me how to do that with Image shack? Thanks...

Switched over to IE and that browser seems better at handling this forums software and/or input methods anyway. This link will take you to the full size image...sorry for the hassle...

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/8869/capture190120071914092sp.jpg

[Darth Krow 0]

ok the green dont grow for me what did you do i cant get it to grow

[JohnTheMutt 3]

If by green, you mean cash, then you could try obtaining lots of CS$$$ like Jerimiah did, or you could do what I did and put in a lot of toll booths. My total commute time was not really affected that badly by doing so and it generates thousands in cash due to the very heavy traffic...

[GlobalHaze 1]

Put some subways, tha'll get rid of the bad commute time.

If I could make cities with residentials like this without all the abandonnement, I would play this game more often.

[Smarty218 2]

That's odd, I would have thought it would look like a jungle of endless skyscrapers.