Is abandonment unavoidable?

[Sorias 0]

I notice as I get to about 40k, I start to get some abandonment....is it pretty much unavoidable to get a little? Or is it a sure sign you''re doing something wrong?

[jimbo 0]

When My pop goes up, the oldest parts of my city start abandoning. This perplexed me at first as ell but I found that it is usually due to traffic noise. Try enacting the automobile emmision reduction act, it should do wonders for you.

[Metromaster 1]

Also enact the commuter shuttle ordnance to encourage ridership on your mass transit.

I usually start subway construction when the residential is around 30K. I noted that as you approach 40K the tall buildings begin to appear. If you do not have adequate transportation available, the Sims won't be able to get to work in a timely fashion and the building becomes abandoned.

[jimbo 0]

...whoops i meant the carpool ordinance not the automobile emmision reduction ordinace ...the carpool one is the most expensive one and does the most effect...but like i said the emmision one cant hurt either...

[toroca 160]

Taxes are also a significant consideration. In my own experience, setting R$$$ taxes too low results in too many of them moving in, which in turn means that many of them can't find jobs, which results in decay and abandonment. To much R$$$ is almost the ONLY abandonment I ever get. Contrary to popular belief, I don't think Traffic Noise and Traffic-Caused Pollution have much to do with abandonment in large buildings. I've got pristine highrises surrounded on all sides by heavily congested polluted roads, with high Traffic Noise ratings and Medium pollution ratings and they seem unaffected.

[Alodara 0]

I usually keep tax rates at 8.5% for R$; 9.0% for R$$; and 9.5% for R$$$. I still get overbuilding by R$$$. 10% for R$$$ seems to keep them down in numbers to a more reasonable amount, but you'll be constantly bombarded by the unfair tax rate message. I guess a city isn't supposed to be a "for profit" organization. But then seeing as Simland is a communist nation, does it really matter?

[toroca 160]

Alodara, your tax settings are the same as my own, except I usually start out with them 0.5% higher.

For anyone who tries that method, though, it should be noted that eventually the game forces you to lower taxes. Demand simply drops into the negative at a certain point and the only thing that will get it back up is lowering taxes.

[vinta 0]

I have a question: when a building is abandoned i have to crush it down or i have to wait for new owners of the building?

[Alodara 0]

Wait. The building will reoccupy. If it is R$$$ it may reoccupy with R$$. Prepare for an onslaught on your education and medical systems.

[David.Stoner 0]

Toroca...

Roughly at what pop. do you reckon you need to start lowering taxes a little to relive the sims and let them spend more???

Also do you know roughly the pop. before buses are needed?

PLUS - lol...sorry me very demanding today

With regards to $$$ res - am I right in thinking I can set taxes high to stop any development to start with and gradually phase them back in as my city grows - maybe starting at 18% and lovering by 0.5% each year till they slowly creep in - if so am I also right in assuming that this may be a good way to control thier flow as they seem to cause the most havoc?

Oh PS...

I agree totally with the traffic noise and pollution thing - I've never had abandoment due to it either - I reckon it just lowers your mayoral rating or something like that a little - maybe demand is affected - I'm sure this is mentioned in Thy451's guide...

Anyway back to work for me folks - laters....

[Tolomar 5]

I have noticed abandoment due to trafic pollution on R$$$ sim low density housing only...could be the traffic congestion causing it...they don't seem to like a lot of traffic...but as Toroca says...not to the large buildings though...even in experimental cities where theres more jobs than ppl surrounding my city...I still get flucuations (SP?) in building occupancy sometimes degrade then the ppl come back, even no job zots when the # of jobs avaliable out numbers the # of sims...even the city population shrinking when everything is set for growth...could this might be ppl moving about in the city or leaving to surrounding cities as the computer simulates a % growth in the open cites your not playing at the moment???...would ppl geting old and dieing cause this...then the new generation takes over filling up the buildings and jobs again ?????


the bunny isn't sure but it does happen --->

[toroca 160]

----------------

On 9/11/2003 7:43:46 AM David.Stoner wrote: Toroca...

Roughly at what pop. do you reckon you need to start lowering taxes a little to relive the sims and let them spend more???

Also do you know roughly the pop. before buses are needed?

PLUS - lol...sorry me very demanding today

With regards to $$$ res - am I right in thinking I can set taxes high to stop any development to start with and gradually phase them back in as my city grows - maybe starting at 18% and lovering by 0.5% each year till they slowly creep in - if so am I also right in assuming that this may be a good way to control thier flow as they seem to cause the most havoc?----------------

I'm not sure there's a set population for it to start happening. If there is, I don't know what it is. Basically, I don't start lowering taxes until I can't do anything to increase demand. You'll know it's time to lower taxes if you should have residential demand but don't. That's how I discovered it. It LOOKED like I'd hit a demand cap, basically there was no demand. Building parks and such things had no effect whatsoever, and I don't even remember what else I tried. Then I lowered taxes by about 0.3% and BOOM I had demand up the wazoo.

As for buses, If you're going to use them, there's no reason not to start right from the beginning. They're very cheap, and even if they get very little usage, every car they take off the roads is worth it in my opinion. When I'm not playing with Walking Speed turned off, I use busses in EVERY city I build, regardless of size.

Finally, yes, you CAN set taxes to completely block R$$$ in the beginning, but in my own opinion that's uneccesary. Simply keep taxes high enough to keep R$$$ at a minimum. For instance, when I'm first starting a region, I set R$$$ taxes to 10.0%. This keeps R$$$ demand negative until your education system has become effective. Once your city gets smart, demand will slowly climb into positive territory, but because the tax rate is so high, R$$$ move in at a manageable rate. I know of people who have been overwhelmed by too many R$$$ moving in and being unable to provide everything they demand; well, that's never happened to me. Slow and steady wins the race, after all. My cities have always been stable when I use this method, with minimal abandonment and decay.

I should also note that I support my cities almost entirely on residential taxes. My starting tax rates for Residential is as thus:
R$ 9.0%, R$$ 9.5%, R$$$ 10.0%

I'm more flexible with commerce and industry, but in general, I keep taxes on C$$ and C$$$ very low to encourage growth, and C$ taxes very high since C$ hardly provides any jobs. With Industry, I usually have a single city with low taxes on I$ and I$$, the rest have those set very high and IHT taxes set very low.

As a matter of fact, it's not uncommon for me to turn off commercial taxes altogether. In my Honolulu Region, Downtown has a 0% C$$$ tax rate, because that's where I'm concentrating the regions high wealth commerce (although as commerce slowly takes over the currently residential-zoned areas, I'll have to start taxing C$$$ there to keep the city solvent). The rest of the region has a 20% tax rate on C$$$, to make sure it ONLY develops in Downtown. I've got an island with a 1% tax rate on C$$, because that's where I've put most of my medium wealth commerce. I've got higher taxes on it elsewhere, but not 20% like with C$$$. Just 3%.

[David.Stoner 0]

Aha... nice one Toroca!

[DarkMatter 21]

I think abandonment is simply a part of running a city. Not masses of abandonment, but some. Every city has its abandoned buildings, for one reason or another, and there is no single reason. Traffic noise, taxes, no jobs, not the right kind of jobs, etc. Every city of mine has a few abandoned buildings, and I find that normal and realistic. Only when you have masses of black, abandoned buildings should you REALLY worry about it, because that indicates you are doing something wrong. But generally, abandonment is just a way for your sims to tell you, this part of town has some troubles.

[Yellowlab 11]

I have only achieved one city over 300k with no abandonment.  Unfortunately, it got destroyed when my computer crashed.  I used an experimental traffic system with "pods" that isolated Res from high-traffic streets.

[ROBO1964 0]

David.Stoner don't set high wealth sims tax to 18% or you will evacuate your city. See a business might have 1 $$$ CEO then 80 $$ employee's and 19 $ janitors, etc. If the CEO goes then so does that business and all 100 jobs are gone. I find if you too severely tax one category it has a ripple down effect. In industry you can wait it out but you can't if all your people leave the city.

Abandonment is unavoidable. In order to have none you would have to have the same number of jobs as workers per wealth class and changing as workers became more educated. Then there are having enough police, fire, etc. In a finished city the little I did have was all due to traffic noise. When you look at an empty building and everything is low except traffic noise which is high you know it's the problem. I moved my Sim in one of those buildings which was a tower and they immediately complained that they couldn't hear themselves think and then moved out. The problem is the only way to have low traffic noise is to have a city with a population of about 2000.

[Odd8ball 0]

 

----------------

On 9/9/2003 11:42:55 PM toroca wrote:

Taxes are also a significant consideration.  In my own experience, setting R$$$ taxes too low results in too many of them moving in, which in turn means that many of them can't find jobs, which results in decay and abandonment.  To much R$$$ is almost the ONLY abandonment I ever get.  Contrary to popular belief, I don't think Traffic Noise and Traffic-Caused Pollution have much to do with abandonment in large buildings.  I've got pristine highrises surrounded on all sides by heavily congested polluted roads, with high Traffic Noise ratings and Medium pollution ratings and they seem unaffected.

----------------

Thanks for the tip, Toroca.  My latest city lingered around 1.7 mil - 1.8 million for several years, till I read your post.  I always set the R$$$ taxes the lowest my city can handle and the others a little bit higher.  The problem I found is exactly what you said, R$$$ sims comes in droves and abandons in a few months, en masse.

So, I jacked up R$$$ taxes so much so that it has the lowest demand (but still positive) and sure enough, in just a decade, I got my city to more than 2 million.

However, there is also another hitch, if the R$$ and R$$$ sims suddenly spikes, abandonment will also happen because there isn't enough R$$$ sims in the city.  I just had this thing happen to my city once, so I have no choice but to lower the R$$$ tax to get them going in again but then jacked it up before they start to mess up the city again.

Thanks again....

 

 

[David.Stoner 0]

Robo, you CAN stop $$$ moving in and it doesn't damage the city at all - well to start off at least...

I've done this loads of times when I didn't want $$$ res moving in due to the huge house's they occupy and it doesn't harm your city at all - maybe at a later stage once your pop has reached a certain education level but not to start with.

Toroca confirmed this also although he recommends its best not to do it - it won't bring your city crumbling to the ground though as long as you start off from day 1 with 18%...



Try it dude - you'll be pleasantly surprised!!!

(maybe 18% is a little harsh but its to STOP them not STALL - you can lower it when you want them to start moving in)

[ROBO1964 0]

But 18% will not only stop any $$$ from moving to your city but will also cause the ones in your city to leave which will cause businesses to leave which will cause other wealth level sims to lose their jobs and also leave.

[stolypin 0]

----------------

On 9/13/2003 7:56:41 PM ROBO1964 wrote:

But 18% will not only stop any $$$ from moving to your city but will also cause the ones in your city to leave which will cause businesses to leave which will cause other wealth level sims to lose their jobs and also leave.

----------------

Wow, you understand tax policy better than the Democratic Party! You are describing what has happened to California! Who would have suspected that taxes would be so realistic in the People's Republic of SimNation.

I've noticed that I get too many R$$$ buildings built, only to be abandoned. This is really the only abandonment I get. Adjusting the tax rate seems to fix the problem.

[Sharr 6]

Treading the line.... enough of the political commentary.

[ROBO1964 0]

I will give it a try and see what happens. I just won't save the game if my city collapses.

****I have returned from testing this****

OK, I stand corrected.

See my new post in this forum entitled "Taxes don't work as they should" which will give details on what happened and it may surprise some of you as the resulst were the opposite of what should have happened.

[toroca 160]

Odd8ball, I'm glad my method was useful to you. I too have noted that there are times when you must decrease the tax again to get things going, but as you say it usually has to go back up again. It's very interesting that this method results in a stable, balanced city most of the time.

One additional benefit that I've seen to this method is that it actually allows R$ sims to move in in sufficient numbers. In my densest city, I've got Stage 8 Apartment Towers of all three wealth levels coexisting quite happily together in the same confined areas. And having some of each type is, as we know, better for the commercial areas, so things are going well there too.

[+Guest]

Lower your taxes.

[alexsim2004 0]

Will having ALL Taxes at %0.0 cause abandoned buildings? - my city had hundreds of them. would %0 taxes be the problem?

[storms991 0]

Why oh why revive a 3 year old thread......................

You wouldnt make any money that way, and no, you will still get abandonment. It's not all taxes.



PLEASE DO NOT REVIVE THIS THREAD AGAIN

[Bodom 1]

its unavoilable...

man.. i hate that, it look so unrealistic all that abandonment... really i have never seen an abandoned building in my life...
i hope sc5 has less abandonment

[ten1902 4]

Date: 2/7/2006 10:03:56 PM Author: Bodom its unavoilable... man.. i hate that, it look so unrealistic all that abandonment... really i have never seen an abandoned building in my life... i hope sc5 has less abandonment

quote>

where do you live that youve never seen an abandoned building??? ive seen abandonded million dollar homes, and crack houses, and everything in between and ive lived in just about every major city up and down the east coast

[Keiran Halcyon 0]

Date: 2/7/2006 10:03:56 PM
Author: Bodom
its unavoilable...

quote>

Abandonment, or people reviving 3-year-old threads?

You can experiment with Bones1's Less Abandonment mod if you want something that tinkers with the game engine slightly to make situations in which abandonment/dilapidation is likely to occur happen less often, or you could look for any of several mods that lock buildings in an unabandoned state, which I pay no attention to and cannot tell you much about.

[Peorth 17]

Abandonment is NOT inevitable, since that implies it's a locked-in feature in the game simulator (which is pretty stupid). I've grown some 50,000-60,000k cities without a single abandoned building. The trick is to optimize everything and understand how the inter-relationships of demand, supply, taxation, etc. work. At a certain population level though, more variables come into play and things get less predictable. At this point abandonment is pretty hard to avoid, but it can still be limited to just a few buildings.