Please Help

[pharaway 0]

Sorry to ask a question that I'm sure has been covered 10x over and beaten to death like a lame horse.  But I'm having an issue with abandonment and commute times.  I have a small suburb I'm working on with roughly 5,000 ppl This is primarily residential with some commercial on the main road.  In a connected city I have the power/industry.  1/2 of my suburb is abandoned or with the no job zot above it.  However my demand is skewed.  I've got a demand for nearly 4,000 r$ and zero demand for any job RCI.  Now maybe I've got this backwards but if zero demand in jobs and high demand in residential wouldn't that mean an over abundance of jobs?  Not to mention that traffic is nil, travel distance is just over the connection (not way across the map).

I've updated the game, installed the 2007 NAM, even had it do the perfect pathfinding.  And still massive abandonment.

Any suggestions?  Help!?

[ShortStraw 1]

Is it possible that your R$ sims have upgraded to R$$ through education?  If so then your Industrialy/Power neighbor city may be full of Dirty jobs but not have enough Manufacturing jobs to satisfy your R$$ sims.   This would also drive up your R$  demand  as they're needed to fill the Dirty jobs that your upgraded sims have left.

If this is your problem then just lure more Manufacturing  Industry into your Dirty city (or whichever city really) to employ your R$$.  Alternatively, you could bulldoze your schools and libraries and over time your population will become mostly R$ and stay that way.

There are a LOT of factors that affect abandonment and commute times. This is just one guess based on what I read in your post.  Hope it helps, good luck.

[pharaway 0]

Thanks for the reply.  I've gone over to the industrial town and zoned some extra industrial zones just in case and ran it for a year.  Nothing has built and demand is dry for both dirty and manufacturing.

The only other thing I can think of is that I've put mods on my copy in the past.  Could some of the mods (mostly from here) have caused a problem?

I've had this kind ofproblem with all my cities I've tried building with SC4.  The highest population I've gotten in a city has been around 100K and even at that point abandonment lost me nearly 20% of the population even though jobs were nearby on the same map, mass transit was everywhere, and no one had to commute across cities.

Should I do a fresh install?  Is there a way to erase all the mods I've installed?

Thanks so much for helping me out!

edit:  I attached a pic of my city & its demand graph

[tungston 19]

What does the traffic graph view look like? I think you might have a congestion problem with the streets, and only a couple of roads connecting the avenue.

[pharaway 0]

Thats the only other thing I could think about.  I've attached 2 other shots as well.  One of the traffic and one of the industrial city as well.

[tungston 19]

Do you have the zones watered?

I would use the railroad, and at least the subway, if not monorail to connect the cities. In the industrial city run a few railroad lines, with freight stations out of the city, for shorter freight distance.

[pharaway 0]

i think it may have had something to do with the plugins I had installed.  I deleted all the files in the plugins folder and deleted both cities and just built 3 cities with a Highway connecting all three.  The highway is the only way to get to the cities and there are limited choices on where to join the highway.  So far I've got about 30k in one city and 35k in another.  One has more of a suburban feel with some medium density and little commercial mom & pops scattered about.  The other is an urban setting with all High Density commercial and a few high density residential zones. 

The goofy thing is the city that was defunct had commute times of less than 20 minutes and mass abandonment.  In my 3 cities I'm working on now They're connected CBD-R-I.  I've got residents traveling from the CBD all the way to the industrial city.  My plan though is to have the middle R drive the I and generate huge Commercial demand and fuel the fire for the residents in the CBD to work in.

Either way thanks for the help.  Like I said not sure why 20 minutes was hell for one and 45-60 is OK for the other.  Maybe it was the avenue who knows.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Try changing the order so that your commercial city is between the R and the I.  This is to generate traffice in the C city, and increase demand there.