Unique Quirky behavior

[hoyatables 2]

Hey all,

By way of background, I've recently re-discovered SC4 after a few years off, and I'm enjoying the improvements provided by Rush Hour, the NAM, and so on.  I've got a wonderful region going with a number of successful cities of various sizes and styles.

I've noticed some strange behavior in one of my cities, and I am at a loss to explain it because (1) it has been happening for some time despite many changes in population and (2) it hasn't occurred in other similar cities.  There's a revolving cycle where a significant population of low income sims (some 20-40k) move into a collection of buildings that are adjacent to a highway as well as the central business district.  After some period of time, "no job" zots appear, and abandonment soon follows, with commute time as the rationale.  That would be fine with me, except that then, after another period of time, a new bunch of sims will move in and repeat the process.  It's not the end of the world, but it is frustrating because the population swing is enough to send heath care and education workers into a tizzy.  

I assumed at first that it was a legitimate problem due to commuting time, and immediately oversaturated the area with public transportation options.  That didn't help.  I then tried tearing down some structures and replacing with parks, etc.  That didn't help--in fact, the problem just spread to some of the adjacent residential buildings.  I then tried expanding road capacity.  That didn't help.  I then tried building dirty industry in the immediately adjacent town, assuming that is what they wanted.  (The area is located close to the edge of the map).)That didn't work.  

It is definitely not a demand issue -- I've successfully constructed low, then med and then high density residential in other areas of the city with no difficulty, and various sim types have all prospered successfully.  It must be a true commuting issue (again, NAM doesn't help here).  All factors suggest that this should be high demand for every income type, and I can't understand why mid and high income sims won't move in there.    I can't just bullzone the area or change it to commercial, because the no-job zots will just move on to another cluster of residential buildings nearby where there wasn't previously a problem.  

Any thoughts?  Is it simply a problem related to the low-income sims finding a lack of jobs?  Do they get scared off by the high health and education funding?  I'm at a loss.

[Death54 3]

Same things happenning to me, except I surrounded the residential areas with jobs and the avg commute time is only 3 min. I'm now restarting the city with a different layout and hoping it will help.

P.S. It's not the high health and education funding for sure, I have a tile with only low wealth sims (in my old region) where the EQ is 195 and the life expectancy is 85.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Its too bad you can't isolate that group so that the population by age and population by education graphs would be more help.  What does the desirability screen show for that area?  Maybe it should be higher wealth.

If there are alternate routes to the highway, this may be a problem.  If you have the all cheats .dll file, hit Ctrl+X and click on show paths.  This gives you all the possible paths in the city, but you can concentrate on your problem spot.  There may be some kind of funny break in the pathing.

EDIT:  Make sure you have enough $ type jobs, as well.  Check your Jobs and Population graph.  The number of R$ needs to be about three times the number of I$+Cs$+Co$ jobs in the game.  Momma stays home with the kid.

[AutumnWindz 0]

I've got the same problem. One specific area in each of my last two cities will endlessly go through cycles of: moving in -> jobless -> abandonment -> more people moving in again -> etc. Each area is roughly the same as the original residential area I put down at the start of the city.

It's quite ridiculous and annoying, as there is absolutely no reason for this to be happening; jobs are abundant and development is normal in all other areas of the cities. Desirability for these areas is also very high for all types of Residential.

[hoyatables 2]

I'll go micro and see if I can't trouble shoot it --- putting jobs nearby didn't help the last time, but maybe I can be a little more selective. Also, there may actually be an abundance of roads in that area, and perhaps eliminating some intersections will actually help, too.