A Viscious Cycle?

[docwomet 0]

Hi, first post but I have been enjoying the wealth of knowledge here!

I couldn't find anything written on a current issue I'm having in my region - I built some dirty industry sectors in the corner of my map for some R$ cities to develop with.  I guess my goal is to have a thriving office sector (don't we all) but have some charming slums nearby.

My problem right now is that my demand seems to keep shifting between massive R$ demand to massive Dirty / Manufacturing demands, and nothing else!  It's not self evident to me that creating the education and perks in my new downtown district to attract white collar sims will be of any use because of the rampant demand of the poor, huddled masses!

Should I start over and grow my slums more slowly, balancing the demand with my downtown citizens?  Any other ideas / advice?  Thanks!!

[mightygoose 92]

educate your citizen, thats a easiest and fastest way to get more high wealth jobs... more high wealth jobs attract high wealth residents... so just educate everyone.... after that just make sure everyone has, water, fire, police coverage, health coverage, and libraries as well as schools, (phase that in gradually as and when you can afford it)(NOT ALL AT ONCE)

[xxbydesign 1]

no. this is normal in a new city. Education takes time, so you have to let the game play through for a while. And as another point, you should know that simcity is designed so that R$ can work for any wealth level industry, whereas R$$ and R$$$ require corresponding wealth levels to opperate fully. Therefore, your city can support more R$ than R$$$, which is good for you, cause it would be expensive to support all the R$$$ without a solid mass of R$ beneith. So do not fear the huddled masses; im glad you made the decision to develop a low income neighborhood alongside a wealthy one. Your city is on its way to being a healthy one!

[docwomet 0]

Thanks for the ideas, though I guess I should've clarified I think my issue is more of a regional thing than a city thing! Can anyone explain how demand levels carry across regional zones? I want to make sure the cycle between poor and factory development is contained within the slums, if possible.

[NetPCDoc 1]

Hello docwomet,

Ok - Regional Planning Tips -

First - note -

For your slum cities - education is not that important / For your higher class cities - education is extremely important!

Where you do provide education - note -

Remember - Schools provide the most benefit to Residential Populations; so zone Residential within the school's busing radius.

More schools = more residential zones / more residential zones = more schools.

High Schools can funnel in students from your elementary schools - in theory - at the rate of 3 k-8 for each 9-12.

Taxation - the best method I've found for splitting (up - between different cities) "those" populations.

Raising taxes (to 20%) on non-slum populations in your slum cities will produce more demand for those populations in other cities (where the relative taxes are lower) in the region / Raising taxes (to 20%) on your slum populatoins in non-slum cities will tend to shunt your slum populations into your slum cities (where their taxes are lower).

Notes -

1) for slum cities (or slum area cities) - you want dirty industry and low wealth Residential, both mixed with low wealth commercial services; and/or maybe an agricultural (please don't mix - in same city - with dirty indusry) city or two?

2) for your wealthier cities - you want NO dirty (or agricultural) industry and little (if any) low wealth Residential mixed with even less low wealth commercial (try encouraging at least medium wealth commercial).

3) either develop wealthier cities on larger city tiles or split the populations (medium-wealth Residential, high-wealth Residential, Industrial (both manufacturing and high-tech), Commercial Office) between neighboring cities.

4) when splitting wealthier populations - do mix (medium and high wealth) commercial services into each of your wealthier cities.

Enough? For now?

-NetPCDoc

No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

[tigerplayer91 3]

You should really take mightgoose's advice, he knows what hes talking about. I have a city called Humidus, and its extremely successful. A thriving downtown with residential sectors surrounding it. Ofcourse I planned the entire city from top to bottom and have many money parks to help support the education and health but that is besides the point lol. Here Ill post some pictures to prove that a good education is the key to success. Keep in mind, since it is a pre planned city, it is not completely finished yet, but here ya go:

This is one of the residential neighborhoods. As you can see, I really like rowhouses lol.


The same area at night:



Those are the two good ones I could find, but yeah, my city has absolutely zero low wealth residential and the average income is 130,000 simoleons. Just goes to show you what a good education can do.

[Spinmaster 75]

Maybe I'm wrong, but this sounds like a similar misconception I had once about what the RCI demand graphs really mean. High residential demand means a lot of people want to move in? High dirty industry demand means a lot of factories want to come in? Nope.

Demand isn't about who outside your city wants to come in. It's about who is wanted by residents/jobs already in your city or region. Jobs demand people demand jobs demand people.. there's your "cycle," and it's perfectly normal once you realize where it's coming from. If you have a lot of low-wealth, uneducated residents they'll demand a lot of dirty industry, agricultural, and some low-wealth commercial service jobs. If you have a lot of such jobs, vacant, they'll cause your low-wealth residential demand to increase. That's the "cycle" you're seeing. It's not a problem, just the way things work, even in the real world.

Do you need education? To break that cycle, yes... though "break" might not be the right word, actually. Just brings the other RCI sectors into the simulation machine. It will educate the sims, they'll demand higher-wealth jobs which require educated workers, and the simulation will become more complex. Now comes the other common early mistake - don't overdo it. No, you don't want all gold-lined cities full of nothing but rich geniuses. Many folks learned here the hard way, sometimes it can be a challenge to keep them out, if you're "nice" and prone to providing every service you can afford to everyone. Simply put, someone has to do the grunt jobs, and you're the one that has to decide who by denying amenities such as parks, education, maybe even water, to oppress enough people to keep your city functional. Sounds mean, but welcome to Sim City. High-wealth commercial offices employ the most high-wealth residents, but just because the company is rich doesn't mean the workers are. They are only 15% full of high-wealth residents. High Tech (high-wealth industrial) is 10%. The rest is all mid- and low-wealth workers. Moral: you will always need a large number of low-wealth sims, an almost as significant proportion of mid-wealth sims, and just a smattering of high-wealth ones. You may be able to rid your city of most of the low-wealth jobs, but never the low-wealth sims.

[docwomet 0]

Wow, that explanation was well put and jives with what I've been seeing in my game.  Under that definition of demand, I'm really not trying to appease thousands of peons by building high rises, I'm appeasing my empty factories looking for workers.  A slight but crucial distinction, I'd say!

[Madog 3]

Hi

Well education is essencial but you go need a good health and a low crimes.Polution will afect too

Good luck!

[Adnoxaei 0]

Spinmaster gave an excellent description.

Some jobs can be artificially created with downloads, which will give the residential demand. Destroy the building providing those jobs and those people will need new jobs, so it forces demand for that type of job higher. It can quickly boost everything you want if done properly, but play with it in another city or in a copy of that city before applying it to your crown jewel because when things go wrong it can cause and exodus that is difficult to reverse.

[WooHoo 0]

My first post too.

I've been playing on the hard level with no cheats. Here's my recipe for success.

1. Full health and education: school, high school library, museum, college right from the start. Civic building create R$$$ and R$$ jobs and create DEMAND for R$$$ and R$$ residents on the rci graph. So you get an upper and middle class at the start. When the R$$$ and R$$ move in they create demand for C$$, CO$$ and IM$$ jobs. Eventually when their education improves it'll be C$$$, CO$$$ an HT$$$ jobs.

2. Tax rates: Try to get as many R$$$, C$$$, CO$$$ and HT$$$ as possible so your tax income is higher.

R$ 9% R$$ 8.5% R$$$ 8.0%

C$ 9.0%C$$ 8.5% C$$$ 8.0%

CO$$ 8.5% CO$$$ 8.0%

farm 9.0% DI$ 20.0% MI$$ 8.5% HT$$$ 8.0%

I set dirty industry taxes to 20.0% because they only create jobs for R$ and I've found you don't  need dirty industry ever in any city in any region to create a tax rich city. 

The advantages of relying on MI$$ instead of DI$ to kickstart city growth...

If you only zone MI$$ 2 wide it doesn't create pollution, so you can zone it close to residential and you wind up with less traffic problems. Eventually when your education gets high enough demand for HT$$$ will crowd out MI$$ and you can zone wider.

MI$$ creates demand and jobs for 5% R$$$, 45% R$$ and 50% R$. So you get higher taxes on a per sim basis so you can afford full education and health for all your citizens.

3. Always zone low density residential until every scrap of land that you intend to ever zone residential is used up. 

On a per sim basis low density residential pays the highest taxes per sim so R$ cover their education and health costs, R$$ are profitable and R$$$ are very profitable at low density.