Population Cap

[notmymail77 0]

For some reason, my once bustling city refuese to grow. The RCI indicator shows positive demand in all virtually all sectors, but vast vacant lots refuse to develop. the city res. pop is approximatly 520,000 im not exactly sure what the other pops are.  the areas not developing are seen as desirable for most development classes, and are well connected to the subway, highway and rail net. teh only time anything grows is when i destroy neighborhoods, but even then, the growth dousn't make up the difference.

most of the undeveloped lots are on the opposite side of a river, but their is alsosizable dent in the near core of the city that refuses to develop.the city is sorrounded on three sides by other cities that grow normally. 

what is wrong? what can i do?

[phoenix7 3]

You have probably hit a demand cap. Many things that will raise the caps, parks are the easiest ones. All maxis parks, and some custom ones, raise the demand cap for one or more zone type.

[notmymail77 0]

so how many do i need? is there some mod or lot that raises the cap(s) by about a million?

[NetPCDoc 1]

Hello notmymail77,

If you have hit a demand cap - Parks help with residential, Plazas help with Commercial; your biggest cap relievers are the ports - airports, seaports and spaceports.

Other Possibilities are - Water Cap, Fire Cap, Park Cap and the wrong size zones.

For the Water / Fire / Park caps - try reading the CAM threads over on SC4Devotions Forums.

For the wrong size zones - check by attempting additional zoning - try dragging zone tool over large area and see what size/shape zones tend to appear most. Densitiy may also have some affect on the currently desired zone size/shape.

Hope this helps,

-NetPCDoc

No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

[toroca 160]

If you have any demand for a type of development, you have NOT hit a cap for that type. Capped types will show zero demand, neither positive nor negative.

In my own experience, I eventually run into an issue in cities where newly placed zones will not develop, despite having lots of positives, just as described in this case. What usually works for me is plopping a few small parks or plazas randomly around the empty zones. This often causes something of a firestorm of development in those areas. I've never bothered to test whether it's the temporary mayor rating boost in those areas that does it, or the slight boost in the attractiveness of the zone, or something related to those factors. The same trick works very well in areas you wish to convert to a denser zone type, particularly with residential zones. I use it frequently when I rezone residential areas from light to medium density, or medium to high density. The slight maintenance cost for the new parks is more than made up for by the boost in tax revenues from the resultant larger buildings.

[duack 14]

Ive also hit a demand cap in my main city, but the amount of parks you have to place is rudicolous! In the suburban part of town, I put a medium playground to relieve the cap and about 10 medium wealth, low density houses spawned, then nothing.Still empty zone outside the ten lots that developed.