All RCI bars in the negative?

[pianoblack 0]

I have a 50-year-old city of about 100k people, next to which is an industrial wasteland tile with 20k ind-population, nothing else.  I have been battling constantly low RCI meters for the past 20 years or so, and just now they have all dropped to between -2000 and -4000.  I have plopped a lot of tennis courts, parks and rewards.  Can one or more of you SimCity gods point me towards what might be going on here?

[Operative 1]

is your population well educated and somewhat healthy?

[pianoblack 0]

Well my city is divided into two sections; ghetto (which doesn't have much health/edu infrastructure) and a high-class neighborhood which has a lot of that stuff. 

I tried adding some more to the upper-class neighborhood, and I got a little more demand, but it still fluctuates like mad: one point it will be R$$, then R$$$... and my C is mostly C$ and C$$, but sometimes goes to Co$$$.  Also I am making like 2 simoleons more than I am spending in the budget

[_Atticus 10]

How many R$$$ sims do you have? And how many C jobs (CS, CO) do you have?

Your problem may be that you have too many R$$$ sims, which are much pickier when it comes to jobs.

Hope it helps

-Pingangster

[Chris_k0818 0]

 Yeah, I have just over 300k ppl, around 170k commercial, 90% of my indutrial is high-tech, and I'm making about 6k a month (Low I know.) Anyways, I have about 5 neighboring cities as well. Most of my neighborhoods are rather rich. However, I have hit a cap on all of my commercial especially CO-$$ and CO-$$$. I've tried everything to fix it! I need help because they just won't build but they are complaining that I don't have enough R-$ and R-$$, but if I build more of them then they won't have jobs.

[_Atticus 10]

Just get a lot of lower-end jobs, like I-D, I-M, or CS$ to increase demand for lower end residents and get lots of them

Hope it helps

-Pingangster

[pianoblack 0]

Ok!  I have made some progress.  Bank account is more stable now (8k+/mo.) and I get spikes of buildability, where one type of R C or I will pop up for a while until I build it back down again.  City is expanding nicely.  Sometimes.

As I said, there are SPIKES of buildability.  This means that for the most part, one bar is up, and the others are in the negative.  My industry seems to be constantly hanging into the negs; only HT comes up now because of my taxation against I-D and to a lesser extent I-M (and the growing industrial city next door, which takes all the R$ and some R$$ workers).  And the spikes of HT are rare.  This of course causes a lot of building distress/abandonment from time to time!.  

Any ideas about how to boost my I-HT cap?

[Chris_k0818 0]

CS-$ won't build and I don't want dirty or manufacturers because that will hurt my demand for CO. I dunno what else to do...

 You can raise your HT by raising your population and lowering their taxes. You need high education and other city gifts. It also helps if you build them near parks and away from dirty industry and near neighbor connections or ports. They also require water for the most part.

[pianoblack 0]

Bah they are all in the negatives again, even in my industrial city!  No amount of cap busting has worked; I've placed entire giant blocks of R-busters, and made tons of connections for C/I... they actually have the effect of FURTHER LOWERING my demand!

Utterly confused now...