Not enough jobs !

[Bahamut4k 0]

My residential buildings keep getting bigger and subsequently getting abandoned as there aren't enough jobs. I've put down loads of commercial/industrial zones (to match RCI Demand) but I still have loads of abandoned residential buildings.

I'm even replacing chunks of residential zone with commercial zoning to remove some of the empty buildings and produce jobs to try and fill the other ones but it doesn't seem to be having much impact.

What is a "healthy" ratio of commercial and industrial zoning to residential ? I would have thought you'd need more residential but I've got more commercial/industrial now than residential and still not enough jobs for all of them :/.

Any ideas/tips would be appreciated, thanks !

[JakeMD 107]

Not sure of a healthy ratio. Maybe you want to try to build up your commercial, industry, and build up your infrastructure before zoning any residential. One of the biggest problems I face is the lack of good transportation. This limits the sims to wait in traffic which angers them and they threaten to blow up their buildings.

[Bahamut4k 0]

How do I build up my commercial ? It's all high density, but so few of the buildings are upgrading, whereas the residential buildings don't stop upgrading. It's no wonder they're complaining about lack of jobs when I have residential buildings with up to 8000 sims and the majority of my commercial buildings provide about 50-100 jobs.

[JakeMD 107]

Qucik question, do you have any water leading to your commercial zones? This would prevent them from totally developing at all.

[Bahamut4k 0]

Yup, water coverage all over

[JakeMD 107]

Try placing some industry right in the middle of a residential zone. Some heavy industry high density. Make sure, after that, you place many parks and lots of trees and also make sure there are plenty of schools around the area, and wait for some high tech industry to develop.

[simpants 0]

I had the same problem recently with residential growing out of control and everything else never caught up. I usually do a few things, first rezoning like you have done to try and balance it better. Second, I build another city adjacent to the one I have and just create industrial and/or commercial to provide jobs for the neighbors. Finally, I got a little frustrated this weekend so I downloaded some modded landmarks that people have made that provide jobs off the EA site. So plopping down a big landmark that has a few thousand jobs has saved some of my bigger residential sections. Infrastructure is important, especially with transportation and access to and from the jobs via bus/subway or other means.

[ri0tiny0urcity 0]

You could try with neighbor city. I've found if you commit one city to a certain task like rich residential and another city to high end commercial the results are pretty good...just have to watch commute time.

[ryan820 3]

I second what the others have said but also want to through in that if you do a BUNCH of dense res, you will get a huge number of people in that small area. And if your game runs like mine, those dense res fill up fast and they have very little patience for finding jobs and will leave the buildings fast. So to combat this, I usually build med or low res and as the city can sustain and demands more, I'll re-zone to high dense res. I also allow the game to run in the fast mode for periods of several years between "projects" I build, such as communities or a biz district etc. Give it time to settle down before throwing more fuel to the fire.

With that said, I have some pretty sweet medium res communities that look amazing because the demand is through the roof but I keep it at medium density. Time is your friend and easy-goes-it on adding people, commerce and industry. Don't outgrow your jobs or infrastructure.

[Emerikol 0]

You will also find alot of no job zots if your residential creates poor/medium class people and all you have is high end jobs, or if your population is mostly rich people and you have poor wealth jobs. Also commute times to these varying degrees of wealth jobs/citizens just tends to create jobless sims.

The trick to beating this system is to figure out exactly what type of wealth you want in the city, and adjust the taxes accordingly. Starting out you will want poor/medium wealth people, so make sure theres plenty of medium wealth industry and commertial jobs. Then as the city develops you can try to increase everything to high wealth with your taxes. Just remember high wealth sims don't like to ride the bus to work. Some other form of mass transit is needed. I use the bus/subway method.

Hope this helps.

[Dizastrow 4]

Commute Times is usually the scheme artists when this happens.  Try rebuilding or improving your transportation infrastructure.  More Industry usually helps too, close by but not too close by.