Creating Realistic Cities

[John Kirby 1]

 I've been playing for a while but one thing that I haven't been able to master is the creation of a realistic looking town. I don't like gridded cities I find them to bland. 

If anyone has some pointers on creating a realistic town please post

[Flann 1,709]

If you want realism but don't want grids, you're going to spend the rest of your life stumped. Unless you like Europe.

[Patricius Maximus 236]

It is rather late in the evening in my time zone, so I cannot give a detailed essay. However, I have one simple piece of advice for making realistic and functional suburbs: the fused grid.

Hope that helps.

- Patricius Maximus

[Lampala 1]

Originally posted by: Flann

If you want realism but don't want grids, you're going to spend the rest of your life stumped. Unless you like Europe.quote>

??? There are lots of places in north america that aren't 100% grids. Have you ever been to a suburb? No grids there mostly. And to John Kirby, I'd look at some road patterns by going on Google maps, that usually inspires me.

[how_deep 2]

To find realism, you can always look to your own community.  Whether you live in the country, a small burg, or a huge urban jungle, use the street layout, the placement of utilities, schools, parks, etc. as a guide.  I wouldn't recommend trying to recreate your area yet unless you're in the mood for microsurgery, but look around for examples.  You could also remember some place you've visited.

With my cities, I use a grid mostly, but you don't have to. Use MapQuest, Google Earth, etc. and take a look at a city.  Usually the urban cores are gridded (some use the fused grid) but as you pan farther from the CBD, major roads become less common and the streets take many interesting patterns.  You could look at my hometown, San Antonio, for instance.

[John Kirby 1]

Thanks for all of the replies I've found a lot of interesting tips.

I appreciate it

John Kirby

[Sam 163]

I use much the same principle in my cities as Patricius Maximus posted. It is extremely efficient, both in terms of the number of residents you can fit in if you use those grids on high density, and in the traffic flow efficiency, especially combined with public transport options. They also make great layouts for low density suburbs and industrial areas.

I don't suggest using them for commercial skyscraper districts though, they are better on a conventional (if long) grid. Commercial needs high traffic to get its customers and likes to be on the through roads between residential and industrial for this reason. So using a plan that reduces traffic won't go too well with that.

But I'd suggest experimenting with those fused grids for other areas.

[fayen 5]

I'm a geogrpher and have been trying to create a realistic mid-sized french city in SC4. I have found a few major differences between sim-city 4 cities and real cities wich you can more or less modify to reach a high level of realism. These mainly apply to large cities :

- the absence of diagonals : the NAM with its diagonal streets does help, but few diagonal building exist, and they have to be plopped for propper effect.

- the small size of lots : most lots aren't larger than say 5 by 5 tiles at most.. Most cities in the world will have buildings larger or longer like soviet-style appartment buildings that would translate as 8 or 10 by 2 tiles, while hospitals and universities often have main buildings that could be 5 by 8 tiles and several secondary buildings. Not to mention car and plane factories (something like 10 by 25 tiles), malls and airports of course. You can give the illusion of a realistic city by using a bunch of monuments and putting lots of parks and parking space around mid-sized and large buildings. Sistematically use the add-ons for huge airports and port zones, golf courses, and don't forget to plop mall-buildings, large factories, and to build train depots. Put fences, control posts, no man's lands around any military bases.

- the short commute distances : this is a system thing, which doesn't really affect your city's realism unless you're planning a metropolis of pretty huge proportions. Just know that sims commute the equivalent of 12-15 minutes of transport, while the AVERAGE commute in most large metropolises in the western world exceed 40 minutes, meaning a whole bunch of miles, the equivalent of two or three large maps or more, meaning somme people are willing to drive well above an hour to go to work ( People commute to Paris from Orleans or Rouen by train, more than 75 miles out, to New-York from south-eastern Pennsylvania ). So they have residential zones that can be either miles large with almost no economical activity, or miles out of the city itself, surrounded by fields and woods. These would not grow in SC4. The NAM does allow you to multiply the commute distance but not to that extent.

- The absence of mixed-use buildings with commercial space on the bottom floors and residences above. Not much you can do about that.

- The feeble capacity and range of utilities, police, and health buildings : large cities will have about one hospital for every 100 to 350 thousand people (instead of around 6 to 40 thousand in the game), some million-people cities will have around 8 police station including one large. A double oil electricity plant will feed a 250000 people city and its immediate region, and one water purifying plant would also sufice for such a city. Download nuclear plants and plop the most expensive model instead of plopping 5 gaz plants per map. Download the range and capacity doubler modd, it's a start.

- The impossibility to end highways by turning them into avenues has ended thanks to the newst NAM. Hallelujah.

- Finally, this affects the game little except when it comes to hospital and school capacity, but the population in SC4 buildings is waaaaay too high. (thousand inhabitant towers are bad, but small houses with seven inhabitants, cottages with 15-people famillies and small brick buildings with 250 people are so much worse for realism.) So if your region has, say, 4 million people, it os only the size of a 1 million people city, which is allready fairly large. This also applies to jobs : small shops in real life do not employ 17 people, local branches for banks and gas stations will not have 30 or 40 employees on their payrolls. This is less of a worry though because it might replace jobs which are not included in the game but inderectly created in real cities : plumbers, cable guys, courriers, etc... Anyway, the population halver modd is a definite must-have, but if I knew how to programm these, I would divide population by 2.5 or 3, commercial jobs by 1.5, and possibly industrial jobs by that much too. Yes this will create unemployement, but real cities usually have a reasonnable amount of it.

There you go, good luck !

[CTMandR 9]

I personally like the Fused Grid layout, I usually section off large squares for development, and start randomly drawing streets across it, followed by smaller secondary ones that let me develop more space. Any space too small to build some decent-sized houses will make a great park!

Hopefully this helps, and good luck with creating a realistic city!

[John Kirby 1]

Thanks Fayen I found a lot of what you said really useful. I've also done some reading up on the Fused Grid and I've already begun to employ it into a few of my suburbs!

[fayen 5]

You're welcome, I'm happy I could help.

[newyorkrunaway1 110]

you could also check out parkland, in my signature for ideas, and also parkopolis in the cj section here at ST for a lot of ideas too.... both are geared towards realism