Crystal Junction

[+Guest]

Wow, but I thought you weren't gonna have high density skyscrapers until like 1 million?

[andrew george 0]

Those downtown pics are great - I love seeing stuff like that....

 

A

[whiteshark365 563]

Sunday, July 14, 3074

Crystal Chronicles
40

[+Guest]

Aaah, the master of sprawl returns!

[ChicAgo333 2]

uh oh, sandstorm, looks like ill have to take my vacation somewhere else

 

nice update

[andrew george 0]

Crystal Junction Memorial Airport is looking good.

 

A

[Llama_Sim 0]

Where did you get that cool mall?

[whiteshark365 563]

The mall I got from either the bat or the let exchange, I can't remember which.

[Vlad788 13]

Looking great Whiteshark I like the Memorial Airport. Nice customization.

 

-Vlad

[whiteshark365 563]

City Update 22.1:

 

Crystal Junction is currently a city of signifficant size. It still lacks enough people to be considered a major city, but, at it's current rate of growth, that may not be too far off. Currently the Crystal Junction Metro Area consists of roughly 650,000 people growing at a rate of about 15,000 per year. The city as you can see on the graphics below is starting to spread north all the way to the Upper Crystal Canyon, and outward arround the southwest, and west.

 

Already Sandy Ridge is becoming the hot growth spot with the town having a population of over 31,000, thanks to the newly generated business from the constructed freeway 248. Downtown Sandy Ridge has already begun medium density zoning to provide more jobs, as well as attract workers from Crystal Junction. Sandy Ridge itself is on the verge of being incoperated into the Crystal Junction area, but that itself is still pending.

 

Also provided are the locations of each major airport so everyone can get a rough idea where everything is located.

Eastern and Northern City Spread

Western and Sandy Ridge City Spread

Airport Locations


Feel free to comment guys.

[ChicAgo333 2]

geeez, thats awesome, all the green'); height=15 alt=Insert smilie [:0] src=https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/images/smilies/6.gif width=15 border=0>, all the development'); height=15 alt=Insert smilie [:0] src=https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/images/smilies/6.gif width=15 border=0> great job

[spy360 1]

This is a very nice looking journal.

[+Guest]

Look up sprawl in the dictionary and you'll find a picture of Crystal Junction!

[Llama_Sim 0]

That's massive! The amount of work you've put into this is crazy! Awesome!

[thatmonkeysim 8]

great job on the new memorial airport...

but what happened on tuesday and wednesday after the sandstorm???

[Dark Avatar 8]

This CJ is great!

[whiteshark365 563]

Tuesday, July 16, 3074

Crystal Chronicles
Special Edition
40

[A Killer Ewok 2]

An extremely addictive piece of work. A joy of reading. Good job again, whiteshark365!

[spy360 1]

I like the way you made the weather very nice. And also a nice city.

[77FurryBeagle 0]

Great!!!

I'm just wondering, did you get the name Galleria from the mall in St. Louis? There was some thread a few months ago and you said that you lived there. I'm just asking because Ive been there and I know there is a mall called the Galleria.

This must be the best CJ on the forum!!!

[Dannato 4]

Wow, incredible how this keeps on developing.

You must be either very quick or very patient for all that detailled writing -- talented you obviously are. You got great image editing skills too, the pics of the sandstorm just look great - along with all the others. A highly entertaining journal.

[ginchael 1]

The story (both the sandstorm one AND the actual city itself) is amazing! GREAT WORK! (read that as it is in the most obnoxious way possible)

[whiteshark365 563]

Thank you for all the compliments guys. I do appreciate them. I am glad you enjoyed the story and the details.

 

Ideas for city weather. When i have designed all of my cities, I have a basic idea for the weather they have. Ridge Point, Grimmington, and West point i never went into as much detail in because i was more concerned with getting the city's finished. However, since in each city they are all protrayed as being on a different plantet, I have to try and create some alien-like weather, or weather not as commonly seen in the United States, while constructing the cityies as US cities would be constructed. Crystal Junction is supposed to have a lot of simularities with Pheonix, but the exact atomsphere of which I can't duplicate fully, since I've never been there before, or to be honest, ever even scene the skyline, but I have read some about the weather, and I try to make the weather more hot, and since the city is near the equator of Frontier point, little change in the seasons, espeically from a world only 40% covered with water, and an orbit that creates tropical or desert-like conditions globally. I do read a lot about weather, and try to make my descriptions of conditions as realistic as possible. I also from reading alot about weather, am able to usually think this stuff up quickly.

 

Ridge Point, while I didn't go into any weather detail has a sub tropical weather system, not quite temperate, but not quite tropical. Very rainy, very dry periods, able to support dense farming. West point was constructed in an area boarding the very geologically active areas, as well as at the base of a moutnian range, so it's conditions can in some cases vary greatly, but it tends to have a more extreme range in weather patterns. Severe storms, droughts, windy conditions, cool periods from downdrafts off the moutains. Grimmington has a cross between West Point and Ridge Point's weather system, but generally tends to support grasslands. Long mild periods of light rain, and baulmy weather, but breifs intense periods of storms or wind. Crystal Junction as you all know has a very dry, hot, and desert-like weather systems. Severe weather is often in the form of heat waves or sand storms, but over all it has a constant hot and dry climate, with in most cases less then half an inch of rain ever falling within a 10 year period. The Crystal and Limestone rivers stay wet only from springs, and rain to the southwest and south. The city's location is a place where most of the air loses it's miosture hundreds of miles to the west. The only time it ever recieves rain is when on the rare ocassions, low pressure systems from the north are powerful enough to draw moisture into the area from rapidly enough before it dries out, or the air is so heavily saturated that the area's lack of air humidity isnt enough to prevent rain.

 

77FurryBeagle: I got the idea for the name the Galleria, mostly because it is a very generic name for a mall in a major city area. I would be lieing if i said that the STL area's Galleria mall wasnt of some infulence. I do know that a lot of major cities have a mall named the Galleria, L.A. is another such city that has one. I do also base most of my city's to some exetent off of STL, and I would imagine a lot of people on here do try to model either their whole city or parts of it on their hometowns. The major sprawl for instense of all my cityies comes from the fact that St. Louis is the 2nd most sprawled city in the US, only Pheonix is more spread out then STL, when compairing area to population. STL is obly 18th in list of population though in the nation. The STL metro area extends almost 60 miles across from one corner to another, only 385,000 of the 2.6 million people in stl actually live in the city, one of the few cities where suburbia dwarfs downtown.

 

Dannato: The detials I put into a story to come rather quickly from me to think up, however, writing them is the part that takes a lot of work for me since as most can tell, my grammitcal and spelling skills are far from perfect or even good. I do try and read over what i type up in the newspaper once, but a lot of stuff still gets overlooked.

 

Future Projects:

I know it seems a little earily to be thinking about what my next major project will be. This city has taken even twice as long as Ridge Point did, even tho it is only about a third of the way complete. I will say I am going todoing both West Point and Grimmington, simply, because i didnt use downloaded lots or mods as much with them, or even the NAM mod like Crystal Junction has, and I never really went into much detial reguarding the naming of everything. I will say my next project will as far as a new city is concerned, will be a costal city. But I am not sure which city yet. I am thinking very heavilily about doing the capital city of Frontier City, but may also do a smaller city. Frontier City would be a very big project to undertake since unlike either Ridge Point which was 1.25 million, or Crystal Junction which I am aiming for 1.9 million, Frontier City will be 5.3 million in size, and need some customized buildings, since the city I imagine it to be has two two mile tall towers in it.

 

I might might do grimmington again while doing Crystal Junction, because a town of 50,000 doesnt take as extensive amout of work as a 1.9 million major city does.

 

Next update on here will be sometime this week.

[subedei 3]

Very impressive CY and region. I am looking forward to more updates. Keep up the great work. 

 

 

Subedei

[+Guest]

About the suburban thing, here in Philly the metro area (city+suburbs) is about 6.5 million people, while the city is only about 1.5 milllion people, which means there is like 5 million people in the suburbs here.

[whiteshark365 563]

Philly is simular to stl in that aspect, there are other cities out there like that as well, but not as many since most cities have more of the population in their main city city limts then in suburbs.. Your city is about 25% urban, and 75% suburban. LA is simular as well, so is pheonix. NYC and other east costal cities, and chicago are probably a lot less like that. STL isnt very unique in that aspect, just the shear difference in percent urban and suburban kinda stands out, since stl is 14% urban, and 84% suburban. Of coarse I'll be honest in saying I do find a number of cities have a better skyline then stl, and Philly is one that has a very cool skyline. STL's city ordinance which states no building can be higher then the Gateway Arch kinda limits it's skyline size. Basically no building over 630 feet tall. D.C. has a simular orbinace, but only it has no taller then the capital building.

[+Guest]

I likek Philly's skyline a lot because there are a lot of historic buildings that are a few stories tall that lead into buildings between like 15-40 stories tall that are not modern, all-glass or anything, but aren't really old either, and then there are the 6 or so skyscrapers that are all very modern and are like 50+ stories. Of course, while Downtown and Old City are nice, the rest of the city isn't.......Pretty much anyone with a decent job lives (and maybe works) in the suburbs now.

[mentarman 14]

Remember that St. Louis is physically small though compared to most other cities. The city's fixed boundaries and the city/county split skews some of the statistics comparing cities.

For example, St. Louis is only about 62 square miles, while Chicago is 227 square miles. If you could make St. Louis that size, four times as big, think of all the suburbs you'd eat up, the increase in population, and how that would change a lot of the stats about St. Louis.

Enough off-topic context from the Lou.

[77FurryBeagle 0]

Date: 8/29/2004 10:11:19 PM
Author: 77furrybeagle

I'm just asking because Ive been there and I know there is a mall called the Galleria.

quote>

Actually, I just moved STL. I wasnt sure whether I should say so or not. In my opinion it is v. nice city...one of my favorites after Chicago (of course, the city that you live in is usually one of your favorites ). Although I do agree that the building height limit is kinda restricting...on the other hand, the arch is beautiful.

In looking at Crystal Junction, I've noticed that it does have a lot of sprawl, especially looking at the pictures I've seen in the past few weeks, which makes it unique along with you not just zoning as fast as you can and trying to add as many pretty things as you can while at the same getting your population up to one trillion or whatever, and not just saying looks like the traffic is bad, lets just plop down all these highways!. (well, that was a run-on sentence )

[thatmonkeysim 8]

wow i love the way you made the report of the disaster it completly caught me off guard...

and you know what i was planning on moving to Granite City...how much are the houses there?? before and after the storm...