New Urbanism In SC4

[paletexan 2]

elerium, That is funny how you are forcing sims to walk with one way streets.

I think I get my terms confused at times, but is mixed use development a form of new urbanism? By mixed use, something like shops on the ground floor and apartments above. This has become popular and more practical than "Truman show" type master communities. I would like to see it in simcity, although it will confuse the already numerous zoning types.

[mentarman 14]

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On 10/21/2003 2:59:35 PM paletexan wrote:elerium, That is funny how you are forcing sims to walk with one way streets.

I think I get my terms confused at times, but is mixed use development a form of new urbanism?  By mixed use, something like shops on the ground floor and apartments above.  This has become popular and more practical than 'Truman show' type master communities.  I would like to see it in simcity, although it will confuse the already numerous zoning types.

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Not all New Urbanism incorporates mixed use, and not all mixed use development is New Urbanism, but mixed use is sometimes part of New Urbanism.

[Norwegian Neko 12]

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On 10/20/2003 2:18:11 AM Shoe wrote:

I have recently been reading up on New Urbanism, and I think it seems pretty cool. I am wondering if this would work well in Sim City, and I'm thinking it could help with commute times as well as other things. For those of you who know about the New Urbanism concepts, have you tried incorporating them into

SC4

?

Well the point of my post is to just get the idea tossed around between some other players who know about New Urbanism and see if it is a possiblity and could help with the cities in the game.----------------

I design almost all of my cities in SC4 around the New Urbanist principles. I like to develop a lot of "town center" areas that have low-density commercial on both sides of a street smack dab in the middle of a residential area. The school and hospital both located centrally add more jobs, so most residents end up working in the shops that form the community.

I wanted to take the concept further and include industrial areas, but I haven't played on a map large enough to handle the low density development.
While New-Urbanism does tout itself as building higher density than a 60's era suburb, they still primarily consist of single-family unattached dwellings.

[Norwegian Neko 12]

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On 10/20/2003 11:52:53 AM mcwesty2000 wrote:

I have been using this idea also, i have named areas, all fairly distinct and unique, with their own neighbourhood centres with library and shops, and most with there own primary (elementary) schools (or private schools). The concept works brilliantly, you have each neighbourhood linked to each other using distributor roads, highways or dual carrageways. A main spine road runs through each neighbourhood which in turn leads to the cul-de-sacs, and streets. This concept i borrowed from the 'New Towns' idea.

Industry is separate, and there is a main town centre for primary shops and offices.

However the new concept in british planning is to create fairly high density mixed use schemes, schemes that are sustainable or schemes that don't require cars, people use public transport or walk instead. There is a new scheme in Edinburgh like this. Do a search for the 'Quartermile,Edinburgh' project at the former royal infirmary site. ----------------

Actually, this is just the complete OPPOSITE of what "New Urbanism" is for. You just described a typical suburban sprawl design, remniscent of the large Arizona and Los Angeles style "new subdivisions."

What New Urbanism is really about, believe it or not, is to design cities and towns like we did in 1920. Put stores close enough so people can walk there. Get people out of their cars. Create a more lively community. Get a variety of people to live together, using government programs and forcing the developers to allow a variety of housing types to coexist.

Typical 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's style American subdivisions reinforced class separation by not providing any direct pedestrian access to stores or schools or the rest of the city; no mass transit; and strict zoning laws that would grade-separate housing types:
one area for houses costing $241,000
another area for houses costing $243,000
another area for houses costing $245,000
and waaaay back near the freeway, put all the low-rent apartments together in the crappiest area.

Why do I know all of this? I'm an architecture major.
Oh, and check out some websites:

http://www.cnu.org/ -> main New Urbanism website
www.newurbanism.org
http://www.sprawlwatch.org/
http://www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/
http://www.sprawlcity.org/

Interesting article/opinion:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2003/0202/cover.html

Anyways, this leads to more fundamental questions about the livability of a city. There are reasons "new urbanism" and "transit oriented developments" are becoming more popular and common in the US.
Primarily - pollution from cars, time wasted in cars, urban blight (shitty run down areas that everyone avoids), urban renewal, and an effort to create more "livable" communities. Ones with lower crime, more integration, less auto use, prettier places.

[rabidbolweevil 1]

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On 10/20/2003 2:18:11 AM Shoe wrote:

New Urbanism basically boils donw to this: Instead of having suburban sprawl, you have small neighborhoods with residential, schools, commercial, etc. So not everyone has to have a huge commute to work.----------------

I haven't heard of 'New Urbanism', but this is usually what I do anyways. My communities aren't too secluded, but they each have their own schools, clinics, and commercial areas. Some also have seperate small manufacturing or hi-tech zones.
The only problem with this is all the wierd stuff in SimCity's coding that forces residents to travel to the furthest possible job they can find instead of the one sitting on their front lawn. Still, in the city I'm currently working on (just less than 10,000 pop), the average commute time is about 32 minutes, even with mostly low-capacity streets running throught the communities.

[Ifubuildittheywillcome 0]

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On 10/21/2003 4:39:44 AM elerium wrote:

Here's another goofy example of restrictive trafficking:

Notice that's the query for the Evening commute. In actuality, in the mornings they all (200 or so) drove to work! So when their day ends, they park at the train station, ride to their part of town, and walk (much more than 5 tiles) home. Their cars magically are home the next morning. So SimCity isn't flawless in it's simulation.

I don't have a screenshot of it, but Sims are willing to walk even farther than this if it's heading home. When I replace the train stations with parking garages, they do the same thing, but walk that long road distance by the wind generators.

Because walking speeds are so slow, for both of these cases the actual commute time wasn't good at all (but still managable, something like 50-70 mintues instead of under 30 using normal roads), but it's interesting to play with.

----------------

I'd like to see the Morning commute here, I just have an idea that I'd like to see occor. The two options here:

-The Sims leave their cars in the Train Station Parking lot overnight to drive again when they get back.

-The sims regenerate cars every day which they take to work, but they can't take them home because of the one-way road, so they leave them in the Train Station parking lot where they are left to rust. The sims just ride home on the train and have new cars regenerated in the morning.

[Larsz 7]

I have started journaling my Seattle region. One of the areas I just highlighted was the city of Patrick and Patrick Point. I just started doing a little reading on New Urbanism so I wasn't familiar with the design before I created this. For those who are more knowledgable, does Patrick Point exemplify New Urbanism?

 

[EchoOfGecko 0]

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On 10/21/2003 2:55:43 AM Skippydam73 wrote:

Here out in the suburbs of Portland Oregon there is a project that is going to be actually similiar to what you have been talking about. Its about 1600 acres of land that will transformed into different housing and a little center for shopping. Its not going to be like a mall type in there but more of your retail services. There is another project out here called Orenco Station that has been nationally recognized for creating a similiar neighborhood. They have the retail services on the ground floor with people living above. Just to the outside of that they have the neighboorhood of houses all close together. The only bad thing thats happening here is you do not have a big lot, meaning a very small patch of lawn. But they do put in a nice size park in the middle. Its difficult for someone like me who grew up in the country and now moving to our second home on a 5000 sq ft lot. There are trade offs between the two. Its not for everyone though. The reason for this type of approach though is to conserve rich farmland and control city sprawl. Until we are able to zone for mixed buildings, its going to be somewhat difficult to simulate the real life version.

For any that are interested, here is the link for Orenco Station.

www.orencostation.com----------------

Cool, a fellow suburban Portlander! I actually live about 5 minutes from Orenco Station!

I applaud new urbanism, more as a tool to help strict urban growth bounries from turning home prices from going sky high. I would much rather keep our strict UGB and have pleasent, forested surrounding areas and greenspaces, than to see our city turn into another Los Angeles or [insert Texas city here].

[Meg 368]

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On 10/21/2003 12:24:02 PM mcwesty2000 wrote:Suburban sprawl happened in every city in the world as far as i know, to combat it in the UK greenbelts were set up around all of the largest settlements to try and discourage out-of-town development. By the 80s out-of-town shopping areas and malls were seriously discouraged as the centres of settlemnts suffered. This is why inner city redevelopment and gentrfication was introduced, and where mixed use higher density schemes originated from.

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In theory this makes sense but I don't understand how can everything fit inside of the old city centers without destroying some history in the process.

Take, for example, Alexandria, Virginia, which is across the river from Washington, DC.   "Olde Towne Alexandria", the old city center, still retains some colonial flavor.  You can walk down those streets and see that it used to be a colonial town.   There are high-rise buildings, and big box stores outside of the old town area, which certainly qualifies as sprawl.  In this area, the cities and towns all bleed into each other and you have to watch the street signs to know when you have left one city and moved into the next.

But to fit the needed residential and commercial development into the old town center would involve destroying the colonial feel.   There was no such thing as high density colonial.  Yeah, the buildings facades could be preserved but that isn't the same thing.

The basic problem is there are just more people than there used to be and all of that residential, commercial, and industrial development has to go somewhere.   That's why sprawl happens.   I'm not saying it's a healthy thing.  As a recent article said, sprawl is making us fat.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/958681.asp

 

[tri 3]

I live in a six-floor apartment building in Seattle built above commercial shops and offices. I love it. It's not like you should worry public has access to the building you live in. It'd be like being afraid to go to the grocery store. My apartment building itself is secure access; you have to let youself in using a fob (sort of like a key card at a hotel) which opens the door. There's a narrow spot between all the businesses where the apartment lobby is. I share a common building space with a coffee shop, a sandwich place, a haircutting business, and a Yoga centre. Many other spots in the neighbourhood do the same thing.

It's great. Very lovely conveniences. I walk two blocks to work every day, and I typically walk to pick up dinner. We rarely cook and live in a neighbourhood with about a dozen great ethnic restaurants within a one-block radius.

I try to incorporate commercial with residential in my SC4 cities, usually sticking commercial on two sides of a road, and have streets branching out from the roads with light residential on the streets, and make another commerce road every five or so blocks. I put MT stops (usually buses) in each commerce block, on each corner, which is every 6 to 8 tiles. Then I usually stick one MT stop for every two residential blocks. If commute traffic gets heavy (normally over 100 or 150 cars going through one area) I change it to a road and put MT stops on each block the road exists. When it's time to switch to middle or dense residential, I do the same. Switch streets to roads, and one MT stop each block.

Anyway.

I vote YES for urbanism.

[DuskTrooper 316]

OOH, New urbanism!  This is  possible in SC4, but with the BAT and plop capabilities, this will be far more possible. 

Anyway, has anyone heard of the mixed use concept?  An example of this is the placement of apartments above stores, and office buildings.  Is there a way to mod this in?

[mentarman 14]

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On 10/21/2003 9:17:32 PM SkiGeek wrote:

In theory this makes sense but I don't understand how can everything fit inside of the old city centers without destroying some history in the process.

Take, for example, Alexandria, Virginia, which is across the river from Washington, DC.   'Olde Towne Alexandria', the old city center, still retains some colonial flavor.  You can walk down those streets and see that it used to be a colonial town.   There are high-rise buildings, and big box stores outside of the old town area, which certainly qualifies as sprawl.  In this area, the cities and towns all bleed into each other and you have to watch the street signs to know when you have left one city and moved into the next.

But to fit the needed residential and commercial development into the old town center would involve destroying the colonial feel.   There was no such thing as high density colonial.  Yeah, the buildings facades could be preserved but that isn't the same thing.

The basic problem is there are just more people than there used to be and all of that residential, commercial, and industrial development has to go somewhere.   That's why sprawl happens.   I'm not saying it's a healthy thing.  As a recent article said, sprawl is making us fat.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/958681.asp

 

----------------

Well, I'm not familier with that part of Alexandria (though I lived in Arlington for a short time). But if the old part of town is buslting and happening, it sounds like it's doing fine. Smart, close in growth can grow around it.

But many, many cities have lots of empty lots and buildings. The town I live in at one point was the 4th largest city in the country. In the 1940s, there were 900,000 people here. A little bit of that was overcrowding. Today, there are 300,000 people in the city as people have fled for the suburbs. That means lots of places where rehabbing could be done to older buildings. There are also huge tracts of land where abandoned buildings have been destroyed. These are open to development, but instead the sprawl continues, but now they are building a few New Urbanism type suburban developments. It seems to me that if people want to live like that, there are lots of great neighborhoods in the city itself that could take them. They would get great architecture, historic buildings, etc in the deal.

It's not so much a problem of the number of people we have to house, but where they choose to live, and how things (including public policies biased toward suburban development) impact that choice.
IMHO, of course.

[elerium 0]

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On 10/21/2003 5:17:35 PM Ifubuildittheywillcome wrote:

I'd like to see the Morning commute here, I just have an idea that I'd like to see occor.  The two options here:

-The Sims leave their cars in the Train Station Parking lot overnight to drive again when they get back.

-The sims regenerate cars every day which they take to work, but they can't take them home because of the one-way road, so they leave them in the Train Station parking lot where they are left to rust.  The sims just ride home on the train and have new cars regenerated in the morning.

----------------

I don't have this city anymore to take screenshots of it, but I'm 100% sure it's the 2nd option. As ridiculous as it sounds, they drove from home every day but left their cars at the far away train station every night. Disposable cars... the next big thing? Heh.

[Norwegian Neko 12]

This is an interesting article related to New Urbanism about the housing crisis/price gouging in San Francisco you guys may be interested in reading:

SFGate.com

[Meg 368]

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On 10/21/2003 10:07:17 PM tri wrote:. . .  It's not like you should worry public has access to the building you live in.  It'd be like being afraid to go to the grocery store. . . .

----------------

Well, during the sniper shootings a lot of people *were* afraid to go to the grocery store.

However, the New Urbanism design of my local grocery store solved that problem for me.  I could drive out of the underground parking garage in my apartment building, drive into the underground parking garage at the grocery store, get the groceries, load them into the car, and get them home without ever having to go outside.

Somehow, I don't think that is quite what the designers had in mind but the store wasn't close enough to walk to.

At work, there was an underground parking garage too so, if I wanted to, I could go for days without ever going outside.  It was a rather icky way to live, I thought.

[Ken_Chang 0]

I may not live in the Biggest city in the World, but I do live in the 2nd fastest growing city in the US. Naples. Naples is located in SW Florida, Urban sprawl from the actual city of naples which only has 24k residents has swollen to create East Naples a city of 180k, North Naples, Marco Island, Immokalee, and Golden Gate, we've grown so much due to 'urban sprawl' that we've extended all the way up into the Bonita Springs area to the north giving our Metro area around 320k residents. Were still the 2nd fastest growing in the US. Neway, downtown is where downtown has always been, but all the 1950-1970 buildings have all been torn down and new modern upscale upper-class snobby shops have been built. Downtown is pretty large but there is no trace of pre 1990's feel in downtown, it's in essence, a rich people downtown. What people designate the Financial district used to be old naples, it's got medium rise banks and such were the old drive in theaters used to be.

What people call Downtown East Naples, which really doesn't exhist because East Naples truly isn't it's own city but is considered one, has the regular middle to upper-middle class stores, sprawled all over the main road through the city, but the city has 'sprawled from the coast where 10 to 40 story high rises line the sugar sand shoreline to the center of the county with the cities of Immokalee and Golden Gate, so i guess this is what urban sprawl is, out with the old and in with the new, and expansion, and that is exactly what happend here.

From the years 1960 to 2003 the Naples Metro Population has grown by 866%. Pretty imppressive when we started out as 5k in 1960 and now we have 320k in 2003....

Sorry if this is to long, i jsut wanted to say this stuff,

Ken Chang - Member of the Permanent High Council of New Manhattan in Sim City Central

[villagemayor 0]

Well the point of new urbanism isn't only land use (commercial on every street corner) and road networks (grid road pattern versus cul-de-sacs), but also the fact that new urbanism encourages pedestrianism, where people can walk to the corner store without being bombarded with fast moving vehicles. So driving from the apartment to the grocery store, even though parking is all underground, isn't exactly what new urbanism is about.

It isn't the fault of the resident for driving. It might have something to do with the fact that pedestrianism isn't encouraged enough to entice people to walk, rather than drive. IOW, the grocery store is more than a 5 minute walk!!

[a_b_s 0]

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On 10/20/2003 11:18:22 AM SkiGeek wrote:

I'm familiar with several neighborhoods around

Arlington

,

Virginia

that were designed to be part of the New Urbanism.

Most of them involve buildings that have stores on the first floor or two and apartments or condos on the upper floors with parking garages underneath.

----------------

WHAT?? New Urbanism? This concept is almost ancient! This style you describe has been done in, oh let's see....NEW YORK CITY for almost 100 years!!

[DuskTrooper 316]

Okay, remember the oddly named small town whose name everyone laughed at?  Sugarland, the city I live nearby?  Well, don't laugh at it because it is a well developed suburb with new urbanism centers popping up all over, and the growth is tremendous!  the pop doubled since 1990, and the pop is expected to be over 150,000 by 2020.  It is a new urbanist small town whose well planned master planned communities, particularly the massive First Colony was part of the Government's New Town act designed to eliminate the massive urban blight caused by the mass exodus to the suburbs during the post war era.  The Houston area is filled with these massive master planned communities due to the vast amounts of farmland there is.  Most of the newer ones, and some older ones, are enacting massive New urbanist theories in their development.

[yamaneko 2]

The town I live in near Chicago has a very small core of Cs$$ and Co$$ that's over 100 years old and is surrounded by a vast sprawl of R$$ and R$$$ subdivisions to the south and an old low-density IM/ID sprawl (complete with toxic spills!) to the north.

In the Chicago area, "New Urbanism" is often a synonym for "politically correct and horrifyingly expensive." Or, "Gold Coast prices in the cornfields." For example, Coffee Creek near Chesterton, IN that offers breathtakingly expensive lots just outside Chesterton itself, a pretty town where one can walk to restaurants or drive 10 minutes to the train station. One can also get duplexes (semidetached homes) with mortgage payments that compare with the rent in Coffee Creek's apartment complex.

I tend to design my cities with an elementary school and a selection of civic buildings in the center, the residential districts within school boundaries and parks scattered about. Neighborhoods are zoned commercial in corners not reached by the schools, and the buffer between R+C and I includes an avenue or expressway that serve as part of the border; they seem to discourage use of cross-streets as well.

The neighborhoods consist of 7x7 squares with 3x3 residential lots in each corner and a small park in the center. Some 3x3 areas are given over to large parks and others may be zoned commercial. This leaves a cross of eight undeveloped squares, four on roads and four bordering the central park. As demand and density rise, I place more little parks in the center and bus or subway stations along the road. While it may sound like I'm building Levittown, the cities wind up looking a bit like North York, Ontario.

The Sims seem to like it, and reality (at least in the Midwestern US) dictates that developers build what customers buy.

[Ifubuildittheywillcome 0]

Where I live, the landscape is always chainging from sprawl and New Urbanism, and vice versa.

In Stone Bank, a small rural (or at least once rural), things are changing fast. The town was started in 1833, and its population around that time was just the loggers and lumberjacks that worked for the mill on the Oconomowoc river. The population grew up to about 70-so aroun 1900. It then continued to grow until about 500 in 1990. Things started to change. A new school was built, and new subdivisons went up everywhere. The small 5 road town has changed to a part of the outskirts of greater Milwaukee. The town now has about 1500 people, and is expected to be corporated any time now. A new fire station, which by the looks of it creates the feeling that this town is turning in to a cul-de-sac ruled neighborhood where the only word used to describe subdivisons is "estates".

In a neighboring city called Oconomowoc, things are different. New Urbanism is now being attempted in the old farm owned by the famous beer family, Pabst Farms. Main roads are built where commercial shops (mainly strip malls, they are everywhere in Wisconsin, one LITERALLY every 350 yds. in medium sized cities), a school, and a YMCA are located/to be located. Roads come off of this avenue and come to small residential blocks. This neighborhood could completly support itself if it had to.

Me myself, I don't have any preference, but I do believe New Urbanism is much more asteticly pleasing.

[mcwesty2000 0]

In theory this makes sense but I don't understand how can everything fit inside of the old city centers without destroying some history in the process.

Take, for example, Alexandria, Virginia, which is across the river from Washington, DC. "Olde Towne Alexandria", the old city center, still retains some colonial flavor. You can walk down those streets and see that it used to be a colonial town. There are high-rise buildings, and big box stores outside of the old town area, which certainly qualifies as sprawl. In this area, the cities and towns all bleed into each other and you have to watch the street signs to know when you have left one city and moved into the next.

But to fit the needed residential and commercial development into the old town center would involve destroying the colonial feel. There was no such thing as high density colonial. Yeah, the buildings facades could be preserved but that isn't the same thing.

The basic problem is there are just more people than there used to be and all of that residential, commercial, and industrial development has to go somewhere. That's why sprawl happens. I'm not saying it's a healthy thing. As a recent article said, sprawl is making us fat.


Sorry but thats not true, Edinburgh has its medevil core, then its Georgian new Town, both added new buildings, alot of which are to look old and tie in well with the surroundings. The Site for re-development is re-using most of the existing buildings and renovating them, some of the uglier 60s blocks are to be demolished and newer more sensitive buildings put in place.

[Meg 368]

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On 10/28/2003 8:21:58 AM mcwesty2000 wrote: . . .

Sorry but thats not true, Edinburgh has its medevil core, then its Georgian new Town, both added new buildings, alot of which are to look old and tie in well with the surroundings. The Site for re-development is re-using most of the existing buildings and renovating them, some of the uglier 60s blocks are to be demolished and newer more sensitive buildings put in place.

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I think it's fair to say that, in general, America and Europe are taking different approaches to this issue.   Most of the European cities I've visited have done what you are saying and most east coast American cities have done what I was saying. 

When I visited London, for instance, I was very surprised to see how the newer buildings were designed to blend in with the older ones.   That is certainly not the case around Washington, DC.  I can "read" the suburbs around DC like rings on a tree.   The kind of houses, the building materials, and the street layouts all show when the neighborhood was built.  and I'm talking about which decade in my lifetime, not which century.

As the saying goes, one main difference between Americans and Brits is that Brits think 100 miles is a long way and Americans think 100 years is a long time.

[Larsz 7]

I never really thought a whole lot about real life city planning before SimCity 4. I have been reading up though! I like some of the concepts of New Urbanism or Smart Growth but I think it is misleading to tout the concept as the salvation of urban blight. As they say in The Matrix, it comes down to choice.

 

I recently moved into what would probably be classified as a New Urbanist community. It was the really the first planned community in the city I live in. New Urbanism certainly isn't new, this community was planned in the early 1900's. The community filled out over many decades so housing styles are very divergent. The house we purchased was one of the first to be built. It is a two story, very typical of the time period; front porch, little setback (10 feet from sidewalk), no driveway and narrow lot (52' x 120'). The streets are laid out in strict rectangular blocks with alleys in the backyards and wide enough to park in front along the street. All the schools are within 10 blocks. There is a lot of pedistrian traffic and lots of kids which was one of the reasons we purchased the house. My brother can't believe I like this neighborhood.

 

My brother lives in what I like to call "duplexville". Row upon row of duplexes. The only way I know which house is his, is that he is the only 1 on his block with a basketball hoop. The setback is probably 100', the driveway and garage are the predominant feature of the front yard. There are NO sidewalks. Schools are several miles away and there is no pedistrian traffic. There is mild congestion and a lot longer commute. My brother loves it, particularly, the fact that the interstate is only 1/4 mile away. I can't believe that my brother likes his neighborhood.

 

I would hate to see any group or developer come into our city and push a specific plan, any plan without taking into account our city. Our city dynamics are a lot different than a lot of cities, one size does not fit all. I don't like typical suburbia, my brother doesn't like traditional neighborhood. As long as there is variety, we can both be happy

 

As for what works in SimCity 4, I have successfully built suburban sleepy towns and traditional residential neighborhoods. Just like in real life, the issues are different. Combating long commute times in suburbs and combating noise and pollution in inner city neighborhoods. SimCity 4, in my opinion, does a pretty good job.

[mentarman 14]

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On 10/24/2003 2:41:07 PM a_b_s wrote:

WHAT??  New Urbanism?  This concept is almost ancient!  This style you describe has been done in, oh let's see....NEW YORK CITY for almost 100 years!!

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That's why it's New Urbanism. "Old Urbanism" would be what you're talking about in New York, and back in time for quite awhile. Then along came a period of stricter divisions of zones -- put commercial here, industry there, and residential way over here. Often this was sprawl.

Now some are realizing the downsides of that, and rediscovering the beneifts of urbanism. Their new ideas using these theories are called New Urbanism.

[tri 3]

For the nicer areas of my cities, I try to make most of each city block residential, then designate two or three tiles for 1x1 commercial. Within four or five blocks of each residential/commercial block is a block or two of high-tech industry. This way, the commute time stays very low (I've sustained 30min commute times in cities in upwards of 300,000 res. population). I could possibly make the commute times less, but that would mean mixing dirty industry with my residential, which is something I stay away from.

Then, of course, I designate a central location for a downtown core, if I'm building individual cities. For some reason, all of this also helps create heavy traffic in the downtown area, which promotes commercial growth, and creates skyscrapers.

Then, sprawl it.

[bboter 0]

NEW CITY CONCEPT

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=42027&sessionID=09F2ECD51FDF441795BAA565ABE230F3

[Shoe 2]

I have recently been reading up on New Urbanism, and I think it seems pretty cool. I am wondering if this would work well in Sim City, and I'm thinking it could help with commute times as well as other things. For those of you who know about the New Urbanism concepts, have you tried incorporating them into SC4?

New Urbanism basically boils donw to this: Instead of having suburban sprawl, you have small neighborhoods with residential, schools, commercial, etc. So not everyone has to have a huge commute to work. Of course some people would work outside of the neighborhood lets say 30% dont, that makes 30% less traffic because those people could walk to work. Also people could walk to restaurants, friends houses, movie theaters, etc and not have to make so many car trips a day.

Well the point of my post is to just get the idea tossed around between some other players who know about New Urbanism and see if it is a possiblity and could help with the cities in the game.