Air Pollution. Grr.

[Timbo9 0]

How do you guys deal with air pollution?

For me it seems to spread over more than half the damn map!

Any offices or retail or high-tech that are nearby shut down, and if you have residences there they complain and you get red messages saying "Pollution is killing your city"

To get around this, I would need heavy industry and manufacturing on one side of the map, and everything else on the other, with a huuuuuge gap with no buildings of at least a third of the map in between. Which would make the traffic situation ridiculous.

I already have a large empty gap between industry and everything else!

How to deal with pollution?

Any advice appreciated.

[Timbo9 0]

Hmmm..

Just checked another city of mine.

I wonder if my problem stems from the fact that a lot of my industry/manufacturing is up on hills, surrounding a valley where the rest of my city is?

Does the game code take elevation into account, enabling the pollution to spread much further than it would at ground level? 

[PLB82 0]

I don't know.  I was really surprised by the radius of air pollution as well.  I have a small ring of heavy/manufacturing industry and the entire NW quadrant of my city is polluted.

Does anyone know how much parks really help pollution?  I tried to surround the polluted areas with them, but it's hard with the parks having to be enclosed by roads.

[morriswalters 16]

Size matters.  The bigger the industry the more it pollutes.  Oil is really bad at this.  This all falls back to what this game is about.  It's about trading to build a city.  You are forced to make descisions about what matters to you.  Almost all maps have resources set in opposition to each other. Oil fields near agriculture, that type of thing.  Use the edge of the map wisely.  The trap here is cash flow.  If you create industry to generate cash flow, then you generate population which forces you to increase your industry to maintain your cash flow.

The only way to beat this is to pick some things that you can trade and do those things well.  Bonus buildings come into play as your population increases.  These will add efficiency to some of your industries.  Also maximize your use of the map.  You will evntually have to go tall.  Plan for that.  There is a reason why there are more high rises in the game than any other type of building.  These are general things and depending on your map they might change.  If you want adventure develop the Three Valleys map, very hard.

[Timbo9 0]

 Thanks for the replies guys.

Have found a solution I think.

Started a city which is divided up into islands separated by rivers and large expanses of water. I've located industry on islands away from the population. The heavier the industry the further away it is.

Distance doesn't seem to matter in how far your citizens will travel to work. Mine are travelling more than a third of the map to get to industry and traffic ain't too bad (yet).

Get green messages now saying "The Environment Quality is Perfect."

City planning really is key in this game eh.

[nickwjm 0]

did you ever discover if putting industry on hills makes a difference. Its just that for a long time I had pollution problems but i moved it to the far south, air pollution spread out from teh industries as you woudl expect. However, I have since started building on the highest point of the map and on checking my pollution again the ENTIRE map has the same pollution???

[Psycho_Teddy 25]

I've found the need to develop the town with the heavy industry and whatnot, then focus on a restructure of the town. I'm in the process of relocating jobs from heavy industry to high tech and offices. I'm hoping this strategy will work and eliminate a lot of the pollution I'm getting from big oil and industry. I'll report back with my results when it's complete.

[Androv 6]

I think citizens will travel anywhere on the map, but if there are major traffic problems they will complain about employment.

[nataklug 3]

Originally posted by: nickwjm

did you ever discover if putting industry on hills makes a difference. Its just that for a long time I had pollution problems but i moved it to the far south, air pollution spread out from teh industries as you woudl expect. However, I have since started building on the highest point of the map and on checking my pollution again the ENTIRE map has the same pollution???quote>

I have tried to put some industries in top of hills to see if polution is "more" effective but there is the same result... as big the industries grows (heavy and manufact from level 2~3) worse are polution results... it will consume all your city in some point.

Originally posted by: Psycho_Teddy

I've found the need to develop the town with the heavy industry and whatnot, then focus on a restructure of the town. I'm in the process of relocating jobs from heavy industry to high tech and offices. I'm hoping this strategy will work and eliminate a lot of the pollution I'm getting from big oil and industry. I'll report back with my results when it's complete.quote>

I have tried this too... no lucky. HT industries need manufactured gods and manufact need heavy industries... in solo mode this way is a dead end. Planet offer I don´t know.

Originally posted by: Androv

I think citizens will travel anywhere on the map, but if there are major traffic problems they will complain about employment.quote>

Yes, they will travel, but how can we solve traffic problems without mass transit system? It is impossible to move 70k people using a avenue or expressway for 160 cars...

[Androv 6]

How about.... *TWO* expressways

[Timbo9 0]

Originally posted by: Androv

I think citizens will travel anywhere on the map, but if there are major traffic problems they will complain about employment.quote>

Indeed this is the case. Because my citizens travel so far to get to industry and manufacturing, employment satisfaction is constantly high on the list of complaints, in orange and red.

I've build up my city to pop. 750,000, and kept my heavy industry and manufacturing well away from the citizens and offices etc as I described above, the 'Pollution is Killing Your City' messages came back quite a while ago.

Checking air pollution zones, the red zones are still NOWHERE NEAR any citizens or offices. Miles away. So why the message? Do you get the message simply for the fact that pollution exists somewhere? Bit crap if that's the case.

Or is this a bug - something that needs tweaking further, like the education problem.

Perhaps as your city grows toward the 500,000 mark, it is 'natural' to progress toward high-tech, and demolish manufacturing and industry, as suggested by a poster above?

Going to start a new city now. Think I might try the high-tech approach.

Interested to hear if anyone has tried this.

[morriswalters 16]

The first thing you should do is quit listening to the advisors.  Query your individual  businesses to find out how pollution is hurting them.  Everything can tolerate pollution to a degree.  The next thing don't use level three industry.  It's pollution spread is to large.

The next thing is satisfaction.  Keep it positive, preferably above 10 percent.  If your satisfaction goes to low people will leave.  Let your sims be a little unhappy, they will be better for it.  Satisfaction is a complex thing.  Keep unemployment down when not growing.  Use the park texture to fill in spaces when you can.  Keep the number of intersections on your main roads down.

Use highways, just don't use interchanges.  On long runs of expressways with no intersections replace the expressway with a section of highway using the city link pieces.

On last thing. Remember that the game is set up to force you to trade.  In SP mode you will never be able to build a city as big as PO cities.  And this is by design.  The only way that will change would be for Monte Cristo to allow a sandbox mod.

[Psycho_Teddy 25]

[side note]: I'm amused as to how everyone refers to them as "sims"

Anyways, this is designed to be a realistic game. That said, you're not going to plop parks down next to your manufacturing districts and see any sort of improvement, just as in real life. If you think about it, most cities don't justify the expense of public parks by saying that they're good for the environment (they do occasionally for good PR, but it's not the main premise), they justify it by saying that it's "city beautification" or "public recreation" or the like. It's not like SC4 where you could plop parks down and get more R$$$ to build. This is more realistic.

[yoyoboiler 0]

I also find that my farms are completely destroyed by what seems to be extremely minimal air pollution. I've kept every polluting thing as far away from them as possible, but my farms all seem to shut down almost immediately after I place them. The farms are in one corner of the map and my industry and oil is in the other corner. Even my city's residential part is removed from the farming area, but nothing seems to really help.

[nickwjm 0]

I am slowly reducing my polluting industries to to the time where it only effects a certain distance, and not just the entire map. It would be helpful if we could see in figures approx how much air pollution each type of industry produces. Does anyone have any ideas which industries are worse at this?

[morriswalters 16]

Oil is the worst, it spreads very far.  But here is a screen shot to put it in perspective.  Bigger is more polluting period.

In the top left hand corner are 75(more or less) level 1 industries.  On the right 16 level 3. There are 2 ring roads around the pollution. Between the first 2 farms coming from the center is a road marking level 2 heavy industry  The outer ring level 3.

[intristin 0]

morriswalters, what map is that?

[morriswalters 16]

The wetlands.  The screen shot is sideways, normally the small industries would be at the bottom.

[Megaplex104 0]

Air pollution is stopped by hills, I have two major level 3,2,1 industrial areas and nearby I have qualified and executive housing. I also have oil near them as well and my pollution is low.

My city is Lake Glordia (soulc) check it out and see how I built the polluting Industries on Pollux

[Androv 6]

Wow, those heavy industries are nasty Maybe I should just bulldoze them all (but... the money.....)

[Rutgar 0]

Another issue I've found with pollution that seems to be glitch, is that I had some manufacturing close to my Exec Houses, so I deleted all of the these manufactuers, and re-built them far away. The Air Pollution map still shows massive amounts where the manufacturing used to be. And this is after 10 to 15 cycles.

[8elhaj 0]

There are a lot of glitches that have to do with pollution. like for example i build manufacturing in one side of the map and farms on the orther but sometimes the farms complain that there is pollution. then after a while they stop complaining and then again they complain even if i didnt change anything in the city.

There are alot of glitches that have to do with pollution and education..

[Androv 6]

How about air/noise pollution from cars?

[jeremy12 0]

Originally posted by: Androv

How about air/noise pollution from cars?quote>

i have yet to see this, but my cities have yet to be over 150k people

[Leafdag 0]

I tried a map with just 2 factories and 2 manufacturing and 2 High tech and i was still getting Air Pollution messages. I am thinking maybe the Air Pollution is buggy and not being properly accounted. Other thing is why no Environmental control to stop pollution ,the park is just a Avatar meeting place.

[Rutgar 0]

Another gripe about Air Pollution; Why does the Ship Dock produce Air Pollution? They just move cargo. The don't 'produce' anything.

And yes, there doesn't seem to be any 'anti-pollution' controls in the game, other than not building stuff that pollutes. Which is not an option due to the way the economy in the game works.

[Urbangamer1 0]

My opinion in this matter is if they gave you a way of conquering pollution so it could be reduced enough to be able to develop offices & other industrisee that are affected by pollution then you could in theory build a completely self-sustaining city(apart from maybe agri & water supply depending on your map) This would make PO completely pointless as no-one would need to trade for anything apart from the aforementioned things.Therefore, I doubt they're will ever be anything to combat pollution & you will just have to like it or lump it....

Who knows though, this is just my opinion but I'm so un-impressed with this game & it's faults that I get frustrated just writing about it...lol...

Originally posted by: Androv

How about air/noise pollution from cars?quote>

Yes, you get pollution from busy roads. mainly noise though I think.

[zwr100 2]

I think it's clear that they want us to interact, and pollution is one way of pushing us into specialized cities.  Looking at the pullution radius reminds me of police/hospital/education coverage which you had to optimize in previous city builders (assuming you idn't cheat).  Aside from the glitches, you just have to choose carefully which makes an engaging game

IRL hills do affect pollution - it basically doesn't move up hill, and it can have a 'ring-around-the-tub' effect on hills surrounding a valley. I haven't really investigated the way it works in game.

[morriswalters 16]

I had written that oil polluted worse than anything else.  I'll let these two pictures speak.

Thats two level one oil fields and one level 2.

Thats 75 plus heavy industry and manufacturing at the top.

[Androv 6]

I can't see the radius on the first pic... is that because it has no radius and it just destroys your city?