Tips and Tricks on your Initial Road Grid

[SimBurger 0]

So I heard someone recently say that the biggest planning phase when you start a new city is before you lay your first road.  I would like those of you with huge cities that look amazingly well structured - how do you lay your road grid?  

What techniques do you use to ensure that when your city has grown, you aren't bulldozing every single road, along with buildings and zoned areas, just to fit in a highway?  

Some of the largest cities I've looked at on here have an amazingly structured, beautiful, symmetrical grid of expressways, lined with "Simple roads".  It looks seamless in some of them - especially your city - DarkWater or whatever your username is.  I think his city name is SEIKO or something.  Its incredible looking.  You should all see it.

But what do you start with, so that you aren't spending hours bulldozing existing roads and buildings and zoned areas later on?  There must be a trick, or a technique that allows for seamless growth and simple expansion of roads.  The largest cities I've seen seem to have Expressways intermingled with zoned areas. 

Some even use an amazing trick of putting one square Residential next to one square Business - to reduce commute time and improve traffic.  I have always zoned residential in separate quadrants. 

Any help, tips, tricks, or rules would be appreciated.

SB

[commanderkai 38]

I call it "Expert Mode". I haven't tried highways, but I have a grid like system of small and large avenues that form neighborhoods. I'm going to adjust it for high density structures, but even then, they can fit within the grid I create.

[SimBurger 0]

What's different about expert mode, as it pertains to roads?

[jeremy12 0]

it unlocks all buildings from the start, so what he is saying is he starts with the roads he wants

[jeremy12 0]

for an quick example just leave plenty of room take this page for starters https://www.simtropolis.com/cityjournals/index.cfm?p=view&id=1010&page=3 also skip to page 5 for the large interchange made of ave's, this is where i plan a Highway cloverleaf, with the introduction of a highway i will have more then enough room to placing them, then put supporting roads around it

[SimBurger 0]

Question - you wrote this on that page:

"The city console has already approved a 6 million dollars to go towards adding a addition 4 lanes to Highway 55 "

Is that just you pretending, or is there some actual budget approval process that I am not seeing in the game?

SB

[mentarman 14]

Why plan that well? A real city is a work in progress, with the infrastructure of the past not anticipating the needs of the present, and the present not anticipating those of the future. I think doing without planning for the future more than a minimal amount adds to the realism and challenge. But that's just me, and I guess off-topic of the actual question if you want to be strict about it.

[EAGCE 2]

Expert mode feels like cheating to me. =/

I like bulldozing everything to fit in new stuff.

[Sainty 0]

Originally posted by: EAGCE

Expert mode feels like cheating to me. =/

I like bulldozing everything to fit in new stuff.

quote>

Exactly!

And old town centers makes perfect spot for a new BP too!

[SimBurger 0]

AGREED that expert mode feels like cheating. I think it is. No city starts with skyscrapers. It grows from tiny little caveman huts

I dont know guys. I have seen some pretty beautiful cities and they were definitely planned out.

When I have tried to "Wing It" ... I always ended up with a complete disaster of a city. Maybe i just suck at it, but mine end up looking like a crinkled piece of wadded up dirty paper.

Some of these other cities I see look like artwork. That has to be planning.

SB

[El_Presidente 0]

I like to go with minimal planning ahead. Results in much more natural and organic looking cities.

This is rather easy when dealing with small towns and cities, but obviously gets more and more difficult the higher your population becomes. I don't really know about cities beyond the 100,000 mark (i don't get much time to play, and am a fan of smaller cities).

For example, my latest creation, Crastmuth. In the first screen, you can see the town from above. Already you can see the lack of a conventional grid layout. This was all developed with very little planning and purely for the needs of the time and near future, alot like real life. When i started the map, i built a small avenue through from one side to the other, which you can see going along the lake front and through the centre of town. As it got bigger, i built the ring road in anticipation of more people wanting to get to their jobs, which at the time was the farming industry, the largest source of jobs in town.

As the city marched South, another avenue linking off from the ring road was created to cope with the traffic. Eventually traffic got too crippling from the Southern Suburbs, so the Bay Bridge was built, necessitating the demolition of some houses. As heavy industry developed further in the North-East, two avenues were built to link it up to the ring road, one going one way and one the opposite. As strain reached catastrophic proportions on the ring road, a cross town tunnel was built, requiring the destruction of more houses. This still wasn't enough, so the large bridge structure you can see was built, with one of the original avenues demolished and rebuilt so it could run in between them. However, alteration of traffic flow to allow for more efficiency has resulted in the cross town tunnel becoming useless, and i'm undecided as to whether it should be rebuilt or completely demolished.

In the second screenshot, you can see where the heavy traffic flow is and get a clear picture of the city layout. In the third, a nice scenic picture of an organic city.

Beyond 100,000 population though, i imagine things are going to have to start to change a bit. But that's all part of the fun!

[zwr100 2]

Can you use expert mode online?  I haven't even looked at that option - where is it?  It seems like expert mode should be renamed easy mode?


Regarding road layout: I found that if I use the 8 direction tool and lay one road, I can build off that road with great consistency!  I find the square grid tool neccessary for a CBD.  The tool can be difficult to "match-up" perfectly so I end up with squished rectangles that can't hold the 6 zones I want.  So the 8 direction road tool makes it work for me!  I can do nothing better than quess how much room I'll want for road expansion :/ I have no solution to bulldozing when you want to upgrade

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Expert mode is generally for experts. It is recommended that players make at least 60K per time cycle before they turn it on. That means that they already unlocked 1/2 of everything anyways. If you play 1 city through without expert mode, then do another after you make 60k a tick, then you should have the experience to start with expert mode.

[PLB82 0]

I use a city "block" as my measuring unit.  A 3 x 3 block of low or med density will take up the same space as 2 x 2 high density, so I think it's the optimal unit, as you can start with a 3 x 3 donut with a park in the middle and bulldoze later and fit a 2 x 2 high density later.

My first city I made most of my grids with simple streets, with the occaisional expressway running through.  This time I've done a little differently.  I never put two simple streets beside one another.  I use a large expressway - simple street - small avenue - simple street - large expressway and then repeat.  It ensures citizens never have to go more than a block either way to get to at least a small avenue if not a full expressway.

I'll try to get a screenshot when I get home (posting at work!)

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I use blocks of 3x6 low/medium-density blocks with parks in the middle that I upgrade to 2x4 high-density blocks. I try to continue with the roads that go up through the farms to be the parallel. This means that all my farms are 12 units (240 meters) wide with the length being whatever is needed to make a 100% size farm. I then destroy the first farm and make another country road that runs perpendicular to the first roads. I have a picture for one of my only instances (it is from the demo because I will not install CitiesXL until I upgrade).

[vonhaubitz 5]

Originally posted by: El_Presidente

I like to go with minimal planning ahead. Results in much more natural and organic looking cities.

Beyond 100,000 population though, i imagine things are going to have to start to change a bit. But that's all part of the fun!

quote>

I actually started in the same map (my city is called Amrava), but I did a huge mistake in the beginning: I placed the industrial area much to close to the agricultural area, so, I am not producing as much as possible. Therefore, I grew the city to over 650.000 inhabitants and opened a big CBD in the north, to sell office production. And now I am carefully moving the industrial area away from my agriculture. It's quite a project :-) Especially as air pollution is hard to control when you have a significant amount of industry. There are even some suburbs where the residents are heavily affected by the pollution. So, I have to complete some projects in that respect.

And to answer to the thread title: yes I had a plan - but poorly excercised in some respect:

- agriculture was given by the defined areas

- the old city centre is west of the farming land and ends at the lakeside.

- I placed the elites along the lakeside

- I create shopping areas in every city quarter (to serve approx. 100.000 inhabitants)

- I boosted the office areas to be able to sell overproduction and try to place them in every city quarter

- I placed the high tech industry far off the other industrial area near the lake side and near the houses of the elites

- I try to create bigger roads as transit routes and connect those transit routes with other big roads.

But if you take a look at Amrava, the traffic problem is serious. Well there need to be some mass transit, definitely

[UrbanLegend 63]

One trick I do is to use dirt roads to mark out future highway right-o-ways.

[SimBurger 0]

I guess I just assumed with some of these cities that they just HAD to have sat down with a canvas and draftsman tools to have an end result as awesomely structured as they have. THe roads on some of these cities are just downright ARTWORK.

Take a look at DarkPrince and his city Siekielo or whatever. You might have to just search DarkPrince then find the one resembling that name. That city's road structure is downright sexy...

-SB-

[Livin in Sim 83]

[rsseck 0]

your totally right, i used to plan out sytems and they always get grid locked eventually lol......personally i love going through and taking out the old and maticulously reworking the new lol......

although I hate terring down skyscrapers though especially when poor people move in lol...... 

I have this one area in my city, which is mostly streets with a side road that runs along the medium air port. Of course I didn't relize that every single street apparenlt empties inti this road lol, and I refuse to put in an avene lol so much or that side of the city would be destoryed lol. what i think i'll do is tear out the air port and move it over a row or two.....

then the only problem will be getting rid of the landfills!! no matter what i do they wont go away!

[Cob92 360]

I lay out a grid that leaves space for road widening and density increases later on. Main roads are given extra space to allow expressways to be laid if necessary, and all blocks in the city center have enough space for a minimum of four high density buildings of any type. Outer areas typically are not designed for high density development (I build for semi-realism, not population). For highways, I've developed a system of a highway that goes around the periphery of the city with spurs that go underground to the city center, bypassing surface traffic and leaving most neighborhoods untouched.

[zwr100 2]

How I do it:
I play on expert.  I start with high density using the rectangular grid tool (3x2 buildings per block).  I make a 4 quadrant residential area, (about 6x9 blocks in each quadrant) intersected by parallel expressways.  Services are clumped in the middle and elites are nearest services (but away from major roads) while unqualified are farthest.  Between the residential area and water I place other skyscrapers (especially high density offices).  On the other sides of the residential area I break into mid density and later low density, and follow the topography to make it look more organic.  I also take advantage of water and holidays and allow them to break the grid.  I sometimes include farms far from the skyscrapers and try to create a smooth transition.

 

CBDs are typically very square and grid like.  Look at any major city and you will find extensive grids.

IRL Cities get started somewhat similar to cities we create in cxl (without expert mode), but the original settlement and town hall are replaced with larger buildings over time.  The original settlement often becomes the CBD... or the CBD grows nearby and consumes the original settlement, except those areas designated 'historic.' 

You can't really do this in CXL.  The high density zones are bigger than the low density zones so you end up with extensive bulldozing and/or wasted space.  Neither is common in real cities.  Therefore, I believe it's best to plan extensively and use expert to 'cheat' and end up with realistic looking cities.

Disclosure:
I don't necessarily start with high density.  Sometimes I start with low density and farms far from where I actually plan to build the CBD just to get the city established.  Then I'll build the 'main' city almost as a separate city.

[Cob92 360]

Originally posted by: zwr100

IRL Cities get started somewhat similar to cities we create in cxl (without expert mode), but the original settlement and town hall are replaced with larger buildings over time.  The original settlement often becomes the CBD... or the CBD grows nearby and consumes the original settlement, except those areas designated 'historic.' 

You can't really do this in CXL.  The high density zones are bigger than the low density zones so you end up with extensive bulldozing and/or wasted space.  Neither is common in real cities.  Therefore, I believe it's best to plan extensively and use expert to 'cheat' and end up with realistic looking cities.

quote>

You can do it in CXL, but you have to make sure to leave open spaces when you are building the initial settlement. Houses should be spread out, blocks should have at least 3 low density lots on each side, there should be swaths of grass inbetween buildings.

[zwr100 2]

Originally posted by: Cobhris96

Originally posted by: zwr100

IRL Cities get started somewhat similar to cities we create in cxl (without expert mode), but the original settlement and town hall are replaced with larger buildings over time.  The original settlement often becomes the CBD... or the CBD grows nearby and consumes the original settlement, except those areas designated 'historic.' 

 

You can't really do this in CXL.  The high density zones are bigger than the low density zones so you end up with extensive bulldozing and/or wasted space.  Neither is common in real cities.  Therefore, I believe it's best to plan extensively and use expert to 'cheat' and end up with realistic looking cities.

quote>

You can do it in CXL, but you have to make sure to leave open spaces when you are building the initial settlement. Houses should be spread out, blocks should have at least 3 low density lots on each side, there should be swaths of grass inbetween buildings.quote>

I've actually been laying out my downtown area with the high density zoning tool, then deleting the high density zones and replacing them with low or medium density. Later I can delete the low/medium density and my grid will be tight when it is time to go all high density