Realistic and Beautiful Cities?

[Rionescu 14]

Hi there,

I'm curious how you guys make your cities look so beautiful. In particular I like the look of Haljackey's Greater Terran Region.

I think my biggest problem is that I don't leave empty space within zones. My latest city had this accounted for when I initially built the highway system and zoned, but it doesn't seem to have helped.

If you guys can tell me what I'm doing wrong, I'd really appreciate it.

[sneakeypete 16]

The two major problems that i can see here is grid and flatness. Having, what i guess you could say, the "challange" of building a city where there are hills, rivers, lakes etc. to force you to build around makes for a visually more interesting city, in my opion. Aswell as that, just laying things out in grid is very... gridish. Perhaps try to break it up by putting in a few large parks or something of the sort, to break the lines up.

[Aspire 3]

I completely agree with sneakeypete. i like the HW intersections though 

What you should do, (for your next city) is ass some rivers, trees, put a little sway to the landscape to add more beauty (hills are everywhere exept if youre doing a plane type city on a mountain), use your Erosion tool, to make the rivers, mountains, and cliffs look more realistic, then when building the city, try to make repetitive towers go away to a minnimum of 2 or 4 per downtown (i think), add at least 1 to 5 highway bridges (not to close toeach other (and if needed, always keep 2 bridges next to each other by one block space.)

Its all about the challenge!! after that, or along the way, take pictures, and upload them to the Site for everyone to have that great AWing moment that you want everybodt to have. including you.

PS:: Add some trees and animals

If all cities in Simtropolis were like this, then city journals would get boring. (Be Artistic with it!)

i know you are a good painter, and your canvas is SC4.

(im going to use that as this month's Signature! It sounds so Great!)

[Fee_Nicks 7]

I feel that realism and beauty come with both the landscape and the methods of designing a city.

There are very few places on Earth which are perfectly flat; certainly none that would entice people to build a city upon it, as cities are usually founded and grow due to factors such as trade and transportation. The biggest cities are usually on rivers or on bays protected to some degree, as this facilitates trade to a fantastic extent.

If you still wish to stick with flat ground, it'd be a good idea to mix up your design of the city. Very few cities are all high-density; most have a token few commerical skyscrapers and a few apartment towers, but the majority of the population of even dense cities are located in medium-density apartments and buildings, or out in the suburbs. And although a grid may be efficient and actually be a fairly realistic method of city planning, it leads itself to repetitiveness and in general is frowned upon; along with the usage of varied terrain, mix it up a bit; make your roads non-straight and vary the grid sizes and shapes.

Hope this helps you, and if it's just repeating what's been said above... it's another way of saying it.

[N106 10]

The skyline is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too big. There is a lack of meduim density zones. For a skyline that big, I'd say there needs to be at least 10 million people in nearby sprawling suburbs. Plus, what other people said, too.

And there's too much repetitiveness.

[Raysfan16 5]

The best way to make cities realistic is to look at actual cities on Google Maps or Bing Maps, or something like that. What better place to get realism ideas than in real life ones? Same for beautiful cities-look at beautiful ones.

Also, think of what made the city develop. If it's by water, have a port nearby. If it's landlocked, have lots of railroads and railyards.

[Rionescu 14]

Thanks for your help guys. The problem I have is that my Simcity 4 will crash whenever I try to import a region, so I did it on a blank region, though I might to it on one of the pre-loaded regions to mix it up. If I can find someone to upload the regions after they've been imported into SimCity, I could probably just paste it into the regions folder, but that's too much to ask of anyone, unless someone volunteers. All I would ask is that the custom regions they have are uploaded somewhere so I can download them. I wouldn't ask for any specific regions. (or at least not often )

BTW, does anyone know how to limit the number of buildings showing up over and over again, because I find it annoying as well.

[Aspire 3]

I'll Volunteer

Also.. there is no known way of limiting buildings, What i just do is destroy them when they are up or constructing.

[Z77 3]

-puts in two cents- Time. It takes a considerable amount of time to create a realistic region. Which is something i have trouble personally. I get impatient and decide to grid it out too much and not put in those fine details. (another reason i TRIED to start 2 CJ's but kinda quit..I liked making the regions more than i liked taking pictures of them ) But i have seen regions that took people so long to make that they might of spent 2 hours on 2 buildings and the surrounding park areas. So yes, Time is one of the most important keys in a successful realistic region

[froelich131 13]

Well heres a tip for highways. Always zone atleast 3 tiles away from where the highway is. That way the large amounts of traffic noise doesnt bother residents. And maybe add in a few walls, and interesting features.

~Joey

P.S. You could also check out some great CJ's like rockwell region (my cj) GTR (haljackeys cj) Parkland adventures 4.0 (newyorkrunaway1's cj) and browse the site.

[scifanata 1]

Okay, I gotta agree with a less-grid like city and having a WAY too big skyline: that's kind of everyone's direction, once they get high-rises they want the maximum possible. Don't. Go for the best skyscrapers but only keep the few best *Aspire said demolish the duplicates.

Also, I'm not seeing too many civic buildings, i see a high school and Colt Tower, but that's it: no plazas/parks, landmarks, etc.

It's okay to have a flat city, but most cities do have water nearby.

Try to have districts and mixed zone regions: district ex: shopping district, university district, midtowns. Add in scattered low-density houses, commercial and some medium density industry and promote the other wealths (not just rich) to give the city a more raw feel.

Too many dead-ends.

Hope I didn't come down too hard. Good luck!

[Wheezy 23]

Ironically, Greater Terran Region, while impressive, looks nothing like any real life city.

If you're going to built a realistic looking city, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THAT YOU DOWNLOAD A LOT OF REFERENCE PHOTOS.

Also, as was mentioned earlier, many people tend to portray cities as skyscraper forests.  This is far from true. 

Most major cities are just miles of small houses, same-y wall-to-wall apartment buildings and midrises, with a relative few skyscrapers, which are usually clustered in the downtown area.

Tokyo

New York

BTW: These photos are both amazing and I recommend you save them to your hard drive as references.

Also, from looking at the above pictures, you'll notice that both cities are also built on board-flat ground, so there's nothing wrong with building on a flat map, but make sure to include some water.

Most of my cities were built on flat maps, but I was able to make them look more interesting by looking at aerial photos and basing my layouts on those. 

(My cities are 50% plopped, though, so that may not work for mainly-grown cities.)

BTW:  Holy crap, it will be a LONG time before I post anything this long and well-researched on any forum again.  Finding the pictures and typing this took me almost an hour.)

[Rionescu 14]

Thanks guys, I think I get it now. I've started a more natural region on the Eaton map, where a few small settlements will eventually grow and combine into a big sprawled-out city.

[edmonton_stinks 5]

I would check out the Natural Growth CJ for inspiration. If that's not realism, I don't know what is.

[Rionescu 14]

That CJ is exactly what I'm trying to emulate, though it's probably going to look completely wrong, but only time will tell.

[DCMetro34 577]

Wow, all those pics are great! I would love to see that twice. I wish you luck!