Question about reducing pollution

[Blacksilvre 0]

Hello Everyone,

My population is going to the 300k now and I still have lots of high demands for all 3 zones.  I have divided my city into 2, the east side is mainly Residential, Hi Tech Industry and Commercial while the west side is all dirty, coal plants and manufacturing industries and in the middle is an airport.  My question is, the 2 sides are about to merge on the middle.  It would be a bit hard to merge them because of the tons of pollution the dirty and manufacturing makes because even though they are far away, they're still able to pollute alot of the space near them. 

My question is, before I go about destroying the airport in the middle and some commercial and hi-tech industry, is it going to be effective on stopping the pollution if I put tons of medium parks and tons of trees in the middle going straight from N to S? I figured about 12 tiles thick straight down the middle? I figured it would serve as a wall against the pollution and stop it from getting to the other side when they both get near each other? Plan would be only a highway or 2 and a couple avenues will be connecting the sides while the middle will be trees.  Will this be effective? or is the heavy pollution still going to affect the nearby zones?

Thank you in advance for all your help and time.

[Mazzman830 0]

I would download the PEG Artificial Tree or the Air Purification Plant from STEX and disperse them throughout your polluted areas. The pollution should disappear really quickly. If you don't want to do that, then placing a line of open grassy areas maybe 3 or 4 tiles thick and adding trees on them along with some parks and plazas nearby should do the trick.

[Jezus53 18]

Forget the parks. They are a cost that will not help. Simply build the wall of trees and you'll be fine. It is a common tactic in fighting pollution. In fact, if you put in small patches of trees in your industrial area it would help make pollution less damaging. But for your case, simply build the wall of trees, 12 tiles sounds good enough, and you'll be fine. A small warning though, if there is A LOT of pollution, i.e. giant red spot bigger than the 300+ year storm on Jupiter on your pollution map, then the pollution CAN go across the tree line since pollution goes up into the air over the trees. But the trees will dramatically reduce the amount that goes to your residential.

[Mazzman830 0]

If you hit shift+command+alt and then enter God Mode, you can make trees more easily and fill up any open spaces in your industrial areas. That helps me alot. And yea, Jezus is right. Only do the parks if you have a lot of cash to blow.

[Blacksilvre 0]

Thank you so much everyone. I'm currently getting near the 400k population mark and i still have high demand for all 3 zones. It's great to know. I'll just do the wall of trees then since I can just imagine how much it would cost to use parks and gardens and the monthly cost. I have to plant them early I believe because it takes time for them to grow right? I will try to make manufacturing to appear near the merge so that they won't have that real high red pollution. Thank you so much again everyone.

[BowynAerrow 0]

Use God mode trees - they do not cycle through birth, growth and death.

[SC4BOY 20]

The "growth time" doesn't matter. As I recall a seedling reduces pollution the same as a full grown tree. Also with a city of 400000 you should have money to practically throw away.. you should be making a lot of money each month. Anyways.. good luck on your pollution

[jmusacha 2]

In my experience, God mode trees are much less aesthetically pleasing than the regular (mayor mode) trees.  The god-mode trees seem to plop a lot of pines and scrubby-looking bushes and small trees.  With the mayor trees, you can fine-tune where the trees are planted, and can pick from oaks, maples, spruce, and palm.

[SC4BOY 20]

I'm speaking to the topic of reducing pollution. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and another issue.

[Blacksilvre 0]

Thanks! Yeah, I'm surprised, I'm currently earning 30k a month! T_T I currently have around 2.3 mil in reserves. Taxes are actually low, around 7-8% and at least most of the residential zones have high score on school and hospital and crime is low. Everything is adequate.

Speaking of residential zones, does having access to schools and hospital affect who lives there? I seem to be having problem meeting demand for low wealth and medium wealth residents. Or it doesn't matter? I figured if there's a good school and hospital access in an area, the sims living there would have good education and can work towards being high wealth than those who didn't have access to school and hospital?

Also, how come when i build lots for zones, most of the time, the no road sign would appear on one or all the lots even though, there's one in front where they're facing. Most of the time, the no road access sign would disappear after something is built there, but sometimes, it would never disappear and after a couple of months, the sign would be replaced with the no job sign with long commute and after a month or so, it would go abandoned due to long commute. The buildings nearby will have a short commute though when I query. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong? I make sure that when I build zones, they're facing a road or street..

[Jezus53 18]

Schools and hospitals greatly affect the surrounding area. Usually, if the area has a high score for both education and health then you will typical get R$$ and R$$$ since they love that type of stuff. But that is not the only think that is taken into consideration. Crime level, pollution, traffic, land value parks, and other stuff all goes into consideration. If so if you need a bunch of low income residents then by leaving out parks and whatnot will make it less desirable for the higher wealth sims and lower wealth sims will move in.

It just sounds like a problem with the game. It happens every now and then. Are you using any mods?

[SC4BOY 20]

The only real way to get high numbers of R$ is to tax high enough the R$$ and R$$$ to allow them to grow. R$$$ and $$ will displace R$ in almost any city. The reason for this is that the simulator tends to "average" the values out rather than control the the actual spot. If you don't keep tax pressure on $$ and $$$ they will take over leaving your city to not have adequate workers.

It's pretty handy if you have a region that is developed enough to allow high stage buildings to grow. This allows you to grow cities with R$ while taxing out $$ and $$$, then you make them historical. This is too much trouble though if you have to try to keep up with a lot of small houses. I have absolutely NO FEAR of going into a city that is already there, setting the taxes to block $$ and $$$, then develop whatever level you need. Then by "gating" the taxes you can allow thte $$ and $$$ to grow.. the problem is that if you haven't locked the $ with "make historical" then they will just develop over the $ lots.. sucks but that's about it.

After the region is developed to allow high stage lots, I go in, whack a batch of $$ and $$$, lock taxes, grow 50-200000 $ residents (be sure you give them good transport to where they need to work) set those buildings to historical (since they are high stages, they will have 4000 to 12000 or so residents per building so there aren't many to fool with. Then set the taxes back to where you want it.

You almost have to lock out R$$$ too while the $$ is growing.. because if you have nice land values and civics, the $$$ will WAY overgrow for the jobs you have and screw up your regional balance..

anyways.. that's the idea.. sorry for being wordy

[shnugi 0]

You could try raising the terrain in between the two zones to block polluted air from flowing towards your nicer areas. I usually zone my industry in valleys and build the residential areas on the hills with tree buffers and that combination usually works.

[magnet152 0]

Download the Artifical tree, i had same problem as you and it helped me loads by getting rid of all the polution (Y)