Recreating Detroit

[nikpabel 0]

Hello,

I wondered why everyone wanted to recreate New York City, one of the reasons was it's road grid. What I wanted to make was Detroit, but Simcity 4 has three limitations:

Freeways

Even with the NAM/RHW many problems exist! Most sections of freeways are sunken and there are interchanges between each other that are completely impossible to recreate or even make something similar. And how can you make the Fisher rise up and meet Gratiot Avenue before the Dequindre Cut?

One ways and diagonals

Detroit's downtown has a lot of one way roads! Some side streets in the residential parts of the city are one way too! It shouldn't be a problem if streets also had one way counterparts in the game. I am using the game's one way streets but here comes another problem: Diagonal streets! Most downtown streets are on a varied degree. At Temple Street Cass Avenue and Clifford Street part ways in a Times Square-style split! Now I know how to make the roads snake and they would look diagonal on the map but very unrealistic in the game.

In the suburbs

The road grid is diagonal in the city but is true-to-grid in the suburbs. How to make that happen?

Some people have attemped this city I'm sure and just wondering did any of the above limit your designs or stop it all together?

I'm still going to press on with my Detroit recreation with all three above problems. How do I correct them all?

[Rionescu 14]

That seems like quite the challenge, and makes me realize that Toronto is quite easy to recreate, since most of the city is a grid that my downloaded region is aligned to.

[astronelson 339]

I know you can make diagonal streets (45 degrees) with the NAM, but the zones won't be perpendicular to them.

[Meg 368]

Have you met the people working on the Barry Sanders Project?

[RagingTBag 0]

What you wrote about the suburbs being true to grid and downtown being diagonal is exactly the same problem as doing Los Angeles. Downtown is a diagonal grid, so it's hard to make it match the surrounding straight Nth-Sth & West-East grid properly, and looks weird because you can't place buildings & zone diagonally. Melbourne is the same. The majority of the suburbs, particularly inner, are an up & down grid but the CBD, while a perfect grid in itself, is diagonal compared to the rest of the city.

You can get some great Detroit buildings on here though from the Barry Sanders Project uploads as mentioned above, and also you should check out the MP series of uploads - low wealth lots of boarded up, abandoned & graffitied lots to realistically capture the feel of Detroit

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

Aren't we all in a way? This IS a fansite for a city building game(s). Still, don't see how that is relevant to the topic.

---

You are right about the road layout, we simply don't have enough odd angle (FARR or diagonal) buildings to fill up those spaces even if we did manage to get the network to have some resemblance (which seems difficult, but doable).

That is one of the reasons a great many Detroit's buildings will probably never be recreated, the footprints of the buildings are really bizarre and thus do not translate into the game very well.

[Francis90b 748]

Well, i second what SimHoTToDDy said regarding the "filling" of a Detroit-like road grid. On the STEX there are very few diagonal buildings, and none of them is from detroit or can be used in a re-creation of it. Also, i don't remember that BSP team members (people who re-create detroit buildings for the game) do currently have any diagonal building on their list. On the other hand, JBSimio is working on some FAR buildings on Simcity4devotion. They're not detroit buildings, but they could be used as old, prewar buildings to be placed on diagonal streets, once they're done and made available. NAM team is working on releasing some more FAR pieces, but i don't know wheter they can be used on your project. I believe that a detroit re-creation is completely unfeasible right now, and it could be possible in the future only on the price of sacrifying many aspects of the recreation itself.

[iowndiscti 141]

that is quite a challenge. but thats not your largest problem. your largest problem will be the ambassador bridge. the ambassador bridge is an avenue bridge and although they have a bridge that looks exactly like it in game ( the long suspension bridge, its built the same way and is almost the same color) how are you gonna get those extra freeway lanes to come up to the surface in time to meet the ambassador bridge?

side note: how are you even gonna add the express lanes to i-75? or find a people mover that looks like the one downtown.

another side note ( the jefferson - 375 entrance/exit should be fun to make for you :-P

[USA_Pride 49]

I too tried to recreate Detroit. I had to settle for Warren and Center Line. I just simply don't have the SC4 skills.

I have been able to recreate the People Mover, it's a small monorail that goes in a useless circle that nobody uses. Not too hard to recreate!

(grew up in Clawson, live in Warren now)

[naftixe 131]

I am still working on San Francisco, here is the link https://www.simtropolis.com/cityjournals/?p=toc&id=888 Take a look and feel free to to PM me with any questions

[Simaddict1000 1]

soon it will be possible https://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=6920.0

[mike32178 0]

I'm working on the same thing and it's quite a challenge.  I have my region  aligned to the river like downtown.

[EyeofMobius 27]

I drove through Detroit this spring and agree that the work is cut out for you.

Since the Ambassador bridge is a border crossing you could make a BAT for it that is a transit enabled border control area that you can connect an avenue to for the bridge. Might be a simpler work around and something that maybe the community would be interested in to ad another simulation element; just saying.

The sunken freeways and the myriad maze of ons and offs will be your biggest battle by deciding where to sacrifice realism of network for realism of scale. On the bright side you will probably learn all the tricks of the NAM.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

One guesses that your Detroit will spread over multiple tiles.  Good luck.  If you are going to do the Ambassador Bridge, does that mean you have a stub of some kind for Windsor?  If so, don't forget the tunnel as well.  And do remember that Windsor is south of Detroit.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

Regarding Melbourne, even if you lotted all the buildings yourself, youd run into another problem. TRAMS.

There are currently no diagonal trams. Some cities are easily recreatable, others are near impossible.

[Dannibee 138]

Well at least it's mainly grid-ish, I am having not that much luck in my recreation. I suggest you get the road network right first before you start doing any buildings. Also, if you want a sense of scale use the 'terrainquery' cheat which will tell you how many metres and the height.

[alex48111 9]

I only try to recreate the downtown grid