Still not getting Skyscrapers...

[twl221 0]

For some reason I still can't get Skyscrapers, nor am I able to place a 4x4 zone. My city has 750k+ and about 600k+ commercial jobs. Anyone have a reason why I can't get them? Also, my region has about 1.25mil. Any info is helpful, especially with the 4x4 zones.

[SC4BOY 21]

Your regional population really is barely acceptable... keep building and they will come

[thingfishs 417]

When you can't zone as you want to holding shift as you zone stops the game from automatically zoning for you. Also try holding control or alt for different options. As for the skyscrapers that's pretty odd for 750k, can't help there. 

[TekindusT 3,809]

@thingfishs: Holding the Ctrl key while zoning is only useful for making custom-sized lots. I use it when I make 4x4 lot.

About getting skyscrapers, with your regional population, try plopping some custom ones; sometimes they boost the commercial demand and provide jobs that would encourage the growth of your city and the building of more skyscrapers. If all this fails, you can try downloading the Super Demand Ordinance Mod and you'll see how they grow...

[Cobraroll 138]

Hmm... if 1.25 million is "hardly acceptable", at which point do the highrises start to pop up? It's been long since the residental skyscrapers started appearing in my city, but the tallest Commercial buildings I've gotten are far lower than the residental. In SC3K, the tallest commercial buildings you got were 1.5 times taller than the tallest residental, here it seems to be the other way round.

What do the tallest non-downloaded, non-landmark skyscrapers actually look like?

My region has a population of 1.4 million, by the way.

[e_ssen 0]

Originally posted by: twl221

For some reason I still can't get Skyscrapers, nor am I able to place a 4x4 zone. My city has 750k+ and about 600k+ commercial jobs. Anyone have a reason why I can't get them? Also, my region has about 1.25mil. Any info is helpful, especially with the 4x4 zones.quote>

Thats interesting as my city with just 240k population has skyscrapers (note no mod). It started appearing when the population hit 150k but not huge ones but then i did lot of high density commercial and residential.

[SC4BOY 21]

hmmm.. maybe my bad memory... sorry.. here is a link which shows the % chance of a stage (I think of stage 8 as being "skyscrapers" for Rushhour/Delux)

[Nuclear550 3]

Well my downtown is going fine. Are you sure you put down educational and other main public facilities. Did you also connect neighboring cities? My region has altogather 325,621 sims and I have a main rail. I also have an interstate highway connecting all the cities.

[BelgradeSim 9]

Well, I have a city with 570k and quite nice downtown skyscraper district!

The city has 3 neighbor cities and it's connected to two of them. Whole region has 630k residents for now.

As far as I know, many conditions influence development of highest level skyscrapers. First, you should expect them on a 3x4, 4x3 and 4x4 tiles (use ctrl button when zoning, like other said). Your city should be generally well developed, with good education, safety and other services. Ypu should now that some things releases 'caps' for commercial development. Caps mean that the demand will be increased. So, building a convention center or some other gift buildings will release some caps for the commercial development.

Also I know, neighbor connections are needed and they release caps as well the airport.

Hope you will make some nice skyline...

[Cobraroll 138]

My region has exceeded 3 million inhabitants now, spread across 20 cities or so, several of which have more than 300 000 inhabitants (the largest just hit 550 000). So far, I'm only playing on small and medium size tiles, but all cities border another.

Still, my largest building is the "Simon and Frank and co" (Norwegian name) skyscraper. I get several of these, but haven't got any proper highrises yet. (No commercial ones, at least) Education, health and public services are through the roof. People are employed. The demand for CS

[ironhub2 0]

Try building a neighboring city with road links.. my impression is that the cities 'feed' each other and one of the cities... probably the larger one.. will start growing taller buildings.  Hope this helps you. 

[Cobraroll 138]

^All my cities are connected (apart from one, where the neighbouring city simply vanished, together with the land it was on). Some cities are completely surrounded by others (up to six), with several connections per city.

Still, no luck.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Without any pictures it's hard to say anything, but a very common mistake is to zone far, far, far too many dense commercial areas. The result is that commercial demand is spread over zillions of square miles. The best strategy is to zone low and medium density until you notice that you get kinda big buildings on 2x4 zones (I don't know the English names of the buildings in question right now, and I'm not on my PC while posting, but I mean the biggest ones that can grow on medium density).

Then, when you think you're ready to go - and CO

[Cobraroll 138]

^That might do the trick. Almost all the commercial I have in the region is dense, which means I probably have to bulldoze a LOT (there are probably 1.5 million commercial jobs in the region so far), or just stay away from dense zoning at all for the last two thirds of the region.

Thanks for the help!

[reaper980 0]

It seems that other than commute times and traffic, the only other thing you might be missing out is that you have zoned too many commercial zones. Keep in mind that all zones prefer to develop laterally rather than vertically. Try removing about 20-50% of your CS$$$ and CO$$$ in strategic places and those commercial businesses will start crowding in the rest of your commercial zones. Also, don't foget that only CS$$$ and CO$$$ have skyscrapers. Hope this helps.

[Ilikeanrhw 4]

My city has 530,000 residents, but i had some problems with my commerce. When i clicked on the C-$$$ offices if it is desirable enough, half of the C-$$$ offices areas are suffering urban decay. (P.S, i am using the Plopmatic 9000) What can i do?

[Keder 116]

Try putting industrial in small tiled cities. They help boost demand in surrounding cities without polluting your other cities, so you save your medium and large tiles for your cities. I made a region of 4.35 million sims doing that .

[ShadeSigma 16]

Make sure you don't have much air pollution because they don't seem to like that. Place the zones on avenues because they seem to love those. And place a nice amount of plazas. You can do this in a clear neighbor city and I think it will be impossible for them not to show up. Just make sure you have a decent transit system that enters the heart of the zones or the traffic will be horrible.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

If you have an avenue as your main drag, consider having GLR down the median.