City of Dickson

[Jaybyrd05 3]

What started as an attempt to rebuild my hometown of Dickson in Tennessee took on a life of it's own..... now it's bigger than Nashville (state capital!!) haha.  I am not great at the story telling CJs so here are some pics of what I have so far...

[Stef42 0]

Quite amazing, I like the sub-urban area's

Your on the Wetlands right!? Creating huge cities is quite easy on this map...

[Damastius 5]

Cool man!

[jazyje 1]

Reminds me of Houston or Dallas -- cool city, very American.

[Jaybyrd05 3]

@Stef - yes I am using the Wetlands map. I don't like building on very hilly terrain in this game..... all the terracing gets aggravating. I actually have ASHeroo to thank for the suburbs; his pictures of Rooleyson gave me some ideas.

@everyone else - thanks for the comments! I'll post some more after I do some major filling in around the CBD.

[Jaybyrd05 3]

Here are some shots of the downtown I took earlier today..... almost to 1mil citizens right now.  Found out it can be kind of slow after a certain point.... lots of fun tho!!!

[Stef42 0]

Nice, could you tell us a bit more about the city itself? Population etc.

[Herdervriend 46]

This looks gigantic awesome, wanna see a huge load more pictures

[jazyje 1]

I like the progression of density - from high density in the CBD to mid + low.... Getting better and better ---- do you have any transit in the metro area?

[Jaybyrd05 3]

I have several bus routes that go around different parts of the inner city area - and then an express route that goes to the industrial zone (far corner of the map) and back. I believe I have 7 lines and overall only 34% efficiency. The number is skewed though due to a couple of bus routes through mixed mid/high wealth low density res zones that have a low number of riders. 2 of the routes are at 80+% and a couple of others around 40-50%. I am still trying to get the hang of the bus route planning tho.... it's kinda wonky sometimes. 

I have a single highway that goes from downtown (you can see the interchange in one of the earlier shots) to the industrial park.  It's pretty heavily used for now until I expand further in that direction and add more roads.  I am considering creating some highways using one-way roads, but I am not sure where I want to place them.  They could only go in the undeveloped parts right now anyways since I have built up everything else on the other side of downtown and I am not about to delete half the city!

@Stef - Off the top of my head I know I have right at 952,000 citizens. Roughly 21% is lower class, 45% is middle class, 30% is exec, and 4% is elite. Those numbers might be a little off but that's a rough estimate. When I get home from work I will grab some screenshots of different suburbs around town and do some transit overlays.

[jazyje 1]

Yeah, thanks --- I'd also appreciate an overhead map showing the whole city/region so we know where things are roughly located.... Do you have any expressways?

[Jaybyrd05 3]

I have several express ways the go from downtown to the exec/elite area and then some that go through the "ghetto" and on to the industrial zone and connect up with the highway. You can kind of see the exec/elite in pics #5 and #6 in my first post. The CBD is around the left side of the map, transitions to some lower buildings and then jumps back up to more high rises (all residential and a couple of office towers). If you have ever been to Atlanta, GA think of downtown vs the Buckhead area. I know I am going to have to add some more exclusive expressways (probably raised) to go from one side of the city to the other.... traffic is getting bad in some spots.

[Jaybyrd05 3]

Hope you're ready for an overload since I just went snapshot crazy around town..... here goes....

Here are some overview maps showing what the city looks with the layout...

And a traffic overlay...

This was one of my earlier "planned" suburbs.... no random sprawl here hah!

High tech near the suburbs...

And a view of the sprawl leading back to the high tech and planned areas...

Here are some shots of the high wealth areas of town and the Central Park they live nearby... The CBD is directly north of the park and the high wealth high rises are just west or of the CBD.

Some more suburban sprawl in "reclaimed" farmland and low wealth areas of town...

And finally a quick shot of City Hall in the old downtown area...

[jazyje 1]

Simply amazing - very realistic, although not as sprawly as typical American cities... I like that new park nearby CBD!!!

[Jaybyrd05 3]

I'm actually home from work today and have been tweaking the downtown quite a bit.... wish I had taken some before and after shots though *facepalm*. I have about another half or more of the map to cover and it will consist of low density residential.... for the real sprawl.

By the way - I have run into a little issue with the special unlocked buildings you can get under the office category. It did show ALL of the buildings (mostly locked though) like 40 Wall Street, Russ Building, etc etc that I could build once I unlocked them. However now they are all gone - but they reappear if I delete the Merchant's Guild building.....?? Also, I no longer show any of the research labs or the institutes.... is there a limit of how many of those buildings you can build? Am I missing something?

[johannesut 1]

great work jay! keep it up!

[Skimbo 304]

God work, I especially like thoose suburbs.

[johannesut 1]

yeah indeed.. the suburbs are so sweet

[jacqulina 162]

wow excellent work here my friend

[Jaybyrd05 3]

Thank you for the comments.... anxious to get home and upload several shots of some expansion I've done on the suburbs and also downtown again. I spent the past couple of days rearranging the roads and buildings in the CBD. It was too haphazard to me and needed to be cleaned up quite a bit. Thank you again and I'll post some more tonight!

[mentarman 14]

Hey, in the bottom right of that last picture, I feel like I haven't seen that parking lot before, is that part of a building or?

[Jaybyrd05 3]

No it is the parking lot of one one of the medium density office buildings I believe. I would have to check in-game to see which one it is exactly though.

[mentarman 14]

Hmm, OK, maybe I just haven't seen it from that angle or something.

Anyway, nice job on your city, I'll keep an eye on it and clearly I'm not the only one.

[Jaybyrd05 3]

I may need to start a journal to satisfy my OCD tendencies of keeping everything organized...... Anyways, here are some more shots of downtown after a couple of days of revamping and rearranging roads/buildings.... Also got a few city wide shots after some additions and the start of a new single-family home residential area! Hope you enjoy!

[babiez 0]

wow.....because of you i want to get this game

[patriotizzy 0]

This is amazing. I've never seen such a realistic American city come out of Cities XL ever. You get everything right from the suburbs, to the downtown area. Amazing! I'm gonna keep my eye on this.

[Roger51 381]

This is great work, the are look great!!

[jazyje 1]

I love that shot with the lake and old church.... By the way, how did you make that neat-looking walking path around the trail?

[Jaybyrd05 3]

Thanks for the compliments all!! Really appreciated

@Jazyje - The walking paths were made using simple roads/small farm roads and just laying them out in a random pattern. I use the forest plaza tiles in the open space and then delete the roads a section at a time and use another plaza type for the paths. I'm using the New Plazas Mod from CitiesXS. Excellent mod with lots of cool plazas!

[Jaybyrd05 3]

Ok so I am going to have to add some highways in somehow and ease up the traffic situations...... It's going to require a LOT of restructuring wherever I decide to put one in.... The biggest need is to have a limited access connection so it's a straight shot from my low wealth housing to the industrial areas in the far corner of the map. I have a couple of ideas and traced them out here.

* The blue line would extend an existing high capacity road and take it through some of the low density suburbs. It's made using two 1-way roads side by side. I would do low bridges through the area to keep it above the current road system. Zones in the path are mostly all low density residential.

* The maroon line would connect an expressway near the CBD to a dual one-way "highway" near the low wealth residential. It would wrap around downtown and then have a stem going off to the north. This option would also allow traffic from two area of town to merge into one. Zones in this path are a mix of offices and medium density residential.

Which do you all think? Or can you see something better maybe? I can easily redo parts of town if needed so no need to avoid everything.