Welcome to Rockland.

[YannickSHE 0]

Hello everyone!

Welcome to Rockland. A city I've been working on lately and I decided to show you what the city looks like, as a tourist perspective. I found myself walking around the city and climbing on the top of the skyscrapers to show you how beautiful Rockland is.

There's major development plans for future expansion of the city, but as we speak, it's a medium-size community with 250,000 inh, with a nice downtown skyline.

Let's start the tour! Enjoy!

More to come soon!

[johannesut 1]

I like your city... But with this particular city planning, i predict some increased traffic problems ...

[Jaybyrd05 3]

Wow very nice Yannick! I really like the very last overview shot.... looks fantastic. The downtown shots are great.... I hope you don't plan on expanding it any more than that. It looks nearly perfect as it is! The non-gridded layout is very nice to look at as well - random but not sloppy. Can't wait for more!

[YannickSHE 0]

**Replies**

Thanks johannesut for the fast reply! To be honest with you, the traffic is as dark green as you can imagine. I always use a nice mix of all roads (simple, small, small avenues, large), and when you have a great balance of all those roads, with not many crossroads, it works well. I have 9 bus lines as well, so I think the traffic will be okay for a while. The city will expand to the other shore, and it will probably be some nice greeny suburbs, so I won't probably need highways for a while. If I decide to have an highway in the future, it will be to the north with hopefully strategic expressways to the downtown core.

Thanks jaybyrd! I try to zone by breaking the grid, it makes it more realistic that way. I don't really plan to expand that much, but many suburbs will be added (there's a lot of demand for more workers). A lot of new parks will be added, a major park with water as well, more farms to surround the city. I will probably work the downtown core to make it more dense if the need for higher density comes along the way.

[johannesut 1]

Awesome...

[Xidillon 0]

Expand Naow! Nice city.

[Skimbo 304]

I like it, especially that you haven't used the zoning tools a lot.

[YannickSHE 0]

**Replies**

Xidillon: It's coming it's coming ... but more suburbs on the way, the city has to keep a real look, so the downtown core might get changed a little, but the suburbs coming will be awesome

Skimbo: What do you mean by the zoning tools? Thanks for the comments.

New update! By general demand, here's some new exclusive skyline shots!

Hope you liked it! More to come with street views and expansion to the southwest corner, as you noticed on the pics!

Stay tuned!

[YannickSHE 0]

Update 3 already! The city is shaping up!

The downtown core was densified.

Small airport added.

Highway added (the belt).

2 new expressways.

Here's the new skyline pictures! It's evolving fast!

Hope you like it

[Damastius 5]

Very cool! I like the trees next to the highway!

[jacqulina 162]

very nice work my friend

[Skimbo 304]

That you haven't buildt a city with a grid road network...^^

And the new pics are also very good

[johannesut 1]

I agree with skimbo.. Besides if you look at one of my recent posts here, i said that you will face increased traffic problems in case you extend your city's borders (and/or your density in some areas) . That's my prediction...

[YannickSHE 0]

**Replies**

Thanks Damastius... the whole highway around the city will be surrounded by trees, that's the plan!

Jacqulina: Thanks for stopping by!

Skimbo: Ohhh I know what you mean now! Thanks for your comments! More to come for sure!

Johannesut: Maybe the traffic will become an issue once the city is completed... we'll have to wait and see. As you can see on the pictures, my city limits will end at the highway, so all I have left to build is low/med density. But I ain't afraid of demolishing or make the city better once it's done to make traffic better .... but I swear, as we speak, traffic is green/light yellow, no issues whatsoever, a very efficient bus system and I'm using every road size available. We'll see how it goes I guess. Question? You seem to be obsessed by traffic and always talk about it... is that what you do for a living?

[johannesut 1]

what i do for a living is something a lot different.. actually irrelevant.. My profession is economics, but I love organised cities.. and even more "organised" mayors' minds... I'm definitely satisfied from your last report though... All i have to do is just watch your city's development

[Jaybyrd05 3]

Nice update!!! It's growing very fast Sounds like you're planning on doing green beltways to separate the noisy highways.... I really like that idea. Gives the city a very natural appearance.

[YannickSHE 0]

**Replies**

Thanks johannesut ... like I said, I'm not afraid to demolish or to re-work the traffic once it gets bad. For the moment, knock on wood, I barely have yellow or orange anywhere. I did expand the city a lot lately, the city is almost done, an update is coming soon.

Thanks jaybyrd... the highway is so noisy that in order to get approved, the citizens asked for a lot of noise barriers.... and the trees was the solution... for the moment at least

[jazyje 1]

Sweet city - I really like the seemingly 'chaotic' street layout... You should post your bus network --- I've never managed more than 4 bus lines (in VOLKA), so I'm eager to see what others have done with transit in similarly-sized cities....

[YannickSHE 0]

jazyje: ... well the street layout seem to look chaotic from above, but once you look at everything up close, it's pretty efficient and it looks a bit more real than those super perfect griddy cities I've seen in here. However, once I start my next city, I'll try to have it more "north american" with a grid system, especially for downtown. But as far as I'm concerned right now, even if it looks messy from above, I really like the layout. For the bus system, I have 36 lines, 9 terminals (8 small terminals, 1 large), but since I had no traffic issues in the city, there's only a 10% usage of my bus system. I wonder why though. I'll come up with graphs in the next update to show the traffic, the street layout and the bus system.

[jazyje 1]

Well, I hope you understand that I meant that I actually really like your layout --- it only APPEARS to be messy -- when in fact it is very organized --- I am personally not a big fan of grid layouts... And I currently live in the South in the US, and believe me there is not much grid here --- in fact, most cities here have little or no grid at all --- maybe a bit downtown, but the rest is definitely not grid-based.

As far as your bus routes -- it seems they are less efficient if they pass through wealthy areas -- so make sure you connect you unskilled/skilled workers' residences with employment opportunities...

[YannickSHE 0]

Thanks dude ... I'm glad you like it, I love non-grid cities as well, and Rockland is the best I achieved so far. Wait until you see my next update, the city is almost completed. The rest of the map will be trees, lakes and highways. For the bus, I didn't take any chance, they go everywhere. Unskilled, skilled, wealthy, jobs, everywhere. Everything is connected and interconnected, I just don't get why they don't use it. And since 75% of the population are skilled/executives, I guess they don't use the bus that much. But 10-15% usage is better than 0%. For those who actually take the bus in my city are not going through chaotic bus wait times. Everything is flawless.

[jazyje 1]

10% is still better than typical real-world numbers in the US --- usually only around 1 to 4 % of population takes transit here... Have you tried using the tram mod or S-Bahn?

[jazyje 1]

PS> I can't wait to see what you have cooked for us.... Looks like you guys are busy playing today over the pond in Europe --- I guess you have Easter Monday off... ??

[jazyje 1]

I really like your city - feels very airy and welcoming.

[Damastius 5]

Yep!

[YannickSHE 0]

Well ... I was ready to take couple of snapshots of what the city looks like now, I got 1,077,000 people in the city, it turned out very nice. BUT ..... I can't take snapshots, the game stops automatically. Everytime I press snapshot, it closes the game!!!!

What am I gonna do?!

[Skimbo 304]

You could make normal windows screenshots, but you will see the interface on them....

[YannickSHE 0]

I thought about it but like you said, the interface will be annoying ... does anyone had that before? How come it was working fine at 500k pop and now the game stops working once I press that button? I've never experienced this before.

[jazyje 1]

Hmm.... Strange indeed --- I'm sorry I can't help you since I never even reached 0.5 million inhabitants, not to mention 1m+ in one of my cities....

[jazyje 1]

PS> BTW, you can always just print screen + crop out the interface....