Which towns/cities do/did you use for inspiration?

[methodist 0]

 Hello people,

As of yesterday I started building in a new region. Due the lack of personal inspiration, i'm a keen builder of copying towns/cities to my SC4 (mostly infrastructure and rivers/creeks/lakes). Yesterday i started to reproduce the infrastructure of Roseau, Minnesota. I like the layout of Res/com/Ind with a nice creek/river running thru the town of Roseau. I have 2 laptops next to eachother, one with Google Maps 'maps' view, the other with SC4 running. 

But to be short. Which cities do u use for inspiration?

Greetings,

Marijn

[erbush 8]

My Cities are mostly free growing, however for the suburbs I take inspiration from Atlanta, GA.. which is where I'm from.

[Road55 0]

Madison, WI, which I live near. But I don't take inspiration from the government there.

[hmm 17]

Depends on what stage of devlopment and what type of city im working on... since I'm from NYC i borrow alot from its metro area. For the central areas and the inner city residential I emulate Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn. For my suburbs I trie to copy long Island, parts of Queens and New Jersey since they use both expressway and commuter rail for transportation. For my outlying towns I look to upstate New York for the farming villages, and the cities along I-95 in conneticut for the larger independant centers. But really it all depends on your personal style!

[Easy Pete 0]

I really like the mountain/ north american looking cities. Seatlle for example. You know, pine forests, cliffs etc.

For those who might want to take a look: https://www.simtropolis.com/cityjournals/?p=toc&id=1533

[Nuclear550 3]

I look into ultra modern Euro-American cities. I take a lot of inspiration from Richmond, Virginia with its sprawling downtown and bustling suburbs.

[Texan 8]

Generally I use the same cities for inspiration simply because I either know them very well or really like them. I use several of course and they include: Dallas-Fort Worth, New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Los Angeles and Ocean City, MD. I have to be fair, I also look to Rehobeth Beach as well for so guidence on my coastal cities.

[methodist 0]

Thanks a lot for your replies, i'll defintly have a look at your suggested cities!

@ Easy Pete; coincedence, my previous project was Seattle center area, but I was too focused on one city.

[joshriddle 29]

Dallas, Texas

[LivingInThePast 364]

Houston is the mecca for me in terms of SimCity concepts. The endless rows of strip malls spark my commercial interest in SimCity, the modified grid system in Houston is fairly easy to reproduce, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, many aspects (such as the light rail, inner-city railroads, and HOV lanes) are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to recreate.

[JayStimson 212]

methodist: I generally try to develop my cities in tune with the terrain of the map I'm working with. However, since I live in the northeast of the USA my urban, suburban, and rural areas visually resemble this region. I'm guessing most folks follow this approach ... there's no place like home Dorothy.

Road55: That is so funny. I've heard Madison referred to as: "70 square miles surrounded by reality". No surprise you're not inspired by the government there.

[pona12 3]

i have many,Mostly in thee oklahoma city area,specifically the downtown is like oklahoma cities,tall towers with low rises around them,well medium rises .And its spread out like oklahoma city.I also like to use the specific burbs of Midwest City,Del City,Choctaw and Moore,And also i put norman,ok as a seperate reigon that goes all the way down pauls valley.Then i also for my rich cities i use malibu and nichols hills and bev hills.

[Deionn 137]

London, England. Lille, France. New York, New York, USA. all great cities, and Vienna too.

[WillR116 60]

I honestly haven't played in awhile. I really don't like "cities" to say, I like small, relativly low to the ground cities. I kinda take some inspiration from my hometown, Huntsville, Alabama. I try to have alot of sections like University Drive and Highway 72 and typically a much larger version of the five points district somewhere. Occasionally i'll have a downtown but not too often. Once I had a downtown isle though (downtown was in the middle of the river). My favorite town I ever did was Sernsen County which was on a large tile along the ocean. 2 rivers from the ocean along with a creek up through the county seat. It had a mountain retreat town, an average american suburan like town, a beach town, a residential section which I never uploaded any pics of (also on decktop), upperclass town, and the main county seat, an old style small town.

Beach town is in the upper right, county seat in the upper left, mountain retreat in the bottom right corner, suburbia town bottom left, upperclass town next to the county seat and that residential thing was on the island with the roads and the empty section between the rivers to the left.

[tkuelker 2]

Langley/Surrey, BC (canada). A combination of dense suburbs, towers and farmland.

[Deathcat001 8]

Regional view. I use the zoning idea of spreading out from high density to suburbs. I have yet to find cities like this. I modeled the highway system off Moscows ring with many highways going into the center

EDIT:  Removed oversized picture and replaced with link, please keep all photos in the future under 800x600 or 600x800 as per the Site Rules.  Thank you.  -SC4 Meister ST Site Moderator

[kolnikov inc 1]

i get alot of inspiration from european highway infrastructures like this one in switzerland:

[Simbourgeois 139]

My city is a "typical" European city. Although I'm drawing inspiration from different cities in our Old World, my two favorite cities are Paris and Vienna. Good luck with your new region!

Best regards,

Simbourgeois

Mayor of Belleville

[diamonddog_74 32]

I have lived in different American cities, so I have borrowed, and continue to borrow ideas from places I've lived in: New York, San Diego, San Francisco, and now Chicago. I have visited Montreal, Toronto, Boston, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. So my in-game cities definitely have an North American "look" to them because of that.

Chicago is great inspiration for me now, it's got everything: lake, river, beaches, skyscrapers, gorgeous parks, historic districts, rough insdustrial areas lining up the old rail lines, etc. It's also laid out in a logical North-South, East West grid, broken up by some diagonals and expressways. It's like a giant live action SimCity city tile.

I also study pictures from European cities like Paris, and Wien (Vienna) for the boulevards and parks. One of my friends just arrived from a trip to Sydney, Australia. So I'm studying some of his photos from the trip to see what I can borrow.

I also look at CJ's here on Simtropolis for inspiration because many Simtropolitans have used the game in very interesting ways. Some gamers have gotten around the game's (and plugins') limitations in very creative ways, so I borrow ideas from them, and share some of my own.

My cities aren't perfect, but they play well and are profitable. But just like in real life, you have to continue evolving them. That's what's fun about this game.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

I generally use Australian cities for my transport networks. Melbourne's rail system is overall commuter rail, but in the inner city it si rapid transit. Separating the two in my mind is impossible!

[Z77 3]

I really dont use any for inspiration. Rather, I use other people's cities for my inspiration. Seeing that i live in a town of 34,000 surrounded by cornfirelds and the largest town for 150 miles is a town of 100,000. Ive had such a dismal time creating huge metropolises. Which is why im currently working on a small town filled region with a moderate sized town as the largest. I think that small towns give you a better chance of creating a sort of history of the region, whereas huge metropolises are just plopped and dont have much life to them.

[Odainsaker 2,136]

I tend to pull elements from different cities together.  However, I have noticed I use these elements over and over again:

Kyoto - the basic orthagonal city plan derived from geomancy and patterned after ancient Nara and Chang'an.  It's also an ideal bounded landscape, possessing a broad, shallow plain surrounded by forested low mountains.

Osaka - a central castle with picturesque keep surrounded by modern skyscrapers.  While a major port city with vast artificial islands, the Osaka plain is, like Kyoto, bounded by mountains, which help to visually contain the region.  Osaka also has one of the most wonderously dense and tangled rail systems in the world.

Hiroshima - not for the bombing, but for the river delta geography, where the major river branches to form numerous long narrow islands which splay out like a opened fan into the island-dotted Hiroshima Bay.

Shanghai - for the grand Bund waterfront of historic foreign trading houses and banks.  Where else can also freely mix traditional Asian architecture with Art Deco and modern futurism.

Chicago of the Daniel Burnham plan - all the civic ideals of the City Beautiful movement packed into one symmetrical synthesis of the American grid with the Baroque diagonal.  Make no little plans!

Vienna - the "Ringstraße," a circular avenue around the old inner city and which became a cultural showcase of grand historicist construction.

Berlin - an "Unter den Linden" tree-lined central boulevard connecting the major public landmarks.

Istanbul - the ancient chain of massive, shallow domes from the Hagia Sophia and successive msoques along the spine of the peninsula makes for a dramatic cityscape.

San Antonio - gotta have a tranquil and picturesque Riverwalk layered just below bustling streetlevel.


Somehow, i gotta congeal all that together into a playable city.
 

[tankmank 853]

For Nanzhao i get my inspiration from

Guangzhou/Shenzhen - For the Cantonese buildings and their location.

Shanghai - For the Bund area and older colonial buildings and due to the size and density.

And for my new up and coming CJ

Riyadh (KSA) - Due to the city being large and quite grided and old.

[Muck308 55]

I find that whenever I leave town (and most of the time my trips are by car) I get inspired by someplace I drive past. I have been all over the eastern part of the US and much of the southwest, so I take from all of that.

[Muck308 55]

I find that whenever I leave town (and most of the time my trips are by car) I get inspired by someplace I drive past. I have been all over the eastern part of the US and much of the southwest, so I take from all of that.

[tycoonsimraider123 16]

My city of choice for inspiration is Los Angeles. I love the large amounts of suburbs, with a central downtown.

[tycoonsimraider123 16]

My city of choice for inspiration is Los Angeles. I love the large amounts of suburbs, with a central downtown.

[joshriddle 29]

Mineral Wells, Texas. (betcha never heard of it!)

[jabast174748 0]

I've herd of Mineral Wells cos' I get some my inspiration from alot of those small towns dotted all over texas. I dunno, I just like that small town feel. With larger cities however, it really depends on what part of the globe that I was browsing with google earth.

[Reikhardt 50]

I'm generally going for that kind of Seattle type look for my cities, but I'm actually using a map I created of the West Cape/ Cape Town, South Africa as it has a really good mix of coastal and mountain areas. The aerial shots of Cape Town itself are really good inspiration for city layout and landscaping: