Realistic City Layout Ideas

[Decaf Table 0]

Hello,

I'm using SimCity 4 Delux currently with no plugins. I'm rather bored of the strict grid layouts that i've come across lately.

I've seen some very good realistic cities on this site and would really like some good layout ideas to help me create one great looking city.

Medium or Large map is ok. If possible please post some pictures of your sectors with road layout ideas...i'm just not very good at coming up with this sort of thing myself...which is too bad because I love this game!

I guess I need help most with how to lay my transportation network so it looks nice and is effective, plus how to zone around it all. Downtoan areas, suburbs, and an industrial area.

Any help would be appreciated to the highest degree!

[EMTechie 6]

Actually, most cities use a form of the "strict" grid layout, with slight variations made to fit the terrain of the city, any other cities taken in (or outer neighborhoods), etc... Some of the places you'll often find changes to this are subdivisions, along or near rivers or hills, large, oddly-shaped parks, near highways or train tracks, industrial parks, near schools and especially universities, or in upper-class developments. Some of these (mostly the subdivisions and strictly upper-class neighborhoods) are not really applicable to the game, but otherwise, just follow something with at least one main road for easy access and the rest branching off of it and leading back to it.  Also, for around natural areas (hills, rivers, etc...), maybe have the main road follow it or go around it and the rest connect to that in some way

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

There are some good maps on the STEX of real cities, but I have found that gets pretty difficult and somewhat boring trying to duplicate a real place.  To do the kind of things they do in the City Journals, you have to be an artist, and a real expert with the BAT to create the buildings of a real city.

Today, I started a new city in my sandbox, and, feeling bored with the exercises I've been doing to learn about the new stuff I downloaded recently, I decided to make a place from a novel I rather like.  I named the city after the principality of Hostigos from the novel Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen by H. Beam Piper.  You know that you can rename any property by just over typing the name in the query box, so I just up and did it.

Using the Temple of the Followers of Mota, I renamed it as the Temple of Styphon, placed it among a bunch of I-ag, renamed the farms to be Temple Farms, and one as a Nitiary.  I renamed the Mayor's House to be High Hostigos, and placed it on a mountain, above the town I constructed, well away from the Styphon areas.  When I got the first House of Worship, I renamed it to be the Temple of Yirtta, All Mother, laid a clinic next door named Wizards in Service to Yirtta.  I have another clinic a little further over named Alchemists.  The next House of Worship I get handed will be the Temple of Dralm (the chief god), then one of the god of soldiers, Galzar.

To make this work, I terraformed a fairly high, large hill and placed my village market on a steeply ascending street.  All the buildings are in a step formation because I made it very steep.  The city is currently profitable and in funds because I added some industry to give my villagers jobs.  Besides, I need armorers, ironmongers, etc.  There is going to be a holy war on Styphon's house.  I am not sure how I'll get my armies to march, and cars don't look much like horses and/or horse carts, but it is satisfying from a distance of magnification level 2 or 3.

The next city of this series will either be Balf (the Styphon Vatican) or Nostor, the opportunistic raider.

[joshriddle 29]

What I intend on doing with my upcoming region is to terraform some small tropical islands on a vast ocean blue. One of them I want to make a mountain, some volcanoes, some entirely flat, etc...

I got a couple mods recently. They were tropical flora mods by Goldiva. I also intend on temporairly switching the terrain mod to something else, while using the "Realsitic Water Mod". Then I go back to the Clipper and Columbus mods when I am satisfied.

I plan on making the main city a rather large metropolis. Not new york style, but I mean, big. So that should take awhile.

What I am going to do on one of them is Make a dirt road go in a circle around one of the islands.

I won't be building on the volcanic parts. However I may want to build some small haven towns on the side of the mountains. OK maybe go for a tiny indian village on the side of a mountain. But nothing big.

I want the region to have everything mostly. Total I am hoping to have around 500 islands. Some of them however may be no bigger than 4x4 tiles across. The biggest one is going to be a few large city tiles across. Plan on making my signature avenue based highway go in a loop around it while making the maxis highway go dead through it. I may end up with a replication of Rio De Janerio. Which I want.

I plan on getting abot 10 MB of tropical stuff for it. The terrain mod I mentioned earlier I am wanting to be like say like dark green grass with lots of vegetation. NO SNOW RENDERING! I don't want any snow. So I will not include the snow rendering there.

[Bplax15 2]

Build slow, dont make every zone as big as it can be. Get some plug ins of residential and commercial buidings so you dont have 5 buildings repeating over and over again. One of the first things i did once i really started visiting this site is made a real small classic rural town with the one main street going down the middle with some commercial buildup on the side of the road. I then built some neighborhoods behind the commercial section so it would be off the main drag. Then i added some parks and made some farms further away and then let it build for awhile and after that i felt i had a fairly realistic city. The more and more you try the better it'll turn out, you'll look back at your old cities and they'll look like a mess.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I did a pruning job on my regions folder yesterday.  I took out all the standard regions except the one or two I am using.  I also kept Timbuktu because I figured the game has a relation with that one.  I think my game loads a little faster now.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Sorry for the double post, but this is a new topic.

You were looking for ideas on city layouts.  I used Goldiva's shore stuff to put this together today.

Enjoy, I did, and I do.

Notes:

There are two car/passenger ferries.  Be careful with these and save before plopping.  There is a problem in the NAM that could cause a CTD.

There are also two Goldiva water taxi docks.  Quite slick.

Goldiva's yacht club and marine hotel are also in this, as are many uses of her shore-side decorations (rocks, trees, reefs, boats on the beach, etc.)  There are not staggeringly new lots, but if you don't know about them, you would never find them.

Also of note is the fancy neighborhood of 1 x 1 lots at my beach.  You have to do this with care, making every other lot available until you get a building on both sides, otherwise the game may merge the lots.

[joshriddle 29]

Continuing from my previous post, I managed to get some of the planning done for this part.

Click for better resolution.

Red=Ferry Route

Gold=Proposed Development areas

Orange Dot: Location of Seaport

What I intend on doing here is making ferrys run between two coves which I have not yet terraformed. Those coves will be where some residental will be. I intend on cutting that residental off from the rest of the world to only allow them to cross an entire city tile to go work on the smaller island. However I am going to be cautious with that cause with the NAM ferries like to crash the game.

The orange dot is where my seaport will be. This will be inside a small yet wide bay. That is where the local industry will be. I only intend on doing some commercial on the smaller island and making a large and wide residental area. I may throw in an empty grass tile and fill it with broadleaf trees like so on the neighborhoods:

Line indicates a street. Dots indicate those small woods behind the houses. Multiple Hs in one place indicate homes.

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It will continue to follow that pattern in the residental areas.

[tkuelker 2]

Download items from the STEX or else realism will not come.

[beebs 129]

There are a few articles in the Omnibus for creating suburbs - hopefully they help a bit!

• Suburbs and Small Towns
• Suburbs: Creating Realism in SC4

tkuelker@gmail.com: Not necessarily true. I feel it's more about the design of the city than the content. I've made very realistic looking residential and commercial areas with maxis, or mostly-maxis stuff.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

This is an experiment creating a minimal city in difficult circumstances.  Here is my Village in a Col.  The only other thing in the tile are the railroad tracks that come in from another city.  Note that the little village is in the black.

And here is the aerial view of the tile showing that I wasn't kidding.  No bat buildings or special circumstances are present except the NAM and SAM.

I hope you find this interesting.  It is not city building, per say, but village building.

[joshriddle 29]

Well, I am currently building on a terrain just like yours. However I am trying to cram as many people in as possible. Start out on the flat and work up to the summits.

Anyway, I am currently working on a town. I created a small forest town. Currently I don't have any images of the town, but I do the forest. What my intentions here are to slowly work up the mountainside. I currently have a nice NWM road winding through the mountain. Here is the image for that one:

I used a combination of some of Jeronjj's trees and as well as some of Heblems in the mix. I have applied a lot of custom content to this area.

This one shows off the towns main power supply. If you don't allready know there is a water pump buried in there. Just don't know where. Also there is a mayors house. I don't know where that one went either.

That is they system of how power is transported.

See, what I am doing here is since this sits on the side of a mountain, or the side of 5 mountains, both of which are broad and tall, it has very hard to create towns. So what I do is I use power lines to carry power all across the region. I intend on using some of the SFBT power plants to make a central one that can carry power as far as 8 large city tiles, and of which is left I can put up small power plants if need be. Same goes for roads.

I plan on getting the SAM as well and get rid of this old outdated mod that automatically converts them to dirt, brick, or concrete.

[Cobraroll 138]

Nonny... all that room and no trees? At least, you could cluster some at the bottom of the hills. That would look a little better.

Though, I suppose you're not done with that tile?

[joshriddle 29]

Originally posted by: Cobraroll

Nonny... all that room and no trees? At least, you could cluster some at the bottom of the hills. That would look a little better.

Though, I suppose you're not done with that tile?quote>

I usually wait till I am sastified with my city tile to put trees in. Thing is with this one I did put in some trees early. Could be the case there too.

In reply to A Nonny Moose's town, the last time I ever did something like that without roads going out was back when I did the monorail in the town of ten. However nice use of what Maxis has to offer. Also do you have any neighbors? They apparently use the train.