Show us your....roadless cities!

[nathanthemayor 1,263]

@9998:Cool!I like it

@T Slater:The omnibus should be back up soon.... What I like to do is use W2W buildings, pedmalls, and oppie's canals. Also, look a Schumania for ideas...

[nathanthemayor 1,263]

This is a new roadless area I made:

[CascadiaTinker 1]

I built a city which is as nearly roadless as possible for one which contains all zone types. Car traffic is negligible, as you'll see from the following shots. Pedestrian malls and subways rule the day. Rail carries high-tech and farm freight.

Close-up of the CBD:

And a close-up of the high tech district. I had a downspike in education levels which caused some abandonment. For some reason the area never fully recovered after demolition of affected structures. The layout seems to work fine though, apart from that. The inter-zone El/Subway connection is visible on left. (ETA: Solution to this non-growth ended up being to add Mayor Mode trees, everything came back instantly after that.)

Zone view. 70k+ residents and counting!

And last but not least, here are my mockups for gridding a car free city. Pink is parks, light grey ped mall, dark grey the segregated streets required for residential zoning to function without no-car zots. Subway grids line up between the grid types allowing for easy side by side layout. Note the offset on the I-HT grid between Rail and Subway Stations, allowing pedestrian bridges across rail (1x3 size bridges means subway can't abut rail).

This layout has been remarkably stable aside from the troubles in 'regrowing' the I-HT zone after the education failure midway through the city's life. I had a screenshot of the traffic graph, or so I thought, but it's not showing up in my pictures. Anyway all traffic visible on the graph is Pedestrian, closely followed by Subway, with a tiny bit of Freight Train at the bottom. Car traffic is not visible on the graph, and commute time is .2. My Sims love me and have an EQ of 195. Budget has always been tight, but the city is in the black with enough money in the bank to lay out many more car-free developments.

Anyone with a real metropolis going car-free? 500k+? Would love to see it! My next experiment will use the same gridding on a larger map in order to fit a larger population.

---

ETA details of my layout for the person that posted a question thread here about this:

"How do I build a roadless city?"

The simple answer is to use unconnected sections of road for residential frontage, pedestrian malls for commercial frontage, rail for industrial frontage, and subway stations connecting everything.

The more detailed answer:

Residential:

- You must use roads of some sort to face the residential to. There is no way around this as far as I have learned. However, by making each road a short strip with no connections to commerce or industry, your Sims will not use cars on it.

- Put subway stations at the ends of your residential roads so that your Sims can get to work. Put them at the corner of each block.

- I've tried 6x6 and 6x12 and both work about the same.

Commercial:

- Pedestrian mall frontage, subway stations at each corner.

- Again, 6x12 blocks are what I'm currently using for this. I will probably go back to 6x6 because the center strip of the 6x12 commercial block is fairly heavily polluted (???), even with no truck, car or above ground rail traffic. The other zone types don't show this problem.

Industrial:

- Rail with 6 tiles between, I put this in the center of each 6x12 block. Freight can be shipped via rail within 3 tiles away.

- Subway stations between each block so Sims can get to work.

- Pedestrian mall frontage - not sure how far the Sims can walk from their ped malls across industrial to get to work, but with the 6x12 industrial blocks, I put rail on the long axis, pedestrian malls on the short axis. The blocks fill in and flourish.

- If you want farms, just run rail through the farm zones and cross the railroad with a short strip of road with a freight station, a farm will pop up and use it.

All zone types: For any side of the block that a building is not facing, you can put parks or more pedestrian malls.

Emergency services:

You're also going to need to draw very short roads to put police stations on, for stations not in your residential street segments. I haven't figured out the best way to do fire control yet, because the Fire Airstrip doesn't put out any of my fires, the plane just flies in a circle uselessly when summoned. I may have to design fire access roads that do not connect to residential roads (preventing car traffic), but it seems like this would be very wasteful of space. Currently I just let buildings burn and demolish/rebuild. Ugly.

Airport:

I haven't been able to get the Sims to use the airport if they can't drive to it. Short connector roads from the airport to mass transit stations go completely unused, and the airport just sits there wasting budget. I think there are custom BATs that feature mass transit enabled airports and I will be looking into that as a solution.

I am using the latest NAM Unified Traffic Simulator. I am sure there are many other ways to work a car free city, but this is what I've come up with so far. See the Roadless Cities thread for my pictures of these layouts. My system as depicted there produces no car traffic, some freight train traffic and very evenly matched amounts of subway and pedestrian traffic. Commute times are ridiculously low and citizens are happy. You could of course run a more dystopian setup, ignoring services entirely, but I like my car free Sims to be rewarded for their good behavior.

  Edited March 16, 2011 by CascadiaTinker  

[nathanthemayor 1,263]

here's a new one I experiemented with:

[tonyr 926]

I did'nt know this was possible.

[AdoxxBE 289]

I did'nt know this was possible.

Me neither

  Edited March 31, 2011 by Adooxx  

[9988 428]

O.K, I will now show you something very impressive. Behold, the largest roadless city ever made! The Optimia Magna! For much more pictures and info, click that animated picture in my sig. It was created many days, with over 10.000 plopped buildings and over 120.000 PED mall tiles.

[Builder Lauron 1]

That city looks marvelous 9988. Fantastic job. Will have to read your City Journal too

[skyemoor 0]

I have closely followed a roadless city concept ("Carfree Cities") for over a decade now (primarily due to oil depletion mitigation planning), and have tried to implement it in SC4 with no luck. The tips in this thread may help somewhat, but only partially due to residential not growing, plus it really is best if mixed use development can be used (e.g. residential or commercial over retail). The concept can be found at CarfreeCities.com - I daresay you'll find it a compelling read.

The overall layout of a greenfield carfree city would be roughly based on this pattern of pedestrian districts interconnected by light rail;

(hmmm, it doesn't want me to link images via URL, so here are the links)

http://www.carfree.com/topology.html

Population - 1,000,000

Site Size - 100 sq. mi. 250 sq.km

Developed Area - 20% of total site

Green Area - 80% of total site

Each district is unique, and an example of one is;

http://www.carfree.com/draw/distr0760jc02.gif (variations at http://www.carfree.com/var_district.html)

Green = grass, landscaping, or gardens in district; parks, forest, sports fields, or cropland outside of districts

Orange = Buildings

Black = walkways and rail (thick lines)

Notice there is no need for parking!

District population is between 10,000 and 12,000

The blocks are also unique and can look like this;

http://www.carfree.com/draw/block_ref.gif

Height of buildings would normally be limited to 3-4 stories, as FAR of 1.5 provides plenty of floorspace while still having a human scale architectural sense that is not visually overwhelming.

One view of a block might look like;

http://www.inhershoesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/amsterdam2.jpg

And an aerial might look like;

I find that SC4 tends to push me more toward roads than subways - it would be nice if there were configurable heuristics that could be tweaked to a designer's preferences.

Any comments on the above? I highly recommend visiting the site, which is rich in material, especially the Carfree Times.

[nathanthemayor 1,263]

Kinda a roadless city.....

[nathanthemayor 1,263]

Roadless City building to the extreme!

[CT14 2,486]

Bumping for one of the most fun concepts I ever built to. Any new roadless city developments? I see that there are now some new ways to do residential without streets: like using transit-enabled parking lot ploppables as residential frontage.

[11241036 5,115]

Since this thread got bumped, I thought I might share some experience I made after trying to reduce car traffic in one of my cities to zero. I'm no fan of entirely roadless cities because

 

1. this would be too difficult to me,

2. it would be exaggerating imo,

3. it would be impossible, anyway, because police, firemen and garbage trucks won't have access to the entire city anymore (after all, we do want to have a fire extinguished and our garbage disposed of).

 

Therefore, I've obviously never created an entirely roadless city yet. However, I was successful in reducing car traffic to (nearly) zero. The result:

 

Advantages:

*  Very low air pollution. The rest can be eliminated with air cleaners.

*  Lower traffic (but do not underestimate pedestrians and buses! I can remember that one of my roads was even completely congested only with pedestrians).

*  Higher desirability of most parts of the city. Especially I-HT and R-§§§ likes my city much more now.

 

Disadvantages:

*  High difficulty to manage it (you need to make sure, as already mentioned, that police, firemen, and garbage trucks can access your ENTIRE city, and it is absolutely mandatory to build either roads or pedestrian malls to achieve this goal).

*  The high desirability can backfire if a lot of rich people build highrises in your city which will be abandoned very soon because of low demand, high commuter times, or other reasons.

*  Probably low customer rates at commercial buildings can cause them to be abandoned.

 

 

What I did to achieve this goal:

 

*  One point gas already be mentioned: Use pedestrian malls wherever possible and usable at not too high costs. They cannot only be used to grow commercial areas next to them, they are also a good solution for placing civic buildings, rewards, landmarks, and traffic stations (such as railway stations) at their side because several of said buildings have jobs too; therefore they need road access and your Sims will drive their cars to get there. Do not forget to connect them to bus, subway, or other traffic stations. There are some good road-top traffic stations on the STEX, which will make using pedestrian malls easier. It is also possible to place pedmalls along a street in one row and placing buildings behind them, if you have a lack of space.

*  In case it is necessary to build a road/street, use traffic blockers that prevent a certain kind of traffic (such as car traffic) from passing through them. For instance: You need to connect a residential area with a commercial area with a road. By placing a traffic blocker on the road between those two areas, your Sims cannot drive their car to the commercial area; therefore, they will resort to other means of transportation. I've made very good experience with this point, since it allowed me to build a realistic city without too much effort, and I could also place civic buildings without cars driving to them. And I could also connect remote industrial/commercial areas with roads for garbage trucks without allowing cars to use them.

*  Create a dense system of public transportation. Every part of a city where car driving is prohibited obviously requires access to other means of transportation, lest they will be abandoned. Railway and subway are imo most recommendable because they don't generate pollution and are pretty fast, but that is up to you.

*  Place several civic buildings (or other buildings with jobs, for that matter) close to each other, so they are positioned at the same route. This makes planning of the placement of traffic blockers or pedmalls much easier.

*  Be aware of which buildings have jobs and therefore require road access and which not.

*  Consider the placement of industrial and commercial areas well, depending on your plans with the city in particular and the terrain. It might be necessary to create medium-sized commercial areas at the outskirts of your town to reduce commuter time.

 

Remember: Sims only drive by whichever means to 1. their jobs, and 2. the edge of the city, nowhere else. If you make the connection route between their houses and their jobs impassable for e.g. cars, they won't use their cars anymore.

 

If someone wants, I'll share some pictures of my "testing city" later. But this will take time, so I couldn't do this right now.

[CT14 2,486]

Thanks for the input 1124. I definitely have noticed the same effect with R-$$$ downgrading to R-$$ and dilapidating, in my last roadless city.

 

Will car blockers allow fire trucks through?

 

Looking forward to pictures of your testing city!

[11241036 5,115]

@ CT14: This will be a long answer to your post, hope you will like it. BTW I would actually like to see some parts of your city. I haven't heard of the concept of connecting residential zones to parking lots at all, but it sounds interesting. I'd like to see some pictures to see how it works.

 

 

It took me a while to get my city ready to share some pictures, but here we go. As you will soon see, it's no "roadless" city at all   But it's an almost carless city, at least; so I hope it can be posted in this thread. I'll primarily only show pictures related to this topic. I should mention that although I like this city much, I haven't been working on it in months, so it's messy and there are nearly only default Maxis RCI buildings. Furthermore, several parts of my city don't really look like a candidate for "Best Picture of the Year". I don't always have ideas on how to make my city look really great, and so I simply build something; I can everytime bulldoze something to replace it by something better.

 

By the way, the city's name is "Himmelsstadt". "Stadt" means city, and "Himmel" can have two meanings: 1. sky, 2. heaven. Both meanings are of a certain significance, because 1. the city is situated at a rather high altitude, and 2. the local mayor has gone to great lengths to try to make this city a place where its population wants to live, by improving educational and health system and, of course, paying respect to the environment.

 

Let's start with a traffic map from the region view. I'm playing on a 28x28 version (actually 7x7 large city tiles) of Timbuktu, the default Maxis tutorial region.

 

 

 

Next, this is an overview over the city's most important stats, as well as a glimpse on how I usually place commercial zones: The most important ones close to the main railway station in the center, and a park behind them. Making a carless doesn't really make it mandatory to completely reconsider my entire city building strategies.

 

 

 

This is a commercial area at the edge of the city. All buildings are only facing pedestrian malls. You can see that I'm using brooks to fill the gap between the commercial buildings and the road (but purely for decorational purposes). The red circles show some of my subway stations. When creating larger pedestrian zones, I'm placing subway stations at various crucial locations to make sure pedestrians can reach every part of the pedzones quickly (since they don't like walking very much). I've also placed 4 railway stations to make it much easier for my Sims to get to their jobs.

 

 

 

This is an industrial area. Only one road is connecting it to the residential zone nearby (so I don't need to place a lot of traffic blockers). There's a traffic blocker on the highlighted location that prevents cars from passing. Of course, freight leaves this ind. zone via freight station.

 

 

 

The next picture shows how I'm placing traffic blockers at important locations around schools, hospitals, and some railway stations (while building this city, I wasn't really sure whether these railway stations allow cars to be parked there or not). I'm also sometimes simply connecting railway stations with pedmall tiles to roads, as shown in the green frame. Of course, placing traffic blockers around a part of my city takes up space; I'm filling it with tiny commercial zones or civic buildings (such as the library shown in the blue frame).

 

 

 

BTW: Unfortunately, I don't know whether fire trucks are affected by traffic blockers or not. However, I'm sure that at least garbage trucks are not affected. I don't have any garbage issues in my city. The next picture shows how I'm connecting remote parts of my city: by simply using dirt roads. These one in particular will later be leading through several cow pastures, so they are even a little decorative.

 

 

 

Contrarily to popular belief in my Simperium, my Sims are allowed to own cars - they just are not allowed to use them in this city in particular. They are allowed to park them in this parking zone (I can't think of a better name, and English is difficult to learn...). The roads to the left and the bottom lead to adjacent cities, the road to the right leads to the airport. The tunnel is actually a fake; it is supposed to be a (decorational only) route for cars to bypass my carless city.

 

 

 

This picture shows that the reward is very well worth the effort: Very low air pollution. I need to tell that I had to use some air cleaners to help a little bit - but my pollution overview would look much worse if this city wasn't carfree. There's one polluted road to the left - but there's my only tram line, and tram unfortunately causes pollution.

 

 

 

This is the traffic overview...

 

 

 

... and this the amount of various traffic kinds (2 pictures). As you may see soon, I haven't been able to copletely banish car traffic from my city. This has only one reason: The bus stops I'm currently using are offering 2 jobs - and some Sims can't hesitate to use their cars to drive to these stations. It took me a while to figure this out, and, as already mentioned above, I haven't played this city in a while. Maybe I'll later tweak these stations in the Reader to remove the jobs, and replace the bus stops in this city. However, I guess that I've been quite successful in building a nearly carless city.

 

(BTW, there's no monorail or ferry traffic, so I don't show it in this statistics.)

 

 

[CT14 2,486]

Wow, thanks for all the pictures and explanations! I really like your city. The attention to detail shows, especially in shots like the last few. The traffic maps are also interesting. Pedestrian congestion is occuring at many points.

 

Which traffic plugin are you using? I have been using NAM default for years.

 

Which parks?

 

What is your average commute time? As you probably already found, it's possible to get it ridiculously low using a combination of pedestrian paths, subways and high density commercial/industry.

[korver 27,685]

The only city pic I made in 2016 (not shown yet in a show us thread) without any roads whatsoever - the ancient city of Djado, Niger (1000 A.D.).

More scenes available from this update here.

 

[RobertLM78 1,598]

4 hours ago, korver said:

The only city pic I made in 2016 (not shown yet in a show us thread) without any roads whatsoever - the ancient city of Djado, Niger (1000 A.D.).

More scenes available from this update here.

Dang..... are we even playing the same game?!  

Your work is off the hook awesome.. 

[korver 27,685]

[korver 27,685]