Tips or Suggestions for building a Future City?

[lloydyboy232 12]

How can I use futuristic urban planning methods in the game from the beginning to have a high tecnology, futuristic city?

FOr further clarification the Future City is 150 years in the future.

[Cob92 360]

For a futuristic city, you want to minimize pollution, maximize access to education and healthcare, and maximize the use of mass transportation to eliminate congestion. Back when I entered the Future City competition in 2005-2006 (I assume that's what you're talking about since you said 150 years in the future), we still used SC3000 to design the cities for it, so our options for transportation consisted basically of roads, railroads, buses, and subways. I'd recommend trying to work more monorail into your city, since it is the fastest mode of transportation in the game and your city will appear more efficient if you can replace road travel with a good monorail system. Also, build as many educational buildings as you can afford from the start, since the key to building a high-tech city is to have an educated population. Education is required to build high tech industry, which you cannot have a good future city without. BTW, I don't think you're allowed to use any mods of any type in the FC competition, so stick to the basic stuff included in Rush Hour when you plan your city.

  Edited June 22, 2011 by Cobhris96  

[lloydyboy232 12]

So, everyone agrees, highways are not to be built in a future city?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I think you'll find that 150 years in the future, Bauhaus architecture will be out, so if you can't use any mods, you are severely handicapped. Boxy buildings turn out to be a bust from the energy consumption point of view, so the future should go towards other shapes, and these are not in the basic game. The shape with the largest volume for surface area is a sphere, but mostly buildings will be domes. A huge dome built over an existing city and properly set up at the base would actually air-condition the city. This kind of stuff is being thought about now by architects and engineers since materials to do this are now available. I recently saw a show on, I believe, the National Geographic Channel, which discussed putting a dome over Huston, TX.

In the future with almost everyone working from home over the net, you are likely to find that you have commercial centers for shopping only, connected by high-speed transit (monorail in the game), with some automated, high-tech assembly pods on the far outskirts.

Residential pods will be separated by quite a lot of green space, and there will be a sort of decentralization of the business district with several tall commercial buildings in clusters by function. You may want to set the game to plop everything.

Chances are the only power sources will be renewable, so in the default game this limits you to wind and solar power. Waste disposal will be a real problem, but you might get away with waste to energy plants on the edge of the city along with several recycling depots.

To keep you on the straight and narrow, create a separate account on your machine, then access the game from there. You may need to set permissions from the Administration user to do this. The first time you call the game, it will install the default regions for you, with an empty plugins folder. This ploy will also allow you to play in your regular account without affecting you future city region. I actually did this, and it works just fine.

Since the game supports imported regions by default, you can shoose what you want from the STEX maps, but probably only those that do not require mapper or terraformer. You can, of course, create a new region and hand terraform it as you like.

  Edited June 22, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[lloydyboy232 12]

I would like to build residential pods like this

[Cob92 360]

So, everyone agrees, highways are not to be built in a future city?

Not necessarily. In fact, a lot of future tech concepts include the idea of a "smart" highway, where the flow of traffic is managed by computers to eliminate accidents and allow travel at speeds many times faster than what a human driver can handle. They also talk about the idea of platooning, where cars are moved in groups, bumper-to-bumper with one another, in perfect synchronization. However, since SC4 doesn't account for the fact that gasoline most likely will have been replaced as the primary automotive fuel by 2161, it'll still treat all your roads as being clogged with old 20th century gas guzzlers, which is why you want to keep down the volume of car traffic in your future city.

As for energy sources, I'd personally go with powering the city with natural gas to start off, followed by nuclear energy and then gradually replace the nuclear plants with hydrogen fusion reactors when you acquire them. For waste disposal, I'd place a small dump in the corner of the city simply so the game takes the trash off the streets, then cut the city's waste production down to almost nothing with dozens and dozens of recycling centers.

  Edited June 22, 2011 by Cobhris96  

[lloydyboy232 12]

So, everyone agrees, highways are not to be built in a future city?

Not necessarily. In fact, a lot of future tech concepts include the idea of a "smart" highway, where the flow of traffic is managed by computers to eliminate accidents and allow travel at speeds many times faster than what a human driver can handle. They also talk about the idea of platooning, where cars are moved in groups, bumper-to-bumper with one another, in perfect synchronization. However, since SC4 doesn't account for the fact that gasoline most likely will have been replaced as the primary automotive fuel by 2161, it'll still treat all your roads as being clogged with old 20th century gas guzzlers, which is why you want to keep down the volume of car traffic in your future city.

As for energy sources, I'd personally go with powering the city with natural gas to start off, followed by nuclear energy and then gradually replace the nuclear plants with hydrogen fusion reactors when you acquire them. For waste disposal, I'd place a small dump in the corner of the city simply so the game takes the trash off the streets, then cut the city's waste production down to almost nothing with dozens and dozens of recycling centers.

Im actually so jealous of you :angry: Why cant they have Future City in Canada, and for me to be 6th, 7th or 8th grades again!!!! :rage::rage:

Is there maybe a mod that bumps up the speed of highway travel?

I still need a region map for this city, Im looking at Milton Keynes But if anyone else has suggestions....

[lloydyboy232 12]

bump

[Terring 6,476]

I'm going to create a list with all futuristic buildings, mods and strategies for Simcity 4

[Cob92 360]

What about the idea of upgrading a contemporary city for the future? Something like "New York 2150" or something like that.

[lloydyboy232 12]

I'm going to create a list with all futuristic buildings, mods and strategies for Simcity 4

:D I Could Just Kiss You...:*

[lloydyboy232 12]

What about the idea of upgrading a contemporary city for the future? Something like "New York 2150" or something like that.

Ive only toyed with the idea of recreating a city like NYC or LA.. I would need to start with smoething smaller...

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

If you really want futuristic stuff, you will probably have to learn to BAT. I think I said in another thread that Bauhaus will be out soon. It costs to much to provide services to big boxes.

[Tsokoa 9]

May be you should just play with the SimMars mode, that is futuristic.

For a future city may be you could try to have a city with massive mass transport and alternative transport like ped mall, streetcars, bicycle ways and limit the use of roads.

You should indeed focus on education and health to attract Hi-tech and you could also use agriculture towers (there are some on the stex I believe) in order to have your food produced by sims and not imported.

A good possibility could also be to use SC4 limitation of square cities by making a... square city a bit like Masdar City http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masdar_City

[lloydyboy232 12]

May be you should just play with the SimMars mode, that is futuristic.

For a future city may be you could try to have a city with massive mass transport and alternative transport like ped mall, streetcars, bicycle ways and limit the use of roads.

You should indeed focus on education and health to attract Hi-tech and you could also use agriculture towers (there are some on the stex I believe) in order to have your food produced by sims and not imported.

A good possibility could also be to use SC4 limitation of square cities by making a... square city a bit like Masdar City http://en.wikipedia....iki/Masdar_City

Some wonderful ideas. Most of my cities end up as Squares already...

[lloydyboy232 12]

If you really want futuristic stuff, you will probably have to learn to BAT. I think I said in another thread that Bauhaus will be out soon. It costs to much to provide services to big boxes.

Anonymous, isnt there som building like that on the STEX or LEX ...???

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

If you really want futuristic stuff, you will probably have to learn to BAT. I think I said in another thread that Bauhaus will be out soon. It costs to much to provide services to big boxes.

Anonymous, isnt there som building like that on the STEX or LEX ...???

Sure, but there are a few thousand files, so it will be a long search. To get you started, here are a couple:

Water plant

Private College

You can see how I feel about Bauhaus.

BTW, the texture on the college is from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michaelangelo.

[Terring 6,476]

I'm going to create a list with all futuristic buildings, mods and strategies for Simcity 4

The list is ready

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I'm going to create a list with all futuristic buildings, mods and strategies for Simcity 4

The list is ready

Monumental! You must have used a very fancy search.

[lloydyboy232 12]

I'm going to create a list with all futuristic buildings, mods and strategies for Simcity 4

The list is ready

2 Words.

O.verly D.eticated.

Jks... YOUR THE BEST MAN!!!!!!

[KonstantinII 1,106]

How can I use futuristic urban planning methods in the game from the beginning to have a high tecnology, futuristic city?

 

You can go to here and see many futuristic cities and learn from them.

[Bdub01 201]

FYI, they kind of frown upon bumping two year old threads. .

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

It really depends on your definition of "futuristic".

Ask yourself what it means to you. Does it mean smart, planned communities with integrated transport links? Or does it mean whacked out space colonies?

For the former, I would study planned cities such as new capitals (Canberra is a good one; the city has a political district as well as suburbs roughly divided into 5 areas each with their own hubs). For the latter, I would recommend the SimMars mod.