Commercial Over-growth

[archelon2001 2]

My cities aren't really making any commercial skyscrapers. What happens is once I begin education and health, the demand for medium office jobs skyrockets and it doesn't stop. So I end up with a tiny corner with residential skyscrapers and the rest of the city is just a giant office park, with no commercial skyscrapers. The offices are employing sims but it just isn't right.

The only addons I have are transportation related. Please tell me if you need more info to help me fix this problem, thank you!

[Owaen 5]

I think you are zoning way too much.

Try to limit the comercial zoning to a small part and then the demand will soon push up those scyscrapers (if the population is high enough).

Think of how a real city is like. A centralized core with good transportation.

[Yuu Caa Sim 55]

Assuming you are already zoning high density Commercial:

You will need a fairly high population (around 26000) for commercial office skyscrapers. You should also see some mid-rises from around 1200 - 9000 population. This population count is separate for the two wealth types of Commercial Office (Co$$ and Co$$$), so to get skyscrapers, you will need 26000 Co$$ or Co$$$.

To get a rough idea of how much population of each wealth type you have, go to your graphs view and select the "Jobs and Population" graph. Posting a picture of that graph here will also be a good idea. To get a more exact number, you will need to download the Census Repository {here} and also download the dependencies listed on that download page. To see the download link, you need to register / login {here} first.

  Edited June 27, 2011 by yunxiang  

[archelon2001 2]

Here are the graphs you asked for.

here is also my zoning and the buildings above it, so you can see the sprawl

@owaen: I tried to stop zoning but soon sims started leaving because they couldn't find jobs. They all seem to want to work in the small offices. as you can see i have run out of space and they are leaving again.

also the population is over 200,000. i should have more office skyscrapers but don't.

[jacksunny 741]

Perhaps your tax rates are too high? Can we see a desirability view chart for Cs-$$$, Co-$$, and Co-$$$?

[Yarahi 1,816]

They all seem to want to work in the small offices. as you can see i have run out of space and they are leaving again.

also the population is over 200,000. i should have more office skyscrapers but don't.

If the sims only want to work in small offices it may be due to education levels... Only well educated people with good health get the realy important jobs like CEO's wich will boost highrises

[archelon2001 2]

@jacksunny: tax on all residential and commercial is at 8.5%. I tried raising taxes on middle income commercial but then I got the no job problem again. taxes on dirty industry and manufacturing are at 11% and high tech is at 8%.

@ yarahi: education is at nearly 180. i don't think that is the problem...

[Yuu Caa Sim 55]

You seem to have met the requirements for high density Commercial. Remember, it is the number of commercial as seen in the jobs and pop graph, not the number listed as your population (200000), that counts towards the mix of low and high density buildings you get. The problem as far as I can see is that the demand for Co$$ and Co$$$ is too low for the game to want to develop skyscrapers for these developer types. You will have to increase demand for these for more skyscrapers to develop.

How many other cities are there in this region? What are the makeups of RCI in those regions? If you only have this one city in your region, then I would say that you don't have enough residents. Not all residents can work - some are sims still going through school, and others are retired sims.

You generally want to have around 2 time more residents than jobs (commercial and industrial). Looking at the graph you showed us, you seem to have around the same number of residents as jobs. I would suggest that you zone more and denser residential in your city. If you don't want to convert any zones in this city into residential, then it is time to explore the wonders of regional planning by creating a sort of "bedroom community" adjacent to this city.

  Edited June 28, 2011 by yunxiang  

[archelon2001 2]

Thanks all for your quick replies

I tried the residential city idea. It worked for a little while but then I got the no job thing so I had to build some commercial. I controlled the growth and this new city seems to be stable. But I am still not getting any commercial skyscrapers. This new city is large and has about 300k pop and 140k commercial jobs. It is doing very well. The old one is kind of dead so I abandoned it. :| oh well.

[Tsokoa 9]

Judging the picture you seem to already have quite a few skyscrapers though many seem to be residential.

May be you could try moving your last Industrial zones to another city and may be even adjust taxes so that you would have this city commercial only and the other neighboring cities very industrialized but stil with medium commercial zones may be come even close to dirty/manufacture industry so that they would attract low wealth commercial zones here and would re-balance wealthy commercial zones in your downtown.

You could also enable ordinances in your downtown in order to reduce pollution for instance, building police stations to reduce crime, plazas... in order to make your downtown more attractive.

There is also a thing with trafic, comercial zones like to be where the trafic is, may be some of your commercial zones are too widespread without residential areas in between so that they don't get enough trafic all the more that you have grid roads that must even the circulation.