Show Us Your Suburbs

[mailandre 0]

These are two pictures of my high wealth reasidential areas in two different cities.





When I build, I prefer to make roads with a strange and casual path. I don't like grid and straight streets. However your suburbs are so cool!! Hope you like mine..

For more visit my CJ.

[kjetilab 0]

Here's a couple of pictures from the suburb of Bankstown.


High-rises along the expressway

[teve0 0]

Does anyone know where to get that diagonal street med?

[storms991 0]

i think NAM has it

[MidwestSimGeek 0]

Me'self, I design suburbs that are patchwork quilts of various elements I've seen in my random travels around the USA.    Over time, I've arrived at a few general maxims about Midwestern suburbia that have helped me build realistic equivalents in SimCity.

1) The morphology of a mid-distance (second- or third-ring) suburb is generally regular on a large scale and irregular on a small scale.  They didn't build in the entire grid, but some of the roads that DID get built conform approximately to the inner city's grid and numbering system... with a few curves and outliers to make things interesting.  (St. Louis Park, MN; Windsor Heights, IA; Mission, KS; Clarendon Hills, IL; the western end of Omaha near I-680; etc.)  Either that, or the suburb is regular on a mile-by-mile grid of four-lane arterials, with commercial in the corners, linear parks along the lengths, and the rest filled in with low- and medium-density residential (Overland Park, KS; Scottsdale, AZ; Eagan, MN.)

Both approaches are evident in this photo of Sebring Heights, a western suburb of Deal River (my current region, named after indie-rock goddess Kim Deal of the Pixies.  )  This is a wide-angle shot, centered approximately on the Westowne Mall, a partially enclosed upscale shopping plaza.  Raleigh Avenue is the main north-south arterial, on an alignment 114 blocks (9.5 miles) west of Velouria Boulevard, the downtown zero point.   The mall is located at Raleigh's intersection with Northwest 29th, running east-west on an alignment approximately three miles north of Union Blvd./Broadway, the downtown zero point.  Just northwest of the mall is the infamous stack interchange where Frontenac Parkway tees into a sharp curve of westbound I-86.  (Sebring Heights city fathers considered raising revenue by selling a sponsorship of this stack, but ultimately abandoned the plan as tasteless once it became apparent that the lead bidding contender would be Pedersen Mortuary.)

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2) More-distant suburbs are often characterized by separate districts (often independent subdivisions) that are physically contiguous -- yet lack direct transportation between them.  (Hence the prevalent Car Culture of American suburbia -- ya gotta go the long way 'round.)  These gaps often develop in response to the local topography.  Savage, MN affords a great example.  It features a gulch two miles long, carved out by a tributary of the Minnesota River, featuring a 1.5-mile stretch without a road crossing -- though single-family homes are located within viewing distance of one another on the edges of both bluffs!  The gulch itself is heavily forested and consists almost entirely of city parkland.  (There are also several examples in the northern suburbs of Des Moines, notably the gap between Pioneer Pkwy. and Foxboro Rd. in Johnston, and the disconnect between Saylorville and the newer homes in southwest Ankeny.)  Sebring Heights features a few of these disconnects, though not on as large or dramatic a scale.  Here, a forest and park belt shields the upper-class residential area of Victoria Hills from the grid residential and the 38th Street commercial arterial to its northwest.  Access is also limited on the southeast by a narrow linear park bordering Bongard Road (sharp diagonal.)

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3) And, of course, where would we be without the placid domiciles-cum-fortresses of the local gentry?  (At least in SimCity, we can fantasize about a more just social distribution of the fruits of human labor.  The homes in the East Hunters Lake subdivision, below, are inhabited largely by Simerican Civil Liberties Union lawyers, rather than the likes of Johnnie Cochran.  Tamarack Lane counts among its denizens a number of pizza-delivery drivers and construction workers.  And the biggest castle on the block is inhabited by none other than record-industry bigwig Wendell Mucho Maas, who moved to Sebring Heights after becoming disillusioned with the arcane scientific references and thickly layered run-on sentences of San Narciso.  Mr. Maas is known throughout the industry for his fair dealing -- he's rumored to be renting several Waltham Road properties to punk sensations the Paranoids at the paltry sum of two Simoleons per month.)  Note the extensive use of dead-end lanes, forcing through traffic to use main arterial Hunters Lake Blvd., which is itself lined with noise-shielding greenbelts.

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4) Another shot of the Hunters Lake area, with a view of the Paddington hybrid stack/overpass (designed by Sebring Heights civil engineers to allow route transfer and route continuity on both Paddington Road and Hunters Lake Boulevard, without resorting to dangerous merges or noisy, costly higher-capacity roads.)  This neighborhood is cozy and quiet, yet nestled right in the corner of the bustling Westowne business community -- offering the best of both worlds to those Sims with the Simoleons to afford it.  (To paraphrase SimLoc, See the freshness?  It's tucked-in!)

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5) Of course, all scientific experiments take on, to a greater or lesser degree, the distortions inherent to the media in which they are performed, and SimCity is no exception to that rule.  Block-after-block-after-block of uninterrupted single-family homes, Lakeville, MN-style, simply won't do in the SimCity milieu -- those Sim commuters get awful testy at having to drive more than a mile or two to reach their principal locus of productive economic activity.  (Sim sociologists speculate that this has to do with the technological limitations of the Sim entertainment industry -- the largest iPod now available in SimNation has a capacity of only 512 MB, barely enough for 100 songs, which an ADHD-addled Sim would scroll through in a space of under two blocks.)  SO... it became necessary to scatter small chunks of Light Commercial throughout the suburb (as one might see with the corner barbershop or market in a city proper), including a few developments of greater density than one would ordinarily see in a fringe area like Sebring Heights.  Frontenac Village, below, was modeled on the urban village plan, with mixed-use zoning along a well-manicured boulevard.  It was inspired by the Uptown area of St. Paul, MN (boutiques among brownstones and row houses dating from the 1920s) and the Excelsior Blvd. approach to Uptown Minneapolis (though it's considerably smaller than both these large-scale neighborhoods.)  Note the large grassy knoll on the western end of the parkway, which serves the dual function of preserving a lower *average* density for the city as a whole, and pointing the motorist's attention into the neighborhood as she exits the Stack.  (It also provides a place for Deal River's conspiracy-theory community to hold its weekly luncheons.  Though these individuals persist in the elaborate pretense of wording their communiques in Esperanto so the rest of us can't find them... come on, think like a conspiracy theorist, where ELSE would you hold a meeting?  That's about the extent of their sanity, however -- most of their theories are pretty crackpot.  For one, this proposition that the irregularities in the surface of hamburger meat conceal information about the true origins of Simanity, therefore making it of paramount importance that everyone continue eating meat so the truth can remain buried.  Then one of them suddenly got the notion that Deal River's downtown streets are secretly named after 1980s indie-rock albums -- and at just that moment, the (needless to say, black) helicopter of radio station WDRR flew ominously overhead, confirming this poor man's deepest suspicions.  Hell, one of them even insists that each and every resident of Deal River is merely a collection of ones and zeros residing in a plastic box in a far-off mystical land called Minnesota, administered by a strange (and PRESUMABLY benevolent) man who subsists largely on burritos, runs a pirate radio station, never shaves, and sleeps almost as infrequently.  Kids these days... where do they GET this stuff?  )

 

6) Even suburbs have a few places that are hospitable to the aspiring urban bohemian, where those who are ISO something other than 3BR 2BA HDWD FLR can get what passes for funky on the great Midwestern plains.  (In other words, your 16-year-old kid who'd rather be cruising the Quinlan Strip in Deal River proper, but who lacks the good fortune to possess a parentally funded gas card.)  Sebring Heights' supply of these characters usually congregates on or around Waltham Road, where coffeehouses, do-it-yourself art museums, and even the occasional indie record store / TOBACCO pipe shop have carved in a niche near Sebring City College.  (Note also the highrise office/condo complex in the foreground -- these are becoming far more common along freeways in the edge cities of the Midwest, those suburbs-with-an-identity-crisis like Bloomington, MN and Schaumburg, IL.)

 

7) Ah, the place to see and be seen in Sebring Heights... the Salem Green Country Club.  This is where the real movers and shakers of the west Deal River metro come to schmooze -- including turntable manufacturing magnates (we still love our vinyl), executives of the Crimson Permanent Assurance (a bit dinged-up from their encounter with Papist topography, but ultimately no worse for the wear), some of your more prominent klezmer DJs, and -- in a local peculiarity that would confound even the likes of Charles Fort -- itinerant haggis salesmen with club feet.  Note the Frontenac-style neighborhood just north of the country club -- this once-depressed area is being redeveloped to match what downtown Sebring Heights would have looked like, had the burg evolved as a more typical American town rather than a bedroom suburb.  (Raleigh Avenue is also a pretty good example of the greenbelt concept in action -- thanks again to those wonderful folks who designed Scottsdale, AZ.)

 

And now, lest you think I'm COMPLETELY insane, something that's a bit more like the suburbia everyone's used to.  This is the quiet, leafy subdivision of Weston, located well southwest of the whine of 29th and Raleigh traffic, and separated from the small town of Sebring (from which the heights eventually got their name) by the greenbelt in the lower-left corner of the photo.

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[teddyrised 1]

Hi everyone! I would also like to post some pictures of my suburb. I am currently working on a region called Botania which is featured in my CJ... enjoy the photos!















Enjoy

[jacqulina 162]

wonderfull suburbs you guys beautifull work

[Max-Emil 0]

hi.

I want to reask a one of the first questions in this thread (I never saw an answer to it), and it's about the first suburb-picture :

How do you get only one style of house?

M-E

[soldyne 111]

I think it is time to revive this great thread with some pics from my latest CJ update:

hope that sparks some more interest in suburbs (and in my CJ )

[Compromise 1]

soldyne, nice houses although that highway may be a little noisy.

[shivsood 5]

are'nt most real-life suburbs quite dense? Most of these seem a little "small town" to me. They do however look really nice, great work!

[sepsis 17]

Socialist State of Rodina

The outskirts of Vodo-Varbinsk, a northern city very close to the Russian border:

[Cjah 15]

OMG....amazing Sepsis!

[sloppet 3]

yeah, that's really a good one sepsis!

Great wrok soldyne!

[soldyne 111]

Thank you sloppet! and yes, compromise,  that highway might be noisy, however, the trees help dissipate some of the sound.

although, now that you mention it I may look up those sound barriers on the stex and see what I can do with em...

[Glenni 1,445]

Sepsis: OMG dude,you have really captured the socialist feel in those pics.

Soldyne: nice suburbs, i like it oh and thanks for using my houses i didnt really expect ppl to use em since they were so "special"

[mr.skyscrape 1]

There are some real good suburbs here, a real insperation. I think i'll show a few of my burbs.

These are some pictures from my CJ:

And another one:

[mattb325 28,880]

Wow everyone - these suburbs are really awesome, and each one so different in feel...here's a shot of one of my suburbs...

[Compromise 1]

mattb325, nice, you residents seem to like trees. 

[nl1 0]

My suburbs

[capitol1 1]

matt b, you got a nice looking burb their..although it kind of looks small..

[kcen422 1]

Here's mine...

[tomdapom 79]

Well here is a sneak peak of some suburbs of my new CJ, Dallington! (coming soon!)

[capitol1 1]

awsome tomdapom i truely like how its built on a hill and its barely noticable..except in some parts of the second shot..

[shivsood 5]

some great work here, sepdis urs seem very realistic for a russian city

[SpecialEddie 3]

Wow, Sepsis. Yours is really depressing.

[sepsis 17]

SpecialEddie Wow, Sepsis. Yours is really depressing.quote>

 

You say?

[Mikeaut1 261]

Great suburbs everyone!!

[Kippis05 2]

wow, great suburbs, everybody! I can't wait to make one as stunning as these!

[capitol1 1]

thats some scary lookin houses..i would be confused as top which one i live in!

I also love the diagnal streets too nice job.

Heres a fairly small part to half a large tile of suburbs in my cj