Maximizing educational coverage

[Meg 368]

I was intrigued with Sharr's experiment about maximizing educational coverage. I wanted to try it, real time, using no cheats, and see how the numbers looked.

This is my second attempt at it. The first kinda went sour because I built the subway system too soon and didn't plan for several things. (and because I'm far from a expert at this since this is my first sims game.) So I took the lessons learned in my earlier city and here are the results.

I just got my first Ryan Apartments ever! I know many people are bored with Ryans but I had never seen one before. I figured now would be a good time to share the results. First, the basic stats for the city:

The layout uses Sharr's flower arrangement for the schools.

I built the city a section at a time, putting the schools in as I built each section. The EQ rose very quickly.

and is high across all age groups.

Although, for some reason, the opinion poll for education is the lowest in the city. I can't explain that one.

Looking at the financial side, income has been higher than expenses from very early on.

The total balance took a heavy hit the first few years as I was building the city but, since income was higher than expenses, it did turn around. You can also see the hits where I built the airport and the courthouse and later as I built the subway a bit at a time.

The major through roads use the transportation island pattern: two roads with an island in between. I have bus stops every 6 or 7 tiles. The subway system is progressing.

The traffic doesn't seem too bad:



The odd thing is that the schools are very sparsely attended. The official guide said that sims aren't born at any particular age. "Think of it as when they're released from their parents' basement." Apparently a lot of mine are skipping childhood. Which is good since it's easy to keep the schools funded.

I use a lot of museums, roughly one for each elementary school. I guess that is keeping a high EQ for the older sims and they are passing that along to the younger ones. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few decades.

I still need to finish the subway system, finish changing the density on the zoning and add more small parks here and there. After that, I'm not sure what else I can do with this city.

It might be time for me to do something radical like try building on a large tile or building near water or on terrain that isn't flat or using landmarks or making a more realistic looking city or any of the other zillion things I haven't tried yet.

[Sharr 6]

SkiGeek,

That looks frickin' awesome. What are Jobs and Pop like? I'm curious to see the amount of jobs at the varying levels.

EDIT: would also like to see what pollution is like, for air and water... I'm curious!

[Meg 368]

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On 4/26/2003 2:07:05 AM Sharr wrote:

SkiGeek,

That looks frickin' awesome. What are Jobs and Pop like? I'm curious to see the amount of jobs at the varying levels.

EDIT: would also like to see what pollution is like, for air and water... I'm curious!

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Thank you, Sharr! I'm glad you like it. Your test was the inspiration for this city.

About the Jobs & Pop . . . naturally, the graph with all of them together is fairly useless . . .

so let's break it down. It's easier to see on separate graphs but when you do that the scale changes so I have to look twice to make sure I'm comparing things right.

Here is residential . . .

and commercial services . . .

and there is a lot of high wealth commercial office.

Here is the industrial without the high-tech. I don't understand those dirty industry jobs. I can't find any dirty industry in the city. Is this graph of jobs in the city or of where the sims in the city have jobs? There is a dirty city next door. Some of the sims here might have jobs there but would those jobs be included on this graph?

On the graph below, the other industry lines are so flat you can't really see them. Lots of high-tech but still no larva breeding. Haven't had that since I installed patch 2. It might be because my industrial sections are only one block deep running along the corners. My larva breeding in other cities was in the middle of a large industrial section several blocks deep.

As to pollution, the water pollution graph shows that farms used to be here. I like getting the Farmer's Market and then bulldozing the farms.

I should check the ordinances on water use. Or maybe high rises just need that much.

As to air pollution, it is climbing, with some weird, unexplained dips in there.

and as someone said in the transit thread, you can see the routes they take.

One thing that seems odd to me after reading that mass transit thread, this city has no railroads. It has an airport and roads connecting to all it's neighborhoods, only one of which is actually functioning.

Thanks again for your nice words. It isn't the megalopolis that some others have but it's the most successful city I've built so far.

[Pooty 228]

Nice education coverage, SkiGeek.

[Sharr 6]

SkiGeek, that looks wonderful - a very healthy city! What have you put on the transportation islands other than the transportation - grass with trees? That might help cut down pollution on traffic (although you are blessed with almost none) once the population rises some more.

Please update us as your population grows!

[Meg 368]

Thanks, Pooty.  Thanks, Sharr.

The transportation islands are still fairly vacant.  Other than bus and subway stops, what I have is mostly flower gardens.   

I''ve thrown in a few tennis and basketball courts for variety.  Not that I think that is a good place for them.  I can''t imagine either the drivers or the players being happy about games being played on the median strip.

[ftisbb 0]

skigeek - as the others have said, i think you have done a wonderful job with this city!  ... i am not sure what other measurable stat one could hope to attain ... you numbers look fantastic across the boards ...

i know i would be interested to see the data view for your zoning and perhaps get a more clear picture of your road layout ...for a population of 72K or so, i have to say that your traffic conjstion map is most impressive, especially considering that you have a decent pop of med and high wealth peeps ... i know the guide says that med wealth peep will use the MT if it is the quickest route, but from actual game experience, i am not so sure the percentages are as high, unless you employ some kind of paternal traffic pattern ...

more info and pics would be great, but in the meantime keep up the great work!

:-) 

[Meg 368]

Thank you, ftisbb. I appreciate the feedback. I am very pleased with the numbers. I still don't have one of those tall, pretty, blue buildings, though. But I'm under 100,000 so I guess I just haven't gotten to that point yet.

Here is the data view. The attached file is the jpg version of the excel file of the layout. That shows a little more detail.

The layout basically has the schools in Sharr's flower design (those are the green square blobs), the residential around them, then a layer of commercial around that, and a layer of industrial around the outside. I think that what is keeping the traffic low. Most residential buildings aren't that far from a commercial area. And I have lots of bus stops and subways stops.

It's difficult for me to figure out what pictures to show you guys. It's not like I can say "here is the commercial district" because there really isn't one. But here goes . . .

Here is what the center of town looks like:

My park system could use a little work. I mean, would you want your kids to play there? It's not quite as bad as the playground in the middle of the railroad roundabout but it's in that direction. I was trying to cram as much residential into the school coverage area as I could and the parks kinda suffered.

The buildings are new to me although I realize they are old hat to many people.

And, even with all this education, those delinquent sims still draw on the buildings.

Thank you for words of encouragement. In the next city, I want to work in some flavor. The numbers here are great but I'm developing an aversion to the grid pattern. Maybe I could separate the neighborhoods and put them on a diagonal and run railroads in between them or something. I wonder how much I can un-grid it and still retain the educational coverage.

[Sharr 6]

LOL, I have been conversing with Arron and BB about this concept, which I''m calling the "charmbracelet" - which is exactly what you are considering doing, separating the neighborhoods and connecting them by rail. Arron warned me about forcing the rich to use the rail, so make sure you still keep roads functional.

I called it a charmbracelet because it would essentially be a ring of connected neighborhoods hanging off of rail, and each neighborhood being a "charm" on the "bracelet."

[Meg 368]

As they say, great minds think alike

On some level, I was thinking about it in terms of the Baltimore/Washington corridor.  Lots of industry up in Baltimore, not much down in Washington, with commuter rail connecting the two, stopping at the residential neighborhoods in between.   In real life, lots of people take those trains to work.  I did it myself for years.

[Sharr 6]

Conceptually, that would work really well in region play IF the stupid commute times made sense in this game.

For a standalone city, however, I was thinking of maybe putting a highway on the inside of the ring and only connecting it to neighborhoods that I want to be rich. I haven''t put an effort into laying out the design yet, but those are the concepts I''ll be working with when I start tooling with that design.

It''ll be an exercise in wealth isolation, mass transit, and some pollution control. It will likely be a modified grid with some pretty sprawl.

[Adley 0]

Hmm, very good work skigeek.


I''m thinking of trying that idea with the rail, cause one of my friends said that you can  put rail into industry and it will function.. Thing is, I think, since hes still playing sc3k, hes going by that model. but I''m gonna try that in my new city.. Prolly end up using cheats till the city gets big enough to support itself tho..

[Stasher 0]

What school bus coverage are you utilizing? I recently started keeping my schoold buses on elementarys to a minimum, I felt the money was a monthly waste so the small investment for a schools seemed smarter. With this in mind my residential blocks are smaller with a high school and hospital in between the blocks.

[Meg 368]

That sounds good, Sharr. Keep us posted on how it goes.
Thanks, Adley. I think you are right. We know that many things worked differently from the previous version. I

[ftisbb 0]

thanks for the layout skigeek! looks great!

sharr - first, love the charmbracelet term - perfect!  unfortunately, until the commute times bug is remedied, i think we have little to no chance of actually implementing this on a large scale ... i was doing some quick tests using small maps and i was getting some ridiculous commute times just traveling through one into a third for jobs ... now, it was ALL low wealth sims using ALL MT so there certainly was some walking time in there, but ... i was at about 112 mins ... i had a res/com city on a small map with a pop of 135K and 20K cs jobs connected to a dirty ind city with about 50K jobs and a IM city next to it with about 8K jobs ... subway lines are blood red with peeps ... a way to combat that would be to have sep lines (same would apply for rail) connecting each city, but that would not address the commute time ... in fact, it would probably make it worse as te sims would have to do another train-walking-train transfer ... :-(

[Meg 368]

You're welcome, bb. and thanks

I was thinking about this and had a duh!" moment.



See that area on the right side going into the city next door? That is the path to the landfills. That pollution is created primarily by garbage trucks. There are a few jobs in that city but not many.

So, in theory, if I put another landfill in the city on the other side, I imagine the air polutions would even out a bit. It should even decrease a bit in the center since the garbage trucks won't have to go all the way across the city. It's worth a try.

[Sharr 6]

ahhhh!!

Give it a shot and show us how that works out, ski.

BB, I''m thinking that the charmbracelet could work on a medium or large map. When commute times are fixed, they can string the whole region together.

I''ll post in my book-long thread with progress when I get to that.

[Meg 368]

Here are some early results of my garbage truck experiment.

First, I took some screenshots as a baseline.

. . .

Then I put a landfill in the city to the west and evened out the garbage deals so roughly half was going east and half was going west. A few years later, it looked like this:

. . .

That seemed kinda boring (although you can see the route to the western landfill) so I changed the deals so that *all* of the garbage went to the west. A few years later, it looked like this:

. . .

I thought it was pretty cool that, once I quit running garbage trucks through the east side of the town, the air pollution on that side cleared up noticeably. Oddly enough, there wasn't a corresponding increase on the west side.

In the meantime, the pollution going north and south can be explained. I put cities there that are exporting their garbage into this city, which is then passing it onto the west. I know, it violates the strict scientific method to throw another garbage variable into the mix but I needed those cities.

Except for spots on the transportation islands, every tile was full. The high tech demand was going through the roof but no high tech industry was being built. Population was starting to drop because they couldn't find jobs.
I foolishly rezoned the industry as high density. As far as I can tell, that was just throwing money away. Years past and nothing different developed.

So I started cities to the north and south that are mostly high tech industry. Each of those cities now has roughly 4,000 high tech jobs, no residential, no schools. This brought the high tech demand down to mid-way on the graph. (I started to put some commercial there since demand for that is high but I decided not to give up on getting high rise commercial.)

So far, the results have been great. Population is increasing, as you can see from the charts above. I've gotten several buildings that I've never seen before (Galvin Corp, Bell-Towers, Knight Bldg,

Reed Pl

). And I have lots of rewards that I have no place to put. (Tourist Trap, City Zoo, Resort Hotel, Major League Stadium).

I'm not sure what to do now. I'm tempted to bulldoze the high tech here and increase it in the northern and southern cities and then use the space for some of the reward buildings. The alternative is to bulldoze the commercial or residential areas that aren't growing. Or to just say the heck with the reward buildings, which seems wrong. Although I have decided that I don't want to use the Country Club. It always seems to degrade the buildings around it. What do you guys do at this point?

[Meg 368]

An update on how the city is doing . . .

(EDIT: I did wind up bulldozing a few blocks of high tech to add the reward buildings. I didn't plan for them since I had never gotten that far before. But I have lots of high tech in adjacent cities so I figured this city wouldn't miss a few blocks of it.)

I'm getting the cool tall buildings.

. . .

The buses are doing the conga line thing, just like in the transportation thread

And the mayor rating is at 100. I didn't think it did that.

This is the first time I've had a city over 100,000 and I'm pretty psyched

[Chrise 0]

I found this thread really informative, thanks for posting your screen captures as well, I am going to incorporate your education building layout and your bus layout into my cities.

I always get crap cities Thanks SkiGeek

[Meg 368]

Thank you, Chris

[Sharr 6]

Ski, that''s fabulous!

Can we get an overview shot? How are traffic, jobs & pop, and pollution?

[Adley 0]

Cool Ski. so apparently garbage trucks really do  affect the air pollution. keep up the experimenting.

[Meg 368]

Thanks! I've had fun with it. I like to minimize the hassles in the city and this one has had relatively few.

Another Update. Here is an overview.

and here is a closer up shot of downtown

The combined Jobs & Pop graph doesn't look too different.

The residential chart shows an upturn in medium and high wealth and a downturn in low wealth.

Commercial services don't look all that different.

and the high wealth commercial office took a turn upward.

Here is the industrial without the high-tech. I did find some of that dirty industry. A Farley's Foundry was hiding in there. I should have gotten a screenshot of that, a dirty industry building lurking amongst the high tech but I thought of it too late. I never did find the other one but apparently it's gone now.

Here it is with the high-tech. You can see where I bulldozed a few blocks to make room for the rewards I hadn't planned for. The two adjacent cities now have a total of about 9,000 high tech jobs.

As for pollution, the water pollution graph shows that it is rising. I'm not sure what makes it rise when it does. Could replacing a water pump cause that? I've had to replace a few along the way. I guess they got old and died.

. . .

As for air pollution, it is going up as well. I don't know what is causing that stairstep effect. It seems as though those steps have to be happening for a reason.

. . .

As to the traffic, it is starting to show a few red spots.

And I can't forget the education. It took a few hits as the high rises came in but it is still high.

And looks good across the board.

Thanks again for your interest in this experiment. I've enjoyed it.

[Pooty 228]

LoL! Nice buildings! I like the row of buses! Keep up the good work SkiGeek!

[Sharr 6]

Wow, this is fabulous!  Very nice and healthy.  Could we get a look at the region? Sorry for making you do all this work with the screenshots, but it''s fascinating to see such a healthy city that can pretty much stand on its own.

[Meg 368]

Thanks, Sharr. You do keep me busy using Photoshop Here is a shot of the region.< It's one of those boring plains regions with no water or hills. One of these days, I need to practice terraforming.

The other medium city, Voyager, was my previous attempt at this; Piper Maru is feeding it power. I made a few mistakes in that one so I decided to try again.

Anasazi is the city we have been talking about.The

Blessing Way

and Our Town are the cities with the high tech that didn't fit into Anasazi.

I started out with just Apocrypha feeding power to Anasazi but it wasn't designed for the expansion that was needed when Anasazi started feeding power to the high tech cities. So I added Teso Dos Bichos, which is also sending power to Anasazi.

I really need to come up with a better way to do dirty industry. Those cities are just kinda thrown together.

[Sharr 6]

You''re doing great, Ski! I''m very impressed with the city''s health. Once the region grows, more things will open up for Anasazi - like the resort hotel reward becoming available. I am kinda intrigued by the farmland. I might make a rural neighboring city. I have one question, that won''t require screenshots.

How much does it cost to import power? I''ve never traded power or water; I wonder if it''s cost effective?

[Adley 0]

I''ve never cared to business deal power or water myself.. I prefer to do it myself.

[ftisbb 0]

How much does it cost to import power?  I''ve never traded power or water; I wonder if it''s cost effective?

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importing power/water can be a very - VERY costly endeavor (and subsequently a very profitable deal for the city serving it up) ... to try to "even it up", i will usually try to do something along the lines of having an industrial neightbor provide power and garbage services while having the other side of the deal serve up the water to the industry city ... since industry really eats up the water, this seems to be the most balanced trade ... and of course, you alleviate the worries of having contaminated pumps shutting down in the ind city because the water is pumped in ...

:-)