Landmarks

[Odainsaker 2,135]

Perhaps a few additional tools would aid us with some of the less object-oriented landmarks.

A "national park" zone-like tool could aid us with terrain landmarks. A tile designated by the area tool as a "national park" or "wilderness preserve" would have some some populist park and tourism effect, with an overall city effect whose magnitude was tied in part on the number of tiles zoned such. As an example, a special steep mountain with landmark potential (like Diamond Head on Waikiki or Sugar Loaf in Rio de Janeiro) could be marked by this tool, and while visually nothing has changed to the terrain features or foliage, the involved tiles are now aggregatively calculable for a landmark or tourist effect. Perhaps in additional to the total number of continguous tiles, the total number of trees, the steepness of topography, and/or the amount of water is also factored into the calculation to increase the total effect. The "national park" tool would have compatible effects with actual recreational structures like ploppable city parks, and the creation or removal of "national park" tiles, or alterations to terrain on such designated tiles, would have varying degrees of positive and negative effects on mayor rating or reputation.

Something similar could be done with a "historic zone," where not only could individual buildings could be zoned historic, but whole districts spanning multiple tiles and blocks. Some sort of feedback system could be made such that the larger the contiguous historic district or the more total number of historic marked structures a city has, the greater its potential beneficial tourist or pedestrian commercial effects. Tiles marked historic would not allow their currently built buildings to change and might suffer a small tax percentage decrease, and the creation or removal of historic zones would affect mayor rating and reputation.

We should also have a "plaza zone" or "public space" zone, where we could paint urban plazas or gathering spaces onto swaths of tiles. These would have localized tourist, commercial, and mayor rating effects, whose magnitude would be affected by the number of tiles and the numbers of pedestrians, and which would have positive feedback effects on surrounding commercial tiles. Pedestrians, however, would be affected by the immediate proximity of other zone types, like stores, apartments, recreation, or civic facilities, such that if urban public spaces become to expansive, empty dead zones are formed where the maintenance costs of the vast pavement might eventually outweigh the tourist or commercial benefits.

Combined with the familiar ploppable landmarks, these would cover most of what we need: object landmarks, terrain feature and natural space landmarks, urban district landmarks, and urban space landmarks. A single "Landmark Zone" tool strikes me as strange, artifical, and overly broad. We can quibble on the specific tool names or their strategies or balances to achieve certain results, but I think the player-designated route remains the simplest and most intuitive way to achieve much of what we are looking to do, broadly using city design concepts that even many non-simcity fans will already be familiar with, without creating too much Insane Modder's Minutae of Landmark Effects Properties that would be needed to have naturally evolving landmarks. Afterall, it would take a crazy supercomputing simulator engine to calculate the landmark effect upon property values and commuting sims of building a handsome church with belfry atop a hill at the end of axial boulevard framed by a line of linden trees and wall-to-wall boutiques. Granted, I would actually prefer a SimCity that somehow factored more urban design and environmental psychology in this way, but that would require a complete rethinking of the core concepts and tools of SimCity, and unspeakable years of redevelopment. We have yet to get a game that allowed us to set property setback lines, easements, building heights, built-to lines, or even mixed zoning, so I won't expect a simulator that can calculate view corridors and visual sightline aesthetics anytime soon.

Amusingly, many real world preservations, particularly in the U.S., must fret with trying to fit real buildings or structures that have local cultural or urban design presence (a form of "landmark"), but which have no special "historic" significance, into a preservation framework where the existing legal criteria or designations involve establishing "historical" qualities. In the U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court case City of Boerne v. Flores involved such issues, as the city of Boerne, Texas, tried to designate a local Catholic church as contributing property to a historic district in order to save what was deemed a popular and beloved building from radical reconstruction by a church congregation undergoing rapid expansion. The church building itself did not have particularly "historic" qualities, but was well recognized as a beautiful local landmark that many citizens did not wnat to see lost. While the case ultimately was ruled and the issues re-legislated based on the conflict between the simple exercise of civic regulation and the burdens of regulation upon religious freedoms (the church lost the specific case, but Congress subsequently rewrote the laws to the church's favor), it did expose for many preservationists and urban designers that the "historic preservation" toolkit maybe insufficient, and that some form of "landmark," "important heritage," or "urban impact" designation not tied to "historical" qualities may be needed. Other countries, such as Japan, can issue designations they call "important cultural property," and even some living people can be so designated in recognition of some special artistic merit or talent. I suppose it could be interesting or even usefully proselytizing if we could define our SimCity toolkit in similar ways.

  Edited March 16, 2012 by Odainsaker  

[Catmando 7]

Perhaps a few additional tools would aid us with some of the less object-oriented landmarks.

A "national park" zone-like tool could aid us with terrain landmarks. A tile designated by the area tool as a "national park" or "wilderness preserve" would have some some populist park and tourism effect, with an overall city effect whose magnitude was tied in part on the number of tiles zoned such. As an example, a special steep mountain with landmark potential (like Diamond Head on Waikiki or Sugar Loaf in Rio de Janeiro) could be marked by this tool, and while visually nothing has changed to the terrain features or foliage, the involved tiles are now aggregatively calculable for a landmark or tourist effect. Perhaps in additional to the total number of continguous tiles, the total number of trees, the steepness of topography, and/or the amount of water is also factored into the calculation to increase the total effect. The "national park" tool would have compatible effects with actual recreational structures like ploppable city parks, and the creation or removal of "national park" tiles, or alterations to terrain on such designated tiles, would have varying degrees of positive and negative effects on mayor rating or reputation.

Something similar could be done with a "historic zone," where not only could individual buildings could be zoned historic, but whole districts spanning multiple tiles and blocks. Some sort of feedback system could be made such that the larger the contiguous historic district or the more total number of historic marked structures a city has, the greater its potential beneficial tourist or pedestrian commercial effects. Tiles marked historic would not allow their currently built buildings to change and might suffer a small tax percentage decrease, and the creation or removal of historic zones would affect mayor rating and reputation.

We should also have a "plaza zone" or "public space" zone, where we could paint urban plazas or gathering spaces onto swaths of tiles. These would have localized tourist, commercial, and mayor rating effects, whose magnitude would be affected by the number of tiles and the numbers of pedestrians, and which would have positive feedback effects on surrounding commercial tiles. Pedestrians, however, would be affected by the immediate proximity of other zone types, like stores, apartments, recreation, or civic facilities, such that if urban public spaces become to expansive, empty dead zones are formed where the maintenance costs of the vast pavement might eventually outweigh the tourist or commercial benefits.

Combined with the familiar ploppable landmarks, these would cover most of what we need: object landmarks, terrain feature and natural space landmarks, urban district landmarks, and urban space landmarks. A single "Landmark Zone" tool strikes me as strange, artifical, and overly broad. We can quibble on the specific tool names or their strategies or balances to achieve certain results, but I think the player-designated route remains the simplest and most intuitive way to achieve much of what we are looking to do, broadly using city design concepts that even many non-simcity fans will already be familiar with, without creating too much Insane Modder's Minutae of Landmark Effects Properties that would be needed to have naturally evolving landmarks. Afterall, it would take a crazy supercomputing simulator engine to calculate the landmark effect upon property values and commuting sims of building a handsome church with belfry atop a hill at the end of axial boulevard framed by a line of linden trees and wall-to-wall boutiques. Granted, I would actually prefer a SimCity that somehow factored more urban design and environmental psychology in this way, but that would require a complete rethinking of the core concepts and tools of SimCity, and unspeakable years of redevelopment. We have yet to get a game that allowed us to set property setback lines, easements, building heights, built-to lines, or even mixed zoning, so I won't expect a simulator that can calculate view corridors and visual sightline aesthetics anytime soon.

Amusingly, many real world preservations, particularly in the U.S., must fret with trying to fit real buildings or structures that have local cultural or urban design presence (a form of "landmark"), but which have no special "historic" significance, into a preservation framework where the existing legal criteria or designations involve establishing "historical" qualities. In the U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court case City of Boerne v. Flores involved such issues, as the city of Boerne, Texas, tried to designate a local Catholic church as contributing property to a historic district in order to save what was deemed a popular and beloved building from radical reconstruction by a church congregation undergoing rapid expansion. The church building itself did not have particularly "historic" qualities, but was well recognized as a beautiful local landmark that many citizens did not wnat to see lost. While the case ultimately was ruled and the issues re-legislated based on the conflict between the simple exercise of civic regulation and the burdens of regulation upon religious freedoms (the church lost the specific case, but Congress subsequently rewrote the laws to the church's favor), it did expose for many preservationists and urban designers that the "historic preservation" toolkit maybe insufficient, and that some form of "landmark," "important heritage," or "urban impact" designation not tied to "historical" qualities may be needed. Other countries, such as Japan, can issue designations they call "important cultural property," and even some living people can be so designated in recognition of some special artistic merit or talent. I suppose it could be interesting or even usefully proselytizing if we could define our SimCity toolkit in similar ways.

Wow! That's a pretty comprehensive plan. I actually really like your idea of national park zoning. It's something I've been wanting to suggest for ages for a new Simcity, but I figured nothing of the sort would come about. A few years back, before Cities XL and maybe during the SC Societies time (but I'm pretty sure before it), I attempted to make a comprehensive list of all ploppable buildings I would like to see in the next installation of Simcity.

I had good intent with the list, but it was doomed to fail. You see, I was thinking like an unimaginative Simcity 4 user. While that term would ideally be a contradiction in terms or at least some kind of heresy, at the time it was no less than a reality. I was thinking in terms of grids and zones with definite size and large, complicated sets of modular buildings all intended to (hopefully) work together. So it wouldn't have made a bad list in Simcity 4, but for a new game, where the idea is to innovate, it was disastrously stupid of me. Here's a few excerpts from one of the pages I found after looking for a while:

...Medium Park with Subway Station

Large Park with Subway Station...

...Sandy Beach to Rocky Beach Transition

Large Sandy Beach to Rocky Beach Transition...

...Amusement Park Small Wooden Rollercoaster

Amusement Park Large Wooden Rollercoaster...

...Canal Small Bridge

Canal Medium Bridge

Canal Large Bridge...

One of my greatest blunders was attempting to make a comprehensive list of the kinds of parks I wanted to see. I started with small grass park sizes without trees, then moved up to with trees, then grass parks with paths, and so on. Then I realized in Simcity there were like a dozen grasses, and how could I not account for even more in the next game?! I considered erasing, but as I looked back at my list I realized that with a little flexibility in the game's design the whole thing would be obsolete. Why should I have to concern myself with sixty-five kinds of well-watered grassy parks when I should be able to plop a few trees and designate the whole area as a park? I don't think I ever brought up the list or the conclusions I gained from it on this site on my old account, but I think the topic's as worthy of mention now as ever.

Now before I delve completely into tangents of tangents about my old ST days, I had a few other comments about what you said. I fully agree on the idea of designating whole city blocks and neighborhoods historic. I wanted to know some particulars, though. Would the buildings necessarily have to be used, or could they sit empty (and city-maintained, of course, so they grow dilapidated) and still generate tourism for the city? And on the topic of city-maintained, would we need a pretty sizable budget for maintaining those buildings if the Sims themselves don't take care of them, or will that not really be a problem? Also, if you're trying to make an entire neighborhood of the city historic, should the overall look of it change at all? For example, would there be old style cobble roads, old style lampposts, etc.? I think this would add to the overall aesthetic look if you were actually making the area historic, but if you bend the intended use of the historic zoning tool even a little bit it might become more of a burden. After all, sidewalk sizes and styles change in Simcity 4 automatically to the type of zoning alongside them, but this can get to be tacky.

Regarding plaza zoning, that would be really nice so long as we have some choice as to what the tiling would look like. After all, there's old-style city plazas, piazzas, squares, etc., that would only really fit with historical looking buildings like old churches and wall-to-wall buildings and the like. The Piazza San Marco in Venice is an example of this. How could that square look good anywhere but exactly where it was, lying before the Basilica and aside the Doge's Palace and Libreria? Alternatively, how could anything but a square of its design look good lying before the Basilica and aside the Doge's Palace and Libreria? Perhaps (assuming you're okay with stylistic changes) if historic zoning and public space zoning could be overlaid. That sounds like a rather messy compromise if you ask me, though. Furthermore, I'd still want to make some changes to such spaces on my own. After all, Central Park isn't just trees and grass; it has the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Belvedere Castle, a skating rink, pedestrian paths, and so on. I would hope such attractions would add to the value of the space rather than devalue it by removing valuable space or something. I suppose if they are all attractions in and of themselves they may contribute, but at this stage it's hard to tell how such things would be considered. After all, the rich don't enjoy being pedestrians in my poor, overgrown Simcity 4 metropolis; just imagine telling them they have public space to walk around in rather than a nice big skyscraper full of new condos.

[meowza 230]

The game should have a landmark to land area ratio limit. A city with excessive landmarks is too ridiculous, and possibly unfair in multiplayer mode.

[Catmando 7]

The game should have a landmark to land area ratio limit. A city with excessive landmarks is too ridiculous, and possibly unfair in multiplayer mode.

I think it's possible to have a natural cap based on balancing the effects of a landmark with the space it takes up and the costs to maintain it. It would be more indirect (so you won't see something like "Your city can have x landmarks at this time") but should still be clear enough when you zone too much and encounter economic problems. That said, I did suggest a cap earlier, so I'm kind of undecided about this.

[MINIggy03 227]

I'd rather designate our own landmarks(like checking a box+fee on any lot) than have to put in real world locations into my city. I've always disliked landmarks since putting those real world lots in my city looked out of place and tacky. I also wouldn't mind seeing them create their own landmarks(that get unlocked through rewards) than have an Eiffel tower or an Egyptian pyramid in my city.

  Edited March 16, 2012 by MINIggy03  

[emperordaniel 1,281]

However, real-world landmarks could be useful in some CJs (especially recreations of real cities such as New York, London, etc), so I'd opt for both designating your own landmarks and the ability to place real ones.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The point about fixed landmarks is that they belong where they are found. The Great Pyramid of Cheops belongs in the Valley of the Kings and nowhere else. The CN Tower belongs in the railway lands in the Toronto Harbor area, etc.

Designating a landmark by endowing it with a tourist attraction agent in the new game should be a sufficient thing to make a landmark. Unless you are recreating a specific city, having a landmark building is a matter of choice and designation. "Make historical" may well be sufficient to send out the agent. Some method needs to be available to endow this feature on terrain.

[Mark Waybill 242]

I think some algorithm or calculation could be made so that a landmark could arise naturally. In a timeline based city a historic district could be saved from redevelopment realistically like say The Rocks in Sydney, or individual historic buildings could be kept. Take the old Court House at Wollongong Harbour- there is a new court house now but this old one dating from the 1850s still stands. Why? because it served multiple uses and is now used for various purposes but certainly not as a Court House. I think if we could change the purpose of a building, that would be useful. Take Ghostbusters. An old fire station becomes a business. This sort of thing can and does and imo should happen. The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney was an old power station and tram shed. Whereas some buildings were always going to be landmarks like Sydney Tower or the Opera House, and I'm sure when they were being built their potential as such was known. If a timeline feature allowed for a long period of building then examples of this changed building usage could be the Tower of London (prison, mint, among other things) Buckingham Palace (still a royal residence but also a tourist attraction) and also the retainment of structures serving their original purpose, like Tower Bridge or the Houses of Parliament.

Depending on how 'smart' the new sims will be, landmarks could arise culturally and socially. A pedestrian precinct (mall, plaza etc) could either become a boring bland public space or a lively bustling cultural zone with markets and cafes and so forth. A run of the mill pub could become under new ownership a trendy live music venue. The possibilities are endless. If Sims can be resourceful like real world developers and entrepreneurs they could of their own accord designate landmarks and evolve areas over time. Places like Darling Harbour or Newcastle or the River Yarra in Melbourne are examples of revitalisation of a former industrial area, retaining some of the features. Then again this 'smart building use' adaptation brings up the whole issue of multi-zoning and all that.

[Cob92 360]

I like the idea of landmarks emerging naturally rather than being plopped in the city. What makes a normal building, park, or area into a landmark could be based on a number of things, including the age of the building, whether it was the first of its kind to appear in the city, whether it has a unique level of park quality or whatever, or the amount of foot traffic in the area (for a Times Square sort of effect). The city would be able to invest money into improvements for rising landmarks to make them more attractive and perhaps even spur the development of additional landmarks in the vicinity. For example, if I have a building in my downtown that has stood for 300 Sim years and has the necessary size to be considered a landmark, I could upgrade it with public tours and allocate money in the city budget to promote tourism in the area. In turn, this might spur the growth of hotels on the adjacent blocks, and one of those hotels could become a landmark, increasing foot traffic in the neighborhood, raising land value, and attracting more businesses to set up in the area, some of which may become lesser landmarks themselves..

[PeterSweet 5]

I want to see the new fastest train like Eurostar, Eurotunnel, London Underground & Bus Lanes, New York Taxis & Subway etc is hoping to add more of these fastest trains to their fleet and create more routes to Florence, Naples and other cities from Rome and Milan and the another countries as well.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I want to see the new fastest train like Eurostar, Eurotunnel, London Underground & Bus Lanes, New York Taxis & Subway etc is hoping to add more of these fastest trains to their fleet and create more routes to Florence, Naples and other cities from Rome and Milan and the another countries as well.

Wrong topic I think. You should probably copy this to the Wish List.

[trar 335]

I want to keep the traditional landmarks. They can really do things for a city other than 'spice it up', especially since they got a more pronounced YIMBY effect in SC4 and were also rename-able. Heck, I'd like to see ALL the landmarks from the previous SimCity games (official DLC included) and then some (or at least the same capability to make landmarks ourselves as we can in SC4). Care would have to be taken to make sure that the landmarks menu is properly organized (with the possibilites of user-made content being placed in there of course; i think it should be easy for everyone to move icons around the menus as they see fit); submenus are not out of the question.

If the 'make historical' button is kept (it probably will), there should be certain positive attributes to historical buildings (and other things) that have been standing for a long time; having them turn into bona-fide landmarks eventually (as in real life) would be cool.

I'm also okay with modular customization (including already-built real landmarks).

  Edited March 19, 2012 by biff  

[jacksunny 741]

Sorry for the bump. From this article:

Well, you can put down a landmark and it'll change the graphical tone of the buildings around you, so it'll look more like say, London or Berlin or Paris. It doesn't change your whole city to look like Paris but it basically affects the buildings around it once you place down one of these landmarks.

So there will be landmarks in the game, at least in the deluxe edition.

[Mark Waybill 242]

Hmm. Change the graphical tone of the neighbourhood. So if I place the Tower or the bridge nearby it, or the Houses of Parliament or what have you that'll make nearby shops turn into tourist stores selling union jack plastered products and figurines of beefeaters etc? That is partly realistic, but I'd still like to nominate or allow organic growth of non famous buildings in a city to become landmarks over time. An algorithm relating to relative height (Space Needle, Sydney Tower etc), position (cliff top, harbourside etc) or a mixture of variables could be used. Alternatively some buildings could be purpose built as 'landmarks' like the Opera House on Bennelong Point which was always going to be a local attraction however much it also serves a useful purpose. These could arise in extremely high land value areas.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

The Space Needle would be a wonderful way to generate local Seattle flavor and put a height restriction (unless height restriction zoning ends up being implimented, which it seems not to be)! Pike Place market can make nice brick buildings, as well as pioneer square. Heck, even Washington Mutual Tower (or Mezaton Mutual Tower, which is my avatar, it was made in sketchup) could add some more local flavor.

  Edited April 24, 2012 by OcramSeattle  

[Moskva 75]

I would want Landmarks in. Can't live without placing the Fernsehturm 2 in my high-rise downtown .

[gweed123 33]

I am fine with landmarks, as long as there is a good variety, and they are not all from the USA... nothing against the US... but yes, I think we need a bit more variety this time around.

As to the other discussion about cluttered landmark menus... well yes that is simply because the current game was never designed with 10 yrs of custom content in mind. Hopefully this time around they will make the menus much more customizeable and expandable... something similar to how document folders work with sub-menus/folders under main menus/folders... hardly a new idea there.

What I'd like to see is custom content, rather than simply all being dumped into the 'landmarks' tab, be divided up based on type, and have a separate 'custom content' tab under residential/commercial/industrial/civic/transportation. That way if you're looking for a nice commercial building to fill in a specific spot, you just have to look under your commercial custom content.

I'd also like to see an overall 'custom content menu', where I can look at all of the custom content I have, choose which ones I want to be ploppable, which ones I want to be growable, and maybe even choose how often I want them to appear. And have a delete button obviously so that I don't have to go dredging through the plug-ins folder to find it.

Also, I love having landmarks, including custom created ones. I've grown tired of creating my own cities, so what I do most often is duplicate actual cities, which includes finding as many buildings from that city that I can, and placing them where they exist in that city. It just doesn't look the same when you have the street and zoning pattern, but you can't recognize any buildings from that city, it just doesn't seem as real.

For example, I have most of the BATs of the buildings in downtown Toronto. Only the CN Tower was provided in the official game, and the city just doesn't look the same without those custom buildings. I hope whoever made those makes them for SC5 too, because I know that I'll be itching to re-recreate Toronto in SC5, but it won't be the same without those buildings in the downtown.

  Edited April 30, 2012 by gweed123  

[geaorgeW 0]

Finding a dealership is hard.

  Edited June 30, 2012 by geaorgeW  

[BaconMushroomMelt 0]

My preference would be if you manage your zones well enough, the chances of a landmark building there will get higher. Once the game decides a landmark will be built there it'll pick a random landmark that hasn't been built in the region yet, pan the camera over to the zone and notify you, at which point you can either accept or decline its construction. Since the amount of landmarks per region will be limited, it can also make the game more competitive and players might race to build landmarks.