The Inner Workings of Demand and Growth

[Ragamuffin 9]

Good evening Simtropolis, I have a rather pressing question for you all. I've been building a nice city. Oh, it's very pretty. And the demand is looking great! All the bars are in the positive. And the demand is pretty high. I have some commercial demands at 6,000+. But the problem is, when I zone, things just don't seem to grow any more. I have water, power, education, safety, short commute times, parks nearby, all that good stuff. The desirability view shows that they should love it. But more often than not, buildings just don't grow much or at all in some places. It's strange, because I have huge skyscrapers in one location, and across the highway, not more then ten tiles away, I can't get anything higher than retail shops to grow. I'm just wondering what factors I am missing here. I obviously have enough demand and desirability. I'm zoning with high density. Isn't that all I need?

[Mister Giggles 310]

In SimCity 4, traffic produces noise 4 tiles out from the source. You'll notice this most with high wealth residential, as it's one of their complaints that appears on the hover query.

This same noise produces customers, and high wealth commercials consider it a primary desirability factor. The easiest way to see this is to zone some residential next to the commercials. You'll notice larger buildings growing.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Much depends on your cap status. Does your city have an airport? An airport lifts the commercial demand cap quite a bit. You can do other things to lift demand caps. Some parks are quite powerful in this regard. Try a tennis court or two associated with some of your recreational facilities.

To get a real handle on your demands and caps consider adding one of the census repositories. The one by BSC group produces the most statistics, and may in fact come in the category of "too much information".