How much will SimCity change in dev?

[croxis 150]

People seem to be making assumption that these are hard and fast rules, ie if it is on a highway it MUST be high zoning. This may not be the case - road type and traffic volume influence the zone density and what actual building type shows up. It will all depend on the zone rules.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I hope that I can put height limits and I hope that this game changes for the better in development. I certainly hope it does not change for the worse.

[ziroi 14]

Again I ask, what if I want to make an area that resembles areas in the Bronx or Crown Heights Brooklyn? There are many high density apartment buildings on one way streets. It is not uncommon to see this in NYC. And also think about Wall Street or the upper east side of Manhattan. Mostly small one way streets with sky scrapers. And also Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn is a wide avenue-like street (parkway with six lanes and service lanes bringing it to 8 lanes) and it has two and three family houses and mansions pretty much the whole stretch. I don't see how density by transport network type would allow for emulating some real life situations when it comes to zoning. So if someone wants to create Manhattan, all the streets must be avenues? come on.

I think croxis makes a good point that we're assuming the rules are "hard and fast". As I mentioned in my earlier post, the model that seems to be in the works is not perfect and has flaws, but the two rules that are in play is the transport type AND the volume of the traffic. If your one-way street is busy (as the case might be in Manhattan), then it seems reasonable to conclude that skyscrapers could appear there in time. SimCity is going more "organic" as the Maxis devs put it, so surely they've looked at models of cities in Europe and other places where tiny streets are surrounded by high-density buildings and are developing with this vision in mind.

[LivingInThePast 364]

So, if it's on a highway, it MUST be high zoning? That is INCREDIBLY UNTRUE. In rural areas, houses and farms directly connect to the highway. In the suburbs, it mostly contains sprawling commercial (big box stores! fast food! restaurants!) Even in the high-density downtowns, it's usually parking lots and low density that's immediately on the highway.

[Cob92 360]

If they want to have organic density determination, it should be linked to land value rather than traffic volume. In reality, high density construction only becomes viable when land is pricey enough and there's sufficient demand for that kind of space. Look at the big Sunbelt cities: low density sprawl bustling with traffic and wide six-lane boulevards. Only now that land values have shot up in city cores do we see densification in those cities.

[Thetford 22]

If they want to have organic density determination, it should be linked to land value rather than traffic volume. In reality, high density construction only becomes viable when land is pricey enough and there's sufficient demand for that kind of space. Look at the big Sunbelt cities: low density sprawl bustling with traffic and wide six-lane boulevards. Only now that land values have shot up in city cores do we see densification in those cities.

I argue the reverse can be true. If we look back to 1960s zoning (which I think may also be the basis for most previous SimCity's concept of zoning), huge high density residential areas were built outside of cities when land was cheaper (unfortuantly, being outside of the city and it's businesses lead to no economic output of the residential area leading to the ghettos/council estates/slums of today, but that's another story), but today at least in the UK, greenbelt laws forced land on the outskirts to come at a premium, yet now what is built there are small suburban houses. I'm not saying your wrong, but it can just work the other way.

Probably what should dictate the density caps would be something like population density mixed with demand in a particular neighbourhood and affected the density to a degree . With low density, it sprawls out, high density builds up. Though I'm not sure how they would program that as a prerequisite. And I'm a bit too tired to care at the moment.