R$ abandoning - no jobs

[defacto123 14]

In my city of 600K sims on a large tile, I have a dense residential zone which is at the geographic center of the city and about 4 blocks north of my CBD, and the zone is surrounded on two sides by medium commercial. R$ high-rises keep developing and then abandoning due to commute time. None of the R$$ and R$$$ high-rises in the same area are abandoning. I think the reason is that most of my commercial consists of CO$$$ and CO$$ (in about a 2:1 ratio), so rather few jobs are available for R$. Indeed, when I queried the R$ buildings before they got abandoned, I found that many of them had to go to a neighboring industrial city (recall that we're at the center of a large tile) in order to find work. However, R$ demand remains high. Any suggestions? I do not want to raise R$ taxes to drive out the demand. I also don't want to rezone the medium-density commercial areas as high-density, because I want the CBD as compact as possible.

[z1 566]

Are you using the NAM?

[Ltw 401]

A map of your city might also help.

[Cobra_nVidia 30]

Off the top of my head:

1. Does your neighbouring city have what R$ needs? (CS$, CS$$, I-D)

2. Do you have sufficient roads/avenues to support movement between the two cities? (high- and medium-density buildings with insufficient roads/avenues will cause jams and nobody can get to work in time)

[defacto123 14]

Are you using the NAM?

No. I tried it once and did not like it, as it fixed some unusual routes present in the original simulator but created new ones.

Off the top of my head:

1. Does your neighbouring city have what R$ needs? (CS$, CS$$, I-D)

2. Do you have sufficient roads/avenues to support movement between the two cities? (high- and medium-density buildings with insufficient roads/avenues will cause jams and nobody can get to work in time)

Yes, plenty of I-D/M on one side and some CS on the other. I also have a subway in both directions. But the area is smack in the middle of a large tile, making it too long even for a subway.

[z1 566]

Are you using the NAM?

No. I tried it once and did not like it, as it fixed some unusual routes present in the original simulator but created new ones.

I'm afraid that this is a major part of your problem, then. The original Maxis traffic simulator is badly broken; this was demonstrated as far back as 2003. There are many traffic problems that simply cannot be solved as long as you are using that traffic simulator; these traffic problems then typically manifest as abandonment, dilapidation, low desirability, etc.

I don't know which version of the NAM you tried, but the traffic simulator present in it performs significantly better than the traffic simulators present in the NAM a few years ago. It uses a technique called "perfect pathfinding", which ensures that Sims will always take the fastest route to work. When used with a suitable transportation system, it can usually completely eliminate abandonment due to commute time. (This also assumes that you have suitable jobs available for your Sims.)

I would urge you to give the NAM (or at least the NAM traffic simulator) another try. Without it, in a city of your size, you will be unable to get rid of most of your problems.