Best Way tp Mix Development and Rural

[jalue2002 1]

I have ben trying to build a region similar to the ones I grew up around. Ones where you have a developed "Urban" area with farm land around it, small industrial parks on the edge of town with highways and county roads connecting to other developed areas (Towns). Everytime I try to do this on SC4, it always ends up looking bad. What is the best way to develop this type of region? I want the cities to grow naturally.

[grstudios 188]

If you seek agriculture development mixed with urban, well you should try the SPAM mod, made by the great Peg...

It's been around for over a year and modifies how I-AG acts in the game, by adding workers to it, keeping demand for it, changing and adding farms and crops.

Links:

http://www.simpeg.com/forum/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=614 - At the PLEX, may require registering to it.

- Here in simtropolis.

Hope it helped!

Guy

[His Divine Hand 244]

Post some pictures of what you are coming up with to give us an idea where you need help.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

I doubt there is "the best way". I guess there are many good ways, and success probably more depends on how you apply a particular way than on which way you choose.

Some general pointers I can give you:

• Since agricultural demand vanishes after your Sims are smart enough and you have enough commercial jobs, agriculture should come first.
  
• Agriculture needs space. Lots of space. Don't be afraid to devote entire medium-sized maps to landscape, fields, and maybe a few tiny villages.
  
• Think in categories like: Agricultural - Village/Suburb - Mid-rise - center. Try to restrict each map you play to one category or two adjacent categories. For example, mix agricultural areas with suburbs or suburbs with mid-rise, but not agricultural with mid-rise. This works fine with medium-sized maps. You can reserve large maps for extended rural areas or large city centers.
  

Going from small to large also has the advantage that you can slowly gather more and more regional population and develop around the CBD-to-be first. Then, when you start going for skyscrapers, you will have lots of populated suburbs all around already - this will make development in the city center faster and easier.

This is what I achieved with that method - the city is going to be in the lower right corner, you can already see some highrises there if you look closely:

[CLICK]

IMO, it started out OK, but the further I went towards the city center, the more I messed up.

[grstudios 188]

If I may expand what T Wreck have wrote: If you seek to build a real region, start with agriculture. At first you will have to give way to rural development, since it needs much room to prosper, as you lay bigger crops, small farms are joined by more residents. Later, you can pick the place you want your main city to be, and focus at it, adding RCI areas on top of former fields/crops. Remember, what you develop first will eventually become the core of the city.

You can check an old CJ at SC4devotion that was referring to that issue exactly. It was called "Boston v2", and was made by CSGDesign. His first post can explain much more than me right now... It's a great source of inspiration to me.

Link to Boston v2 (SC4Devotion)

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Uh, yes - good link. Wow, splendid region there!

That's a particularly good example of the "natural growth" conceot, which imitates real-life development. I think it's rather difficult, though. My respect to all people who can pull it off convincingly; I don't think I could.

What I did was slightly easier approach: I didn't overgrow anything to develop it further. You could say that I just mimicked the result of natural growth, but whatever is a suburb in my region was started as a suburb from the get-go and will never become anything different.

In order to implement the natural growth concept, you need to go back to city maps a lot and develop them further bit by bit. I focus more on detailed maps, and once I consider a map done, I don't do much else to it.