All-at-once or a little at a time?

[The Wrench 24]

Guys, I have a question - do you like structuring and plopping your city all at once (build the roads, highways, and other infrastructures of what you expect a full-grown metropolis would have) or do you start small, and then expand from that starting point? (build the necessary stuff needed for a town, and then expand from there)

I personally like the latter - It's fun, and it adds a bit of originality to the city.

[paeng 2,510]

or do you start small, and then expand from that starting point?

Definitely so ;-)

I always start with 10 or 20 tiles of street and a couple of small RES zones... then take it from there. But then again - I'm from Europe and don't particularly like "Grid-City" ;-)

[Cyclone Boom 17,016]

Personally, I tend to start small with zoning, expanding as the population grows and funding is able to support it. By doing this, I can balance the RCI demand to ensure there is adequate housing and employment for the population. These are the basic principles to building a city.

Zoning, Utilities and Services

I usually start building my cities in a corner of the map. This ensures the initial neighbour connections are easily accessible. If you start development in the centre, these inter-city connections become expensive, and their effectiveness will be reduced (poor commute times). In the initial stages, I will provide:

• Main roads (with streets branching out)
  
• Essential utilities (power, water)
  
• Basic services (fire, police, local healthcare)
  

[it is important to manage the funding and capacity of these as the city expands].

As the demand increases, I will then develop outwards, providing additional transportation options, utilities and services to cater for the growing population.

Transportation

I do like to plan ahead for future development. I partially build new road networks (also planning for highways), and lay out the lines for my train services. Remember, when urbanisation occurs (and density increases), it becomes harder to construct any meaningful transport routes on a large scale. Once you have made plans for these routes, it allows them to easily integrate with the city's expansion.

However, I'm not a fan of laying out the whole of a city's transportation networks. In my opinion, this is a bad idea as it places restrictions on what you can build in a particular location. Also, it prevents you from changing your city building strategies, unless you bulldoze and start again of course!

Overall, there are endless ways to play this game. But I'd always recommend starting small at first — don't get too ambitious, because this will actually hinder rather than help development. Always think ahead, making plans for your city's structure, but don't fully execute these plans until you have sufficient demand and resources.

Hope this helps in some way, and all the best for your future cities!

[SilverCyric 130]

I like to start small myself and build organically I guess would be a valid term. Start a small town of 5,000, go 20 miles out, start another and when its at 5,000 connect the two. Start a third and when its at 5,000 I'll start connecting them with major motorways. You can form triangles, lines, squares. Whatever strikes your fancy and works with the terrain is how I approach it. Then fill in major metropolitan areas near the junctions. Then as I create bypasses to handle the traffic as the city grows it gives me ideas for scenic spots around bridges or cliffs and such. Just depends on your artitic style and terrain. Oh, and spread, spread, spread. The real problem is building tight and getting overrun by traffic and other high density issues. Most cities here in the US wont have buildings over 5-6 stories until the population is at least 100,000-200,000. If you build good and have good traffic flow, you'll have no problem filling your zones later on and you can always upgrade to higher density. But, of course, most importantly, do what's fun! : ) Hehe

[Prophet42 1,503]

I always start small and try to grow the city realistically. I only plop a few landmarks once the city is big enough and can afford it.

[The Wrench 24]

Thanks for the response, guys.

As stated above, I like to start small, but I have seen some people set networks for the whole metropolis (Yes, they have money hacks). To me that would be a huge creativity killer.

[what12311 4]

i like to plan ahead and start small and expand out

[SimCoug 5,973]

I start small and build slow... It's been about a year (real people time, not sim time) and my region population is still less than 10,000... Yeah, I'm weird.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I pick a likely spot on the terrain and work slowly and carefully towards some kind of village, then to a town, then to a city if I take it that far. This afternoon I started a new fishing port on a tile that is mostly water with some mainland and a couple of islands. (See, I said I was going to start a new region. It is on the STEX in my name as Jasper.) This region deliberately doesn't have much land, and all the higher elevations are to the north.

This is part and parcel of my developed method of playing after 10 years of various styles. I like starting small, in Turtle speed with hard mode, and slowly building a nice little profitable place. I don't supply any services except power and water until the budget can afford it. Generally I start with about 20 2 x 1 CS$ and enough 2 x 1 R$ to provide workers and taxes to get into the black. Sometimes I toss in a few 2 x 2 medium density C and sort of fly by the seat of my pants with some help from the demand graph as to when to add medium density R. With care, this method prevents unwanted $$$ mansions until I am ready to zone for them. When I want then I zone low density 4 x 4 and the game obliges. The network is all streets. Upgrading to roads or better depends to a great extent on traffic volumes. I use the NAM on default settings.

If I am starting a large tile, I will sometimes set up a main drag with an avenue. If I do, the rest will be streets with road stubs crossing.

[packersfan 666]

I built my entire region up with farms are roads every mile, then I build my city over that.

[Bdub01 201]

I always (or usually) continue an interstate highway and make one exit and begin a town there. Over the course of time it will continue to grow to a big city with industry and suburbs etc. now sometimes on the small squares if I know I'm going to make it a farming community I will preset up the roads and whatnot but I know a small community like that rarely goes over several hundred sims so it doesn't matter.

[Superbacon 380]

I start out simple with a few homes and small farms. Then I add things in gradually and throw streets and roads in random directions and zone them, usually with farms first. I tend to not plan ahead for large roads. So my inner-city areas are all either roads or one-way roads. I build avenues in areas that are to-be-developed. And for highways I try to build most of it in undeveloped areas as a ring-road. But when I need to get it into a city I simple bulldoze and cram the highway in there as deep as I can get it. Then rezone and rebuild around it.

Though, I used to build it all at once. Had a money tree mod once. Plopped it, let it run for a month and I'd have 4-point-something trillion simoleons. So I built large roads, highways, rapid transit and railroads. Then plop everything and zone and watch it grow.

But then I tried the opposite once and never looked back. I like gradual city building much better. It's a lot more fun and keeps me interested in what I'm creating.

[MandelSoft 2,770]

I always plan big. I have some sort of master plan about my region, but about the details I make them up as I go. I start with laying all major infrastructure, like motorways, avenue's and railways. After that, I start zoning, starting small, but as time passes by, more plots are getting filled and the city grows and grows. Densities change, some zones get another purpose and sometimes I plop large old districts or big skyscrapers in my CBD when the city is big enough to make them believeable. But I'm not only planning the city, but also the surrounding farmlands, so my region has both rural and urban settings.

It's a different style of playing, but still, there are some dynamics within it and sometimes you need a great overhaul. That makes it still fun.

Best,

Maarten

[thomaslcook1998 0]

Slowly and over time here. I'm not above using some mods like the lottery and some, ahem, far-fetched waste management tools but other than that I go slow and organic. The philosophical and design struggle I'm having now is whether to have cities that are massive (I dig skyscrapers) or more blended. I tend to have farms and forests in all my towns and vary density thruout but I'm intrigued by y'all who build specialized cities. I'm also torn about tax policy - progressive for "fairness" sake or punitive to get or suppress what I want/ don't want. Kinda at a crossroads now and thinking of starting on a fresh region for all these reasons - hence I came out from hiding to chime in and troll the forums for more ideas.