"Downtown-ification"

[SENZAN 0]

Hi everyone! I've been downloading stuff for about a month now, and I figured it was time I posted something.

I've been thinking about this for a while now and I've been wondering if it happens to others as well.

The way I build cities starts off with one avenue and one street, in a cross intersection. Usually I try to make the cross intersection by some place where a city would realistically spawn, i.e. a peninsula, a coast, by a mountain, etc. so that place would naturally develop into the "old town" or "downtown" when the city grows to a major center. I progressively add all the municipal buildings (fire, cops, hospital, so on.) and a school system. The city grows. The school system is usually what marks city expansion for me. It's what makes it evident.

I know this city is expanding because I have to reform the school placements. Usually the colleges are fine, and it seems that a college downtown, even if it's surrounded by commercial buildings, is still effective. As for the high school and elementary schools (as well as libraries) I need to move them around, because the zone of the first intersection eventually becomes commercialized and becomes my downtown center, with the residential areas moving around it. I call that process "downtown-ification". It's like the city progresses from being a low dens res strip to a mid dens res strip with low res around it, to a 3-lot high dens residential on all 4 corners of the intersection, mid strip, low surroundings, then the same basic process for the commercial districts, but all of them begin from the first intersection. It's a really weird process, but in that madness there is the space to plan.

So here's my question. Do you go through a process of what I've called "downtown-ification"? Or do you plan your downtown, and how?

[atsummerlin53 47]

Generally, I zone commercial around my initial intersections for that very reason. Rather than starting with R$ and slowly upgrading over time, I start with low density C$ and it eventually upgrades to C$$ (S or O) and C$$$ (S or O). At some point I'll rezone to medium and high-density if that is the kind of business area I want to develop. I try to only re-zone from residential to commercial if I find that my commercial zones are not keeping up with nearby residential development. This way I'm not constantly reworking the same areas of my cities, and I can focus on encouraging development through incentives such as parks, education lots, etc.

A benefit of this is not having to move education lots (especially elementary and high schools) around as the city grows. I try to plan my residential zones around the school's bus boundary, but sometimes it is just not possible. And with good tax rates my cities make so much money, that having too many schools, or ones that aren't placed as well as they could be, is not a big issue.

[Slashback 136]

I usually work a bit different. Depending on the tile (how easy it is to make a sprawling city on it), I start by zoning my suburbs and making some major roads connection to neighbour cities. If the tile is hard to build on (because of mountains etc.), I start by making a major road that goes through the whole tile and then just start zoning suburbs and city center (actually it is more a town- or village center). If I start by zoning suburbs, I usually start zoning the city center when I have reached a 10-15 000 population, but that varies quite a lot.

[.anonyman 28]

I like to start with agriculture everywhere, either with 1) country roads meandering through the fields or with 2) a Nebraska-style grid. I then 1) replace more and more of the farms as my crossroads villages grow, or 2) develop a CBD and suburbs within the existing street network. This nicely balances my laziness as a mayor with natural city growth.

[SilverCyric 130]

First you gotta have a plan. Is this going to be a city center, an outlying suburb, an industrial district... Something that fits into a loose and general region plan. Then I will start by running a main road, usually an avenue, by a slightly hilly area that I've decided looks good for suburbs. Frame out a quick network of streets with a few roads intersecting. Run the avenue out to an outlying area with a nearby neighbor connection, frame out a small industrial park or a farm, depending on if it's a rural tile, or a city tile, or a metro tile. However you split up and plan your tiles. Run the simulator for 6 months, then I start using route query tools to figure out the most used routes and put 6-12 shops along and bus stations along this same route. This is also where I start seeing road capacities and changing the most used road through a suburb into a 3-TLA or a NMAVE. Then I start selecting sites for the different estates, but paying particular attention to allowing space between the estates, the more the better... 10 years ago, I would zone adjacent areas, so when the city would grow, I had no room for parking lots, park and rides, large school facilities, or proper plaza, park, and forest space to breath a little life into a city. If your goal is to build a metropolis, I always zone 90% low density until region population gets over 100,000, and I'm really keen on building demand around a metro tile with multiple subdivisions first. Helps take a bite out of that crazy R$ demand. Also, I'll make many R$ buildings historical when my first apartments pop up, because if I don't as I start filling in the gaps with realistic things like parking lots and trees, the wealth class jumps to R$$ and you'll lose far too many R$ to support CO$$$ and CS$$$ lots...

[Ltw 401]

I like to create a downtown as first (the area that was a simple commercial zone in the beginning) and build residential zones next to it. Then I zone commercial zones and residential next to each other. I zone this way because it gives quite fast development and I have less problems with commute time. If I zone one large commercial zone and one large residential zone I experience some problems with commute time and development (especially with high-rise). I also like the idea that everything is a bit mixed together.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

I go with the flow of the game, not with realism. I try to make the final result look realistic and credible, even if the way it came together was not realistic at all.

 

What does that mean? I'll try to explain.

 

In the beginning you have low demand, low population, low stage, low education, low everything. The first city is the hardest. So I start out with rural areas. Farms and fields, landscape, a few low-wealth hamlets... police? water supply? Higher education? Highways? Subways? Heck, no! Stuff will grow easily, no hassle. Not much to pay for.

 

Then I'll move to the next map(s) and repeat something similar. Eventually I'll get bored, and I'll want to build something bigger. Now I might build a larger village or a small town. Since all the existing maps will contribute towards growth stage and demand, this will be a snap. I'll focus on looks and realism, and on self-sustaining cities, not on high wealth and high population. Education will mostly be eementary school + library + museum - that's dead cheap to maintain and will yield good enough education for a few low-rise CO§§§ and mid-rise CO§§, which can shape the centre of such a small town. I often increase taxes for high-wealth Sims because I don't want (many of) them yet. Wouldn't fit in. A mansion here and there, fine. But nothing larger.

 

I'll slowly surround my downtown-to-be with suburbs. Then, when I finally tackle the downtown map, I'll have a large amount of saved up demand, I'll have higher growth rates and a higher building stage right from the start, and everything will be a lot easier. I'll "release" all the suppressed demand by lowering taxes to halfways normal amounts and enjoy the highrises...

 

Given that a city always develops a bit differently from what I had imagined or that I'm sometimes just not satisfied with part of the layout, there's still some reconstruction work left to do. The fun part about that is - just like in real life! - when you need to route another transport network through a part of the city, but want to keep the best buildings. That's something I enjoy very much.

[Turjan 1,048]

I guess I could add an "all of the above". Of course, if you really want to have a megacity with all tall buildings making up the center of the whole region, you have to replace everything except a few select buildings on that map after a while. If it's about local "downtowns", I'm often more lenient. In one of my last cities, I made most of the center "historical". It's nothing special, I just felt like preserving the original small town vibe (click on images for larger views):

 

 

This will be a quaint island between the highrises after a while. The local "downtown" developed where most traffic happened:

 

 

In principle, this was an experiment to make a Simcity 5 style town with only one highway connection from the region. I had to give in and add a second connection after the town reached 50,000 inhabitants or so . The traffic chaos was good for commercial growth, though. You can still see from the hotel reward that this qualified as "rural retreat" at one point.

[loudpack 5]

I zone my downtown first with all the mass trans i plan to use. Connect the mass to 8 cities (using large blocks as i always seem to get stuck with), surrounding the center city. Mass trans start from the center and spread out to the neigbors. Then i fill in cities and avoid the center city until the demands allows the towers. but even then for some reason i'll have about 5 cities running before i start a downtown area