Innovative City Designs

[Dr. Boom 37]

Hello everybody!

 

While I am new to posting on Simtropolis I am not new to Sim City. Recently, my interest was drawn back to Sim City due to the release of Sim City 2013, which I hope to obtain sometime this week. However, I have had heard the criticism, most notably due to the size allowed for cityscapes in the new game, and thus I seek to make use what we have and experiment with different styles of city (notably road) construction and innovative designs. Once I get the game I (and hopefully a few others) will be testing various road designs in order to pump out the most # of buildings in the least area size.

 

To start off, I am going to use residential neighborhoods from real life, particularly from my neighborhood, in constructing 1950s urban sprawl replicas in order to cut down the amount of space normally taken up by roads and other forms of transportation. To demonstrate, I will be posting a few pictures of neighborhoods taken from google images (with respect to copyright) and then recreating it in Sim City over the course of the next two weeks. Which ever neighborhood is most space efficient and pumps out the most population (# of sims) will be "rewarded" as the most efficient way to create populated neighborhoods, and I hope my project will be of some use to the Simtropolis community.

 

Here's some pictures to get started with. This neighbor is typical of post 50s America, and judging by the roads and roofs I would place it somewhere in the south. As you can see, it is extremely dense and there is no space not privately owned:

 

 

Another bigger, more centralized neighborhood. As you can see, there is something civic in the center of the neighborhood, and off to the sides are commercial buildings:

 

 

Here's a concentric city design, similar to the last one but circular. Theoretically, the circle design would allow for the most amount of buildings in the least amount of space, granted Sim City doesn't screw us up on this one:

 

I cannot wait to recreate some of these designs on Sim City! I'll post my results later in the week, along with the statistics of the city like the population. If you'd like to also try, go ahead. I'd be interested to see what you'd come up with.

[DrKing2020 8]

Hate to say it, but SimCity kinda screws us up on this one. For the record, I'm not a SC13 hater, I'm mother frakkin' excited for tomorrow. I have noticed density around curves is sparse. Lots of space between buildings. Problem is the game is plopping rectangle lots around curves.

 

This blog post illustrates what's happening. The last two images concerned me as soon as I saw them. http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/getting-into-the-simcity-zone

 

Seems to me trapezoidal lots could solve this problem.

[DrKing2020 8]

The other thing that kinda sucks is your third pic would take up the majority of the area of the current city size. But bigger cities are on the way. Fingers crossed!

[Tsuya 4]

That second design... is amazing.

[TowerDude 2,187]

Nothing against SC2013.. but those urban designs are not innovative at all

[rawls 39]

I thought recently about the city layout and some days ago I posted a rough sketch of a road layout at reddit/r/simcity, I think this will fit here as well:

 

After seeing many cities that have great traffic problems, I thought about a way to overcome this issue. It seems to me that many problems arise because the road layout often allows Sims to take the shortest route which will eventually lead to massive congestion. (It gets worse when people are using only one central avenue)

 

 

blue - commercial (mixed with some residential)

green - residential (mixed with some commercial)

yellow - industrial

red - special use like trade, stadium or something like that

black - main avenues

gray - side roads

 

 

 

With this kind of layout I am trying to manage traffic flow by not connecting every (side) road with each other. This will force Sims to take different roads, even if they live close together and want to go to work at the same location.

 

Other important considerations are:

 

• Commuters/ visitors from other cities will have direct access to the industrial and "special use" area via the beltway on the right. It isn't connected to other parts of the city and will be the shortest route for them to reach the industrial area from the highway.
• to ensure the connection to the highway isn't clogged, there shouldn't be any incentive for residents of my own town (or at least for only a few) to use the beltway road if they want to go to work.
• cargo from the industrial area can easily be transported to the trade depot in the special use area and to the commercial zone
• commercial and residential zones will be a little bit mixed to ensure short travel times between them.

[DrKing2020 8]

Very cool, let us know how it handles under load. I have some ideas for traffic design as well but so far just crude illustrations on a whiteboard. Hopefully can post some bird's eyes in a few days.

[Dr. Boom 37]

DrKing2020: Indeed, the density matter is something to consider. I doubt many circular cities will have high rises, and perhaps the most populated ones would likely be grid cities. I was also thinking a hexagonal city layout, however they might still be unused space within the hexagons due to hexagons having...well diagonals.

 

Oh yes, and one beta player (an Aussie) who streamed his city on youtube did a design similar to that one. I am looking forward to the road options, even if we have so few.

 

Tsuya: Indeed. I bet that took a lot of planning and collaboration, for sure!

 

TowerDude: Haha, I am trying to just use fancy talk to propagate my...experiment. Although I had the idea to use a zig-zag diagonal lines in a circular city space. So we'll see if it ends up innovative in a sense.

 

rawls: That is very interesting. I am generally shying away from most types of curvature (except in my circular design), but as a highway/avenue design that could make the flow of traffic very smooth. A wrong way to make a city would be to have a main avenue and have the residential areas empty out to that. That's bound to cause trouble. Instead, I might try another poster's idea of having the avenue extend around the city and lead the direction of roads there.

 

I'm going to work on managing traffic with having the side roads lead into various avenues that go around the entire city, in other words. The only downside to that is it might make the commuting time to long.

 

DrKing: I'd like to see a rough sketch, if possible.

 

(Apologies for my unconventional style of typing, as my words are often as scattered as my brain!)

[The_City_Builder 299]

This is one I plan on doing for my first city, which will use the French City Set. The circular structure in the center can basically be translated into the Eiffel Tower in the actual game;

 

[the_architect25 5]

I thought recently about the city layout and some days ago I posted a rough sketch of a road layout at reddit/r/simcity, I think this will fit here as well:

 

After seeing many cities that have great traffic problems, I thought about a way to overcome this issue. It seems to me that many problems arise because the road layout often allows Sims to take the shortest route which will eventually lead to massive congestion. (It gets worse when people are using only one central avenue)

 

 

blue - commercial (mixed with some residential)

green - residential (mixed with some commercial)

yellow - industrial

red - special use like trade, stadium or something like that

black - main avenues

gray - side roads

 

 

 

With this kind of layout I am trying to manage traffic flow by not connecting every (side) road with each other. This will force Sims to take different roads, even if they live close together and want to go to work at the same location.

 

Other important considerations are:

 

• Commuters/ visitors from other cities will have direct access to the industrial and "special use" area via the beltway on the right. It isn't connected to other parts of the city and will be the shortest route for them to reach the industrial area from the highway.
• to ensure the connection to the highway isn't clogged, there shouldn't be any incentive for residents of my own town (or at least for only a few) to use the beltway road if they want to go to work.
• cargo from the industrial area can easily be transported to the trade depot in the special use area and to the commercial zone
• commercial and residential zones will be a little bit mixed to ensure short travel times between them.

I like your idea, but with so many angles and curves you are wasting a lot of space to build, from watching all the vids from beta on you tube. It seems the best way to build the biggest city is to go with the boring city block grid style.

[typewriter_ribbon 2]

Here's something I played with a few days ago. I like the idea of radial city designs with a strong circular pattern, and this was an experiment with three circular city hubs. Not sure that it would really function very well in-game, but it was a fun design exercise!

 

[Jack_Hawksmoor 0]

I love that picture Type

It could be a piece of art by itself. Would look cool as a stained glass window!

I'd love to hear how it works out if you implement it.

[epyrion 1]

Here's something I played with a few days ago. I like the idea of radial city designs with a strong circular pattern, and this was an experiment with three circular city hubs. Not sure that it would really function very well in-game, but it was a fun design exercise!

 

 

wow this looks nice. how about power,water,sewage and garbage? another city perhaps? The city hall placement is great but how would you divide the low/med/high wealth residents?

[CoolColJ 42]

My best city uses a circular design, with townhall, in the centre,
and services on the next inner circular ring and the main avenue off the
highway splitting down the centre, and I have over 50k population,
traffic flow is very good, with tourist coming in. Mixed resident and
commercial zones on the outter rings, industry, water and gabage on the
edge of the city where the wind blows

Park and rides at all major resident junctions and at the city entrance and exit.

Have had no major fire or crime issues, unlike some of my other grid like cities.

edit - I find I had to put the 2 medium density roads to the left on the city entrance to allow cars to do a U turn and ease traffic.
Been finding medium density roads seem to flow traffic faster due to not having stop lights!

[DrKing2020 8]

Looks great. Wondering if you can add a screenshot during rush hour? I've found that if I'm not careful when designing the road layout, I can get major traffic jams even with small populations and high density avenues and streets.

[Districtopia 23]

My best city uses a circular design, with townhall, in the centre,

and services on the next inner circular ring and the main avenue off the

highway splitting down the centre, and I have over 50k population,

traffic flow is very good, with tourist coming in. Mixed resident and

commercial zones on the outter rings, industry, water and gabage on the

edge of the city where the wind blows

Park and rides at all major resident junctions and at the city entrance and exit.

Have had no major fire or crime issues, unlike some of my other grid like cities.

edit - I find I had to out the 2 medium roads to the left on the city entrance to allow cars to to a U turn and ease traffic.

Been finding medium density roads seem to flow traffic faster due to not having stop lights!

 

Looks awesome!! Nice job.

[CoolColJ 42]

Looks great. Wondering if you can add a screenshot during rush hour? I've found that if I'm not careful when designing the road layout, I can get major traffic jams even with small populations and high density avenues and streets.

I have found medium density roads intersecting avenues to work better, faster traffic flow, since there are no stop lights

You need T junctions for U-turns as well. And right turns are faster than left

In my city, most of the people use the Park and Ride and take a bus to work/shop, to the station or the metro buses to the other cities it seems

Even at peak hour traffic rarely gets into the red, and if they do it doesn't pile up and grid lock.

 

Off course, things will change at 100+K population

7:30am

8:43am

9am - main road

 

Busiest street - medium density off shoot

10am

10:30am

11am

7:19pm - the traffic shifts to the other side

[CoolColJ 42]

Interestingly enough, my country's capital city, Canbera has a similar design - a ground up planned "artifical" city at that
 

 

[CoolColJ 42]

Here is another circular city I did in a private region, that already had pretty big cities next door.

I spent a few hours on it, and have reached 70k population so far.

I initially had the main avenue come straight down through the centre, off the entrance highway, but that caused massive traffic jams.

Made me wonder why traffic was so good in the other city above - although the design is different.

Once I routed the avenue off to the right side of the city, in an arc to intersect the right avenue, traffic flowed nicely

Traffic flows in to the right in an arc, and meets the Expo hall, so the tourist do not disrupt the rest of the city.

Plus there are Park and Rides at the entrance, along with bus stops and city rides nearby

ignore the graphic glitches on the avenue....

click pics to expand to 1080p size

8pm traffic builds up for the concert at the expo centre

Region context

Before the Expo centre went in

[Mr. Giggles 1]

My city hit the usual wall last night, so I tried scrapping everything and rebuilding it with a similar circular design. I'm not sure what I did entirely but the roads ended up all glitched. New additional loops fail to build correctly and if I place buildings next to certain roads, they "update" which slaps a few zones scattered around it mysteriously. I've also had zones build on top of zones which causes buildings to spawn inside eachother, producing a weird terrain glitch. I've also not been able to get my police to go out and patrol or my garbage collect. It's as if they don't see the roads they're linked to. Anyway, with that aside, a lot of my most recent cities have been boring square grid-based designs to make the most of density since this SimCity is pretty limited in city size. I always end up with traffic issues due to their being intersections everywhere. I'd love to build a much more attractive looking city, but one of the main issues I usually have is when I hit 100k-200k population. I could probably build a decent looking city but as soon as the population rises, it'll fall apart like usual.

[DrKing2020 8]

Looks great. Wondering if you can add a screenshot during rush hour? I've found that if I'm not careful when designing the road layout, I can get major traffic jams even with small populations and high density avenues and streets.

I have found medium density roads intersecting avenues to work better, faster traffic flow, since there are no stop lights

You need T junctions for U-turns as well. And right turns are faster than left

In my city, most of the people use the Park and Ride and take a bus to work/shop, to the station or the metro buses to the other cities it seems

Even at peak hour traffic rarely gets into the red, and if they do it doesn't pile up and grid lock.

 

Off course, things will change at 100+K population

 

Thanks for posting this CoolColJ. I haven't been very successful in creating efficient traffic flow but I'm going to try some of your techniques.

[kavselj 3]

Here's something I played with a few days ago. I like the idea of radial city designs with a strong circular pattern, and this was an experiment with three circular city hubs. Not sure that it would really function very well in-game, but it was a fun design exercise!

 

Tried it out. Sadly the tile size is way too small for this. Places where civic services are marked can barely fit anything in. Same goes for education etc.

 

It's great traffic-wise. No gridlocks or anything but until Maxis increases tilesize, it's sadly not a viable layout

[Ambs 4]

Ive been playing in sandbox mode with some cicular designs, this is the best working that ive come up with until now:

 

I had some major traffic problems halfway through the game, the single lane highway exit as an entrance to the city really acts as a big bottleneck sadly i hope they will add more options for this later on. Still i like the looks of a circular city so much more than a block city. 

[CoolColJ 42]

Ambs I would not put a T Junction right at the entrance, bogs down the flow into the city - cut the left side and flow it right

Left turns are fast.

I would put a Park and ride instead, so vistors will park their cars there and take public transport instead.

edit - also don't recommend Avenues everywhere - the road density signifies road priority, so intersecting avenues with less dense roads can be used to dictate traffic flow

[Mr. Giggles 1]

Here's something I played with a few days ago. I like the idea of radial city designs with a strong circular pattern, and this was an experiment with three circular city hubs. Not sure that it would really function very well in-game, but it was a fun design exercise!

 

 

I'm trying to recreate this as well for the fun of it, although I've ran into some issues. Size is definitely an issue, like kavselj mentioned. I can actually cram a couple of nice buildings in each "hub" but the school buildings are so enormous that I'd need to clip out one building in each hub or just stick a library in there. The only other issues I've had are just SimCity's building system being pretty annoying with circles. There's a lake to the side of my city but bridges go perfectly over it, although anything else brings up issues. The grid system is pretty bad with circles, since it kind of just knots up on one or two ends and causes weird snapping. It also causes additional circles using the grid to draw the opposite way you want, so I had to try doing everything hand-made. It's not too bad, but my OCD is getting the best of me. I'll try to post screenshots later, but I'll probably wait until things are fully in place.

 

As a side not I'm using Petrol City in Reflection Atoll. I'll probably start shifting it more toward the oil industry after I share the turnout but I should point out that this area seems to be one of the few areas that are absolutely perfect for this design. The inset of water isn't too big of a pain thanks to bridges, although with the placement of industry, any pollution is blown right off the map. The only con is that if you do go for oil, the majority of it is toward the center of the city.

[Ambs 4]

Ambs I would not put a T Junction right at the entrance, bogs down the flow into the city - cut the left side and flow it right

Left turns are fast.

I would put a Park and ride instead, so vistors will park their cars there and take public transport instead.

edit - also don't recommend Avenues everywhere - the road density signifies road priority, so intersecting avenues with less dense roads can be used to dictate traffic flow

Thanks i'll give that a try! 

[actasci 1]

Here's something I played with a few days ago. I like the idea of radial city designs with a strong circular pattern, and this was an experiment with three circular city hubs. Not sure that it would really function very well in-game, but it was a fun design exercise!

 

hey, i am building this. and instead of some of you guys agreed that this isn't actually doable, it seems like working well.

 

and here are some ss (sorry about imageshack, i am kinda oldskool about this ss thing. i hope it's alright)

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/824/spark20130319010411.png/ 

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/824/spark20130319010411.png/

[Panos 29]

actasci looks beautiful, but you are kinda limited that you cannot plug resources buildings. Like oil rigs & mines, which shapes are awkward most of the time. 

[MOWS 4 U 169]

Here is my first attempt at a mostly circular city design.

 

 

Traffic has started getting kinda bad ever since I started turning it into a tourist town

[lordax 3]

My city hit the usual wall last night, so I tried scrapping everything and rebuilding it with a similar circular design. I'm not sure what I did entirely but the roads ended up all glitched. New additional loops fail to build correctly and if I place buildings next to certain roads, they "update" which slaps a few zones scattered around it mysteriously. I've also had zones build on top of zones which causes buildings to spawn inside eachother, producing a weird terrain glitch. I've also not been able to get my police to go out and patrol or my garbage collect. It's as if they don't see the roads they're linked to. Anyway, with that aside, a lot of my most recent cities have been boring square grid-based designs to make the most of density since this SimCity is pretty limited in city size. I always end up with traffic issues due to their being intersections everywhere. I'd love to build a much more attractive looking city, but one of the main issues I usually have is when I hit 100k-200k population. I could probably build a decent looking city but as soon as the population rises, it'll fall apart like usual.

 

There's a glitch that it seems can't be fixed yet. It happened to me before; so next time you are doing massive bulldozing, pause the game, first remove all the zoned where you are going to rebuild; then, click on every service tab so you can see if they have any vehicle outside, to make sure they come back to their garages, close it down, when you are sure everybody is back home, *then* you can bulldoze it; leaving a service vehicle (ambulance, garbage truck, etc) outside their buildings while destroying it causes that when you plop it again their vehicles won't go outside. Same with zoning, if the new road passes by previous zoned part and it's big enough to fit a building, it will count as valid thus having for example a R trying to be build under a C or I. So, before rebuilding, pause, de-zone, let every service vehicle return to their respective garages.