San Diego County (Re-settled)

[davidhogan 1]

Welcome to San Diego County

 

Or welcome back, if you were familiar with San Diego 1.5.  This region is based on the accurate scale San Diego terrain that goes all the way from Oceanside to the Mexican Border in the real scale.  It's 512 medium sized maps, so it should keep me busy for a while.

 

 

As you can see, I haven't even finished building I-5 down to the border yet.

 

Now, even though I-5 and I-8 are in similar positions, don't expect this to be a duplicate of San Diego in SC4.  The traffic could never be recreated without rebuilding Tiajuana, Orange County, LA, and much farther east, so I'm going to do things more by SC4 rules than real life. 

 

Will there be influences of the real San Diego?  Definitely, the cities are going to be named approxamately right.  (I live here, I'm not going to confuse myself.)  The freeways will probably follow a somewhat similar path to real life, because I'm planning on growing the city similar to the real San Diego.  (Tons, and tons, and tons, and tons of sprawl.  Everywhere.)

 

I guess this is a what-if I came across San Diego, with no population here, but I-5, I-15 and I-8 planned to be built with the US gov't.  If that makes it easier to understand... 

 

So how big is this map?  As I said, 512 medium maps.

 

 

That's the only other area I've started developing.  I figure I'll start multiple smaller urbanized areas around the region as freeways are built, and just slowly fill things in.  Basically, that's how San Diego has grown, and is planned to continue to grow.  Stick around if you want to see how things would have worked out if I built San Diego.

 

Dave

[spy360 1]

That looks huge! Good luck with it. But you said you quite last time because it took to long to load. Wouldn't this be bigger, and take longer?

[davidhogan 1]

My computer never has had a problem on a medium sized map, but the old San Diego 1.5 had quite a few large sized maps.  Those files were getting to be over 10x larger than the medium maps.  Adding to this problem, multiple large maps were touching, so each time I'd save downtown, it would need to modify three other large map files that were all over 50 MB each also, making the game write about 250 MB just to save one city. 

 

None of the medium maps had this happen, but the large maps had become unplayable, taking sometimes over 10 minutes to load.  (Medium maps took at most 60-90 seconds.)  I'm pretty patient, but when I want to modify an avenue on both sides of a large map I can't wait 40 minutes.

 

Dave

[+Guest]

That's going to take a while to rebuild San Diego again but it looks good.

[Casper3141 60]

this is gonna be great i cant wait until i see some more updates especially since San Diego 1.5 was on of my favorites

[flanig407 0]

I'll be following this CJ...looks pretty neat, I may end up doing something like this for my hometown/map (Orlando)

[Sabretooth78 808]

Look forward to seeing how much Buffalo influence you incorporate into this journal!

 

So I see you got sick of the large maps as well - I think they're great from a layout perspective, and fewer inter-city pathfinding quirks on a regional scale, but they're just not worth it once the city reaches a decent size.  I've started a new region that has only 4 or 5 large maps, and 80% of the blocks are mediums.  The ones I did make large are on the edges and I never intend on developing them much past farmland.  I'll be detailing it in a new CJ in the coming weeks.

 

Can't wait to see more updates!

 

-Chris

[davidhogan 1]

Thanks everyone for the posts.

 

Chris: I have a feeling your Buffalo City hall will make an appearance, as well as the HSBC arena.  San Diegans appreciate quality architecture, and we need an NHL team here.

 

To show a little update on what I've been doing (no close-ups still, sorry). 

 

Downtown Area

 

 

The downtown grid is coming along nicely, and I've built a bridge to Coronado.  This time CA-75 is going to be a freeway down the silver strand and back around to the 905 area.  We'll see how it works.

 

Carlsbad/Encinitas Area

 

 

Encinitas has grown up quickly, and even got its own WalMart.  I-5 is becoming quite heavily trafficked, as would be expected I suppose.

 

Dave

[Mdz1001 0]

Looks like a good start. Your CJ's have always been good, and so I'll keep an eye on this.

[A Killer Ewok 2]

This is looking good. I wonder how you can fit LEGOLAND in there...

[davidhogan 1]

San Diego International Airport

Lindbergh Field

 

San Diego International Airport recently was opened, as well as a new neighborhood for Sims that want that small-town feel near downtown.  (And it doesn't hurt if they don't mind the roar of 747's passing over their heads.)

The airport was actually completed ahead of schedule.  The rapid growth of the Downtown and Barrio Logan areas, as well as continued growth of the North County led the county to decide it was in everyone's best interest to have an international airport in this bustling tourism destination right along Interstate 5.

Dave

[Casper3141 60]

whoa i like how its turning out and i cant wait to see some closeups of Downtown

[ltkud 0]

looks great keep up the hard work......can't wait to see it when it's finished

[subedei 3]

hmmm...I'm getting the little red X for the pics.

 

 

Subedei

[andrew george 0]

Aaah! Now I can see pics I can comment!  Looks a great region, love the region views but could you post some more close-up pics? Nice BRIGHT RED roofs also.

 

A

[moxmssn 0]

Probably a great Cj but i cant tell cause all I see are red X's. But because i live in San Diego County (Rancho Bernardo) ill be watching. Good luck and dont quit!

[Mexicanboy13r 12]

Wow!!!!! The region looks great I see you own the whole county!? ..lol

[davidhogan 1]

There's a place called Downtown...

 

 

Here's the N Harbor Dr exit of I-5 in the northwest corner of the Downtown area.  San Diego City College is located in the center of the photo.

 

 

Downtown's population just recently broke 130,000 - quite a large portion of the 300,000 living in the county currently.

 

Dave

[ChicAgo333 2]

this is looking great, i live about an hour and 15 minutes from San Diego, up in Orange County

 

keep up the good work

[davidhogan 1]

The Downtown Area

 

 

Some of Coronado has been built out near the CA-75, the downtown grid is complete, and Golden Hill is growing up quickly.  Ocean Beach is now home to almost 10,000 residents, and Mission Bay will probably be the next rapid growth area.  As you can see the population has been exploding recently.

 

If you plan on visiting anytime soon, here's the newly released road map.

 

 

I-5 will soon connect to the US/Mexican border, and I-8 is slowly working it's way along the San Diego River towards the county line.  The 163 and 94 are planned to allow easy access to the dowtown area from anywhere around the city.

 

Dave

[A Killer Ewok 2]

I cant see pics. Try using another image hosting site.

 

[davidhogan 1]

Barrio Logan & Eastern Coronado

 

 

This area was just rebuilt from a standard Avenue/Ground Highway overpass to a full cloverleaf due to massive congestion stretching onto almost all the side streets.  Interstate 5 is used in this area by over 9,500 commuters a day, so keeping traffic flowing is quite important.

 

This area immediately south of downtown was a lot of low income housing mixed with industrial areas, but the industrial zones have become high tech, and with them the housing has gone high-income.

 

 

The mainland end of the Coronado Bridge (CA-75.)  The industrial park shown has lobbied for direct access to CA-75 at it's base, but with it's current 8,000 cars/day traffic engineers feel that it could back up traffic through the merge with I-5.

 

 

The constructed area of Coronado.  Mostly lower density, some condos, and some high rises have been recently built on the Bay.  This cloverleaf allows well over 5,000 cars/day to seemlessly access CA-75.

 

Dave

[andrew george 0]

Those last pics look cool but there are some more which are little red x's since my last post. It's looking good though!

 

A

[redsand2008 1]

that is some mind blowing water! but i like this journal and keep it going! never been to san diego but looks exactly as i imagined it

[davidhogan 1]

If anyone has suggestions for image hosting sites other than ImageShack, let me know please.  ImageShack was great, but now I guess they're not working too well for some viewers.  (I haven't seen a red X yet, but I don't want anyone to see them.)

 

Thanks,

Dave

[subedei 3]

ahhh...there we are. Nice looking city so far. Keep up the good work. 

 

 

 

Subedei

[Murphymathwizard 0]

Lookin excellent... keep up the good work

[Slyargent 0]

Very nice. I live around San Diego and can almost recognize most of the stuff right there. I can't wait to see Balboa park up there.

As for a host, may I suggest www.photobucket.com? Good experience from them so far..

[davidhogan 1]

Mission Beach

 

Mission Beach is San Diego's newest suburb - it still has that new city smell even!  The residents here, as seen above, sure seem to love their KFC with two of them located on Mission Bay Blvd.  The bridge network here has caused taxes to stay quite high (for San Diego, only 5.5%), attracting mostly lower-income residents.

 

 

There's a lot of beachfront condos, since almost all of Mission Beach is, well, beaches.  This picture was taken just north of the Ocean Beach Bridge.  (It leads to Ocean Beach, if you couldn't guess.)

 

 

And a closer shot of the north end of Mission Beach, looking Southeast.  One of the KFC's can be seen in this picture, it has the reputation of being the good KFC.  Somehow, the one next door has stayed open just fine, apparently residents like being able to choose.

 

Dave

[Sabretooth78 808]

Looking pretty good!  Something bugs me about that water texture however, but maybe it's because living in the northeast I've never seen anything close to that!

 

-Chris