Zen: An Experiment in Realism

[MathNerd05 0]

This is my small little city of Augusta. It currently has around 150,000 residents and is the largest city in the Zen region. The entire region has around 170,000 residents. I must apologize for not keeping everyone in the loop from the very beginning, but it was boring. (trust me!)

 

I have always built cities and regions with realism my goal. However, I have not figured out the best ways to to use some of the features of the game, such as subways and monorails, to their full and intended extent. Highways are another things that have escaped me. On the other hand, other things, such as roads, have been easy to use in a realistic setting.

 

So, with this said, here is the goal of the Zen region: to create a realistic, modern metropolis of at least 1 million people. The largest region I have ever created was around 430,000, so this may be a stretch for me. To do this, I have decided against most mods except for the Essentials. I use the perfect pathfinding engine and have boosted commute speeds 10x. I do use a number of buildings from the STEX.

 

The region is downloaded from Rebel13's SimCity site and is not my own handiwork.

 

Finally, I do not have the skill nor the time to produce fancy, Photoshopped images nor create intricate stories. While I am sure this will hinder my readership, I have geared this cj toward my own desires: to learn more about the intricacies of the game and to understand how to utilize every tool the game has to offer to its fullest extent. While my posts will not contain the afore-mentioned, they will contain useful information about gameplay, my theories and hypothesis, whether they are rightor wrong, and lots of pictures of an entirely-grown city. I hope there are some out there interested in these same things, namely applying this simulation to a realistic setting.

 

As a post script, I am a graduate student in Mathematics and have taken the time to figure out the quotas in numerous aspects of the game. I will frequently refer to these quotas and post new ones as I discover them. Any and all additions in this category are most appreciated.

 

And as a post post script, I have seen numerous postings on the stages of Sim City 4. While I have a good idea of what they are, does anyone have a thought or a definite on this subject? 

[____----____ 37]

hey it looks like a fine start to me and don't worry about a story or anything

like that i've had updates where i just post a picture and don't say anything

the best way to get people to follow the cj is update on a semi regular basis

 

 

Your city looks quite nice from what I can tell the buildings all seem

to blend quite well and be of matching architectural style, real nice looking

start i am curious to see some closeups when you get a chance.

 

Alek

[MathNerd05 0]

Some close-ups then:

 

 

This is the University and surrounding areas. Since Universities usually have ample student housing, apartments, and small commercial areas, all this has been included in the surroundings. Also nearby are the Research Centers for Advancement and Disease. The University Library is an historical building and is nestled in a small grove. This area marks the nothern tip of the old city. The oler portions were based on a grid system to allow easy and rapid development. However, the terrain and the downtown area have forced a more liberal grid to be used.

 

 

 

Seen here is Augustas performing Arts center. Once upon a time it was nestled within a well-to-do neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. Now it finds itself squeezed between the new zoo and one of three major thoroughfares to Ramesh, Augusta's only suburb. These avenues primarily carry bus commuters and freight, on their way to the Port of Ramesh. The appreciable number of commuters, its location, and demand for jobs, has forced the area to be more commercial than residential. Lets hear it for planning.

 

 

 

This is a current view of Zen. Its popluation is quickly approaching 200,000. Downtown continues to march east, prompting growth in Ramesh. I'm currently debating how best to use the terrain around the central portion of the Ramesh tile. (The middle of the trees, primarily)  I'm thinking that a medium-sized commercial district needs to emerge here oposite the port. The terrain lends itself to this idea anyway. Expansion north should wrap around the mountain and leave it as a natural landmark. To the westexpansion is straightforward and will follow the cliffs along the shore.

 

I've been debating how best to use highways in this region. I've used them in the past only when traffic volumes required them, but I want to use them to decrease commute times downtown. I would think this is feasible, but I've never achieved the effect before. I suppose careful planning is in order. So:

 

Hypothesis: Highways can be used strategically to reduce commute times from the suburbs.

 

We'll see if its possible. Now for some observations.

 

1.) The parking fines ordinance is a waste of space. Unless you are a master at using the flawed parking garages or have a massive city you lose money or make relatively nothing. At a population of 174,000 Augusta's budget rakes in $57,000 per month and spends $49,000. It earns $16 in parking fines while spending $850 on a commuter shuttle service. Granted these two ordinances have relatively the same effect with a $866 difference in your budget, the shuttle service has a much greater effect on mass transit (which aids your budget only if you have well-placed mass transit systems) and has a much greater efect on regional growth. IMHO, I'd rather spend the bucks and boost my region than only aide my major city.

 

I should stipulate that my coffers have nearly $5,000,000 in them, no cheating, so perhaps my opinion is a little skewed by the fact that I'm not worried about pulling out loans to save my city.

 

2.) Education is/should be the primary aim in your city. A well-educated population demands high-wealth jobs, which gets you those nice office towers and low-pollution high-tech industry. It also gives you headaches with transit maps as a high-wealth home demands a much shorter commute than a low-wealth home. This is primarily why the NAM is a must; otherwise, you'd have an educated city full of abandoned homes.

 

Spend the money on education early. Makesure every part of your city has an elementary school and a library, and make sure they are well-funded. High schools, colleges, museums can come later. Just like hospitals. And police. And fire. And subways. And...

 

3.) Control demand through taxes. This is a recent epiphany of mine, one I'm sure everyone else has already had it. When your residential (or $ commercial) demand gets high enough, i.e. +6000, raise taxes a few tenths of a percent. (Or an entire percent if its possible!) This will give you a funding boost if your budget is struggling and allow you to control development within your city. (or a certain area of your city. Just return the tax levels to the way they were when you are done zoning the area.)

 

4.) I hate zoning for suburbs. Not only that, I suck at it. It gives me a headache trying to keep the overall picture in mind while worrying about zoning a good number of jobs and keeping commute times down and placing schools, and parks and police and fire stations and hospitals and if that bus stop gets enough usage and how better to use the terrain in an area and...   I HATE IT!

[MathNerd05 0]

And a few more close-ups

 

 

Mid-town, actually within the Ramesh city limits. This may eventually be swallowed up by downtown if Augusta grows too much.

 

 

The fledgling port of Ramesh.

 

 

 

Located in Ramesh, this is currently the farthest suburb from downtown. However, with a commercial district planned just to the east, this area will probably fall victim to denser zoning.

[Nardo69 51]

Good start.

About blending in the highways: IMHO the main problem is that there is no transit traffic and so the use of my highways is quite low ...

Suburbs and (especially) rural areas can be and are fun if you are willing to invest the time and patience for the details.

That industrial area şs a good start but would better IMHO if you would use PEG's industrial CDK and PEG's port instead of that beach (would you want to take a bath or sunbath close to that industry anyway?

Let's see how you continue!


Nardo

[MathNerd05 0]

Hope everyone had a good weekend.

I fixed the picture issue, I didn't know that they needed to be at most 800x600. Oops!

 

I wanted to get some new pictures up today, but time has gotten away from me. Tomorrow I will definetly get some new shots up from around the town. I've hit 200,000 people and am debating incorporating the square directly to the north of Augusta.

 

So now for comments and responses:

1.) I'm experiencing what I think is a dependency issue with the US Bank Tower file. The lot seems to be alright but the building itself doesn't show up. Strange.

 

Nardo: Thank you for the comments and advice. I haven't gotten around to including any of PEG's wonderful CDK lots on the waterfront yet. And what do you mean by no transit traffic? Do you mean low traffic volumes?

 

2.) I've noticed in the U-Drive-It missions that different roads have different speeds. Streets are slower than avenues are slower than highways, etc. This is my reasoning for trying to reduce long commute times through highways. in the outlying areas there will certainly not be enough traffic to fill the highway, but as long as routes are planned to coincide with congested routes, the waste is not a total one. And, really, underused highways occur all the time in real life. Pretty much every highway in Mississippi falls under this category.

 

Look for more in the morning. Ciao.

[MathNerd05 0]

Some real close-ups:

 

The Coca-Cola building and the new park on 2nd St. and 4th Ave. The Coca Cola building was the second building to break ten stories in the city.

 

 

The Baseball stadium, Glorified mayor's statue, and shoreview walking park. The walking trail is a work in progress that will eventuall span most of downtown.

 

 

The opera house and its surroundings. These are among the city's oldest buildings.

 

 

The new Marriot Hotel. The hotel chain purchased a tract of land in failing portion of the city in hopes of rejuvinating it. Plans to demolish most of the seen buildings and replace them with a residential high-rise and an expansive shoreside park are under consideration. This would mark the second major anchor of the downtown walking park.

 

 

Finally, a dawn shot of the growing downtown. some construction can be seen in the upper right. This will be a large park and elementary school. The industries just to the other side of the railroad tracks are in the process of being relocated to a new, larger industrial park centered about the airport in northwest Augusta. Major transit renovations have already been considered although nothing concrete has been agreed upon.

 

Observations:

1.) Further expansion of downtown to the East will quickly run into The Port of Ramesh. With the movement of industries from the downtown area to the airport area and with new transit models being carefully examined, downtown should expand westward in an attempt to alleviate any major problems later on.

 

2.) Incorporation to the north and west is quickly becoming an issue. I'll have to do it soon. Blah.

 

3.) The pennisula to the west would make an ideal vacation spot. Hmmmm....

[soldyne 111]

I think you are doing well with your goal.  Your city could be anywhere, USA. 

 

one question though:  did you terraform your region or was it download.  either way it looks great. 

 

keep the updates comming.

[MathNerd05 0]

I wish I could terraform that well! The region is downloaded from Rebel13's Sim City site. If you want, you can google it using the phrase Rebel13's Sim City site or I can give you the link. His site is filled with true-to-earth maps of just about anywhere. It has something to do with satellite greyscales, etc.

[Micah 16]

Looks very great! That's the way to start it off!

[MathNerd05 0]

Just a quick update:

 

 

The first anchor to the downtown walking trail.

[MathNerd05 0]

LLbump::

 

Observation: Finding time to play is oftentimes difficult. 3-day weekends are great for relaxation and catching up, but terrible for gameplay. I promise to have more photos and some maps up in the morning... lots of maps... lots and lots and lots of maps...  and charts...

[oroen 0]

Some interesting observations here. Often highways are best used if you channel most if not all your traffic onto them, so that it's the only way from one place to another. It's the whole argument of whether traffic should be based on an arterial system or more of a grid with more choices (even in real life, as new urban planning prefers the latter). And it's true that really nice suburban developments take quite some time to lay out. I've spent way more time than I have available laying out suburbs.

I'm looking forward to all the maps. I like maps!

[MathNerd05 0]

The Marriott Renovation:

Over violent opposition in the city development committee, the Marriott hotel chain purchased a chunk of real estate in downtown Augusta with plans to build a mid-sized hotel and a park along the nearby beach. The land was in a shabby area of downtown that was in need of a boost. The Marriott purchase boosted real estate prices, priming the area.

 

 

Roads and a few dilapidated buildings were demolished to make room for the new area. Engineers and construction crews then leveled the area and prepared it for a man-made stream and the cities first waterfront.

 

 

The final product, at least in terms of the recreational areas. Marriott sold off a small portion of its land to the highest bidder, a local real-estate tycoon. Almost immediately an apartment complex was laid out and approved. Construction began the following year.

 

 

Simultaneously, renewed interest in the area prompted several other new developments. A new tower for the wealthy rose quickly just across the street, overlooking the new waterfront.

 

 

A midrise just up the hill was also approved, adding to the residential boom.

 

 

 

And an aerial of the finished development. The renovation spawned a commercial boom just to the north of the area. Downtown is now split by a park and has led locals to lend the names Newtown and Oldtown to the areas, respectively. Photos will be forthcoming in the next update.

 

Observations:

1.) Caution must be taken when playing with the leveling tool. God forbid you hit the scroll wheel and accidentally zoom out, causing you to drag the in-use leveling tool halfway across the map. While it does give you a nice smooth line, you've also destroyed your major buildings.

 

1b.) I destroyed the original, spawned Marriott by accident. As a rule, I despise plopping anything that is not an original landmark, but in this case I made an exception. Don't hate me.

 

2.) Making parks look good is hard work. Especially blending different sets.

 

3.) Playing with the building set tool is a good way to get diversity in your downtown. Its really frustrating to blow up that Reed Place that zones 7 times consecutively before you get a Sky-High condos. Commercial zones are even more finicky.

 

4.) PEG's random woods are a godsend. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you Pegasus! 

 

More to come soon. Photos of downtown and suburbs and the promised maps will be up later today.

[MathNerd05 0]

As promised, some charts. These are taken from Augusta and represent a fair sampling of city life, IMHO. So, first and foremost:



The current population. Next:



The current budget. The city maintains a healthy 9k surplus. Services are micromanaged to an extent, but I have a tendency to set levels and forget them until a riot occurs. If things were to turn dire I could always mess with the bus/ambulance funds to save quite a bit of money, but $100 here and there at the moment really has no bearing. I would like to point out that city beautification actually takes the largest chunk of the budget with health and education playing close seconds. Residential taxes make up 62% of my income, commercil taxes about 30%, and industrial taxes 8%. Here again, I could control my demand better if I were to play with my tax levels, but I only want the city to grow at the moment. I$ and I$$ will slowly be banished from Augusta, but that will only happen with a much higher population.



Here is the jobs & population chart. First note that this is on a 100 year time frame (my city is 122 years old.) Next note that there is a healthy middle class. Overall job growth is good with total commercial jobs over 40,000. However, it is discouraging to see renewed dirty industrial. I would guess that this is due to new residential developments that have not had time to mature in terms of health and education. What is encouraging, however, is very healthy I-HT growth.

And now on to some fun charts with little or no real value:



Commute times over the last 100 years. I think it is interesting to note that times were all under 2 minutes until Ramesh was incorporated. This act initiated a spike to near 10 minutes. Anyone have any ideas?



THe crime chart. The city used to be quite a bit more dangerous than it is now.



The education graph. I think and EQ of around 180 is beautiful.



A citizen of Augusta can plan on living more than 80 years. Not sure how to interpret this chart, frankly. I know that HQ is a factor in desireability, but does it affect anything else?



Average income chart. Be nice to live somewhere that has a median income near $70,000. Santa Monica, California and Anchorage, Alaska are the only to cities in the United States that can boast figures like this.



Finally, the traffic volume chart. It makes me happy to see that the number of cars on the road is increasing at a slower rate than the number of pedestrians. (To live up to my screename for a moment, and to tell what I actually thought first, the cars first derivative is smaller relative to the pedestrians first derivative.) More people now take the subway than they do the bus, and train usage has remained fairly constant.

Observations:
1.) Overall, growth is good. I'm pleased with where things are.

2.) New incorporated areas are forcing commute times to skyrocket. Direct routes between these suburbs and downtown/industrial areas are becoming imperative. Would it be better to consider new highway routes or to go with new rail lines, such as speedy, direct, and costly monorails?

3.) It takes a heckuva long time to prepare a chart update. Hope it was worth it.

I'll try and get some more pics along with a few graphs up later today. Ciao.

[cifa 7]

Hey!Nice city!Looks great and realistic also!Keep it up!

[sharkbait16 0]

I wouldn't expect Zen and realism in the same sentence, but your city certianly shows the realism. Could be any average size city, very nice.

[Micah 16]

Yes, this CJ looks very real. Great experiment. You forgot something... What is your hypothesis?

[MathNerd05 0]

Thanks for the comments.

 

@Micah: I didn't really have a hypothesis, I just wanted to hone some skills at realistic zoning. I really had more of an abstract. Something like,

 

A look into the methods and madness of imposing a realistic setting upon a simulation, an exploration of its limitations, and an explanation of teachniques that lend themselves to the creation of a realistic endeavor.

 

How's that work for you?

[sloppet 3]

nice start! the region looks ok, and the pics are nice! nice stats!

[sorchin 18]

Very nice job my friend. You have spaced out your zones beautifully. Keep up the great work mate

[MathNerd05 0]

Justr a quick update. First some pics of the new suburbs:

 

 

 

Next, the current sattelite and transit aerials:

 

 

 

Experiement: To observe the effects of urban decay on a well-established core.

 

Abstract: I will zone for a few high-density commercial lots in the suburbs, simulating the move of major corporations from an urban core to the 'burbs. A few medium density housing zones will crop up, but mainly the only buildings will be the highrises. These areas will be incorporated into the current traffic system. That is, grids will be used sparingly while the current method of forcing traffic onto main thoroughfares will continue. Also, adequate bus networks will be provided as well as a subway line.

 

Hypothesis: Since there is little or no decay present in the downtown core, this zoning will lead to lower commute times for suburban dwellers while having little or no effect on the core itself.

 

Observation: If I were to systemically go through my downtown and demolish some buildings, both commercial and residential, in an effort to simulate edcay, then the true effects would be seen. However, I am interested to see if the same concept will work with a healthy core. We'll see.

[SimTiki 4]

Hey, nice avatar!

When I call your name just say here, which will be short for 'Here I am, rock you like a hurricane.'

Nice city too, it reminds me like some of my own

[MathNerd05 0]

I forgot to give props to Stardarcy for the urban decay idea. Thanks!

@tiki: I like your avatar as well.

 

I'm trying harder than I've ever tried before, and it hurts so good.

[MathNerd05 0]

Another picture update. This will show continuing work along the new waterfront in Augusta. The area has been rundown for some time but is responding well to the renovations. See for yourself:

 

 

This is the area when we left it after the Marriot had purchased a parcel and done some considerable work. The city has deicded to expand on this idea a bit.

 

 

 

Of course, some demolitions must take place.

 

 

The cleared area just before the renovation begins. Two high-rises will be alotted in the new area. The land will be worked only slightly and two man-made waterfalls added to the area.

 

 

A shot of the waterfalls after their completion and the newly finished Bell Tower. This along with Quigly Place mark the two high-rises from Pahse 1 of the Marriott renovation.

 

   

 

Finally, a current shot of downtown. You can see the older half of downtown is beginning to become quite dense. Also, what was once the tallest building, the Coca-Cola building, now pales in comparison.

 

Some plans are in the works concerning connecting the small pond by the Opera House to the streams in the renovation. Either that or enlarging the existing pond and allowing it to flow into its own system of waterfalls to be built in phase 3. (The area just above the leftmost set of marinas.)

Either is feasible, or not doing it at all. The walking trail will also see a major extension in Phase 3.

 

So, what do you think? The promised graphs should be up tomorrow along with some more suburban pictures.

[MathNerd05 0]

The renovation continues:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MathNerd05 0]

Just noticed the photo problem. I'll fix this first thing in the morning.

[MathNerd05 0]

Triple post, oh well  ::bump::

I fixed the pictures in the last two updates but am afraid to do much more today for fear of photobucket deleting my entire account. Anyone have better ideas for image hosting, preferably a place without bandwidth limits? 

[Mickebear 2]

Try http://imageshack.us/   - really easy to use.

[MathNerd05 0]

::bump::

 

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving week. I'm about to head out of town until late Saturday, so I won't be adding any new posts.

 

Assuming things slow down at work, I'll have some graphs ready for you Mondayas well as a lot of new sprawl. The region has hit 225,000 without any real growth in the core. I'd like it to be around 260,000 before I venture back into downtown Augusta for some expansion.

 

So, Happy Turkey Day!