Need help with demand

[zerozeronine 1]

Hey there,

 

I´ve got a serious problem with demand. I built up a city with a 150k pop. so far. The taxes for $$$ buildings are low while the taxes for $ buildings are way higher. Education is high and i´ve also got enough hospitals. The transit railway system is pretty up-to-date and I´ve also built up suburbal areas around the main city where I try to push $ and $$ buildings (also cumulative population of 150k so the region has currently 300k inhabitants) STILL the demand for $$$ buildings are under zero and I don´t know what to do to make that go up again. Does anyone have a clue what i might be doing wrong?  If anyone has any idea what I can do about this situation plz tell me xD

thx

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

Parks, parks, more parks.  Even more schools and hospitals.

 

But you really can only have so much high wealth residential.  There just aren't enough high-wealth jobs in commercial and industrial to support an all high-wealth city.

[Pelipper 7]

Even if you give them 0% taxes, you can only have so much residential before you have to zone for commercial and industrial to balance it out. That's the way the RCI system works.

[Prophet42 1,500]

Most likely since you under-taxed the $$$ they became over built.  SC4 seems to have an affinity toward high wealth residential.  My suggestion is to lower taxes for the R$ and R$$ residents and raise taxes for the $$$ residents to produce a more balanced population.  A balanced population will have a majority of R$$ residents, with a good percentage of R$ residents and a smaller percentage of R$$$ residents.

[zerozeronine 1]

Thanks for ur help guys I think I have to accept the fact that I have to let in at least some poor people in my city

 

Most likely since you under-taxed the $$$ they became over built.  SC4 seems to have an affinity toward high wealth residential.  My suggestion is to lower taxes for the R$ and R$$ residents and raise taxes for the $$$ residents to produce a more balanced population.  A balanced population will have a majority of R$$ residents, with a good percentage of R$ residents and a smaller percentage of R$$$ residents.

This is actually something I recognized while experimenting with taxes but I couldn´t believe that this is the solution for my problems maybe I should give it another shot. Thanks for the information.

[cogeo 960]

Parks do not affect demand, instead they affect (boost) desirability (sorry Joe); you would need more parks if you had a desirability or caps problem, but this seems not to be the case. Instead you have a demand problem.

 

I also recommend against playing with taxes, because this causes unbalanced development. Instead, I would recommend that you gradually set all your tax rates to the neutral level for your city size, which should be 8.9% or 8.8%. Increase taxes for your R$$$ gradually, and only if demand gets positive, otherwise demand for R$$$ will hit the bottom. R$$$ pay a lot of taxes after all. You may increase taxes for I-D to 10% or more, if you want to keep dirty industry from developing.

 

What you need to increase R$$$ demand is to create more $$$ jobs. CO$$$, CO$$ and I-HT (beware of the ) offer the best jobs mix. CS$$ and CS$$$ emlpoy proportionately less $$$ sims by far. If you have positive CO demand, try to get more CO development. Zone more commercial (preferably along busy roads or better yet avenues) and put some plazas (not parks) close by; also give them good police coverage. However CO buildings employ $$ and $ sims as well. CO$$$ employ 15% $$$, 65% $$ and 20% $ sims. For CO$$ the breakdown is 10% $$$, 50% $$ and 40% $. And for CS the mix is even worse. So CO buildings need some $$ and $ sims as well, to function properly. There is another reason why you should get more poor residents though: demand for CO can easily be "satisfied" (exhausted) if you develop several CO buildings! Finally your city won't be developing any more. What you need to continue development is a fresh load of educated workforce, and this unfortunately cannot be "imported". You need to educate them yourself. So the solution is to accept any new resident (even R$), and provide them with full education and health services. Schools and libraries (locally), college/university (they work citywide) and finally the opera (get the fix). Play with the sliders (esp ambulance and bus) so that the bill is affordable. EQ (and consequently demand for CO$$ and CO$$$) will start rising month by month. That is, you will rather have to set the $$ and $ taxes to the neutral level too, and of course accept the fact that most of your sims will be R$, while R$$$ will be the fewest. You can cram your R$ sims in R$ towers, so that they don't take up too much space. However these pay (proportionately) very few taxes, while you will have to pay high health and education expenses, and this can turn your budget red. But R$ sims tend to use mass-transit a lot, and placing some MT stations (even buses) close to them can prove a good source of income. Demand for R (al wealth levels) can be exhausted too, so you should try to satisfy all your commercial demand (even CS$), esp if you don't want more industrial development. 

 

For information about city development, take a look in (and its links, esp one). And get that mod from Bones1, to get rid of that development-and-dilapidation problem.

 

Hope this helps.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Generally speaking you have to have a hierarchy in any city.  The upper limit of R$$$ is around 15% of total population.  Cities need to be balanced.  With 300K population try setting your taxes to a flat 8.0% or even a little lower, and work with the game algorithms.  You can't really keep a city going with only R$$$ because you need middle management and clerical workers.  Somebody has to take out the garbage.

[zerozeronine 1]

Thanks for the information guys. @cogeo: isn´t there an easier way to fix the I-HT bug. This is a lot to download :S

[cogeo 960]

@cogeo: isn´t there an easier way to fix the I-HT bug. This is a lot to download :S

 

Not really! You have to download only 2 items, the I-HT jobs fix and the DatPacker. You need to do some work (backups, datpacking, copies etc) but it shouldn't take you more than half an hour (plus another half or so maybe, to read and understand the procedure). I think it's not that bad.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

 

@cogeo: isn´t there an easier way to fix the I-HT bug. This is a lot to download :S

 

Not really! You have to download only 2 items, the I-HT jobs fix and the DatPacker. You need to do some work (backups, datpacking, copies etc) but it shouldn't take you more than half an hour (plus another half or so maybe, to read and understand the procedure). I think it's not that bad.

 

Frankly, it is a pain in the resundle for most users.  We who are computer initiates find it rather trivial, but we are getting fewer and farther between.

[zerozeronine 1]

Yes I tried to download it but for the DatPacker i need 3 more things to download. Due to the fact that I don´t see this chain of downloads coming to an end I will just let it go and create some other jobs for my rich people. Nevertheless thank you for your advice, especially cogeo and A Noony Moose. I kinda understand the game much better now and I realized what mistakes I´ve made so far.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I am not sure, but I think you can use by ilive instead of DATpacker and save a lot of messing about.  You have to have a few computer smarts and be prepared to do a little messing about, but it is a C program and doesn't need anything else.  It is for people who really know what they are doing.