Real Life Cities

[TheBonobo4 28]

Sorry if I've posted this in the wrong place. I'm curious as to whether anyone has ever tried to, successfully or not, recreate exactly a part or the entirety of a city or town or region? I've seen a YT video of someone who recreated about half of Chicago (video link here) but seemingly never finished it, and that was uploaded 4 years ago. That said he had every road, street, house and building, subway and park recreated exactly. Since there's a load of real maps to be downloaded on the STEX, has anyone even attempted something similar?


As it happens, I personally have not, but I would want to one day I reckon. I'm from Manchester, UK, which I feel would be amazing to make but incredibly difficult, mainly due to the lack of custom BATs available, and also the rail network is very complex, as are the many roads and suburbs. I feel London would be the same. My next thought would be New York. Yes, it's huge and yes it'd take forever, but as far as I'm aware, it's never been done before (there may be a reason for that). But with the huge amount of BATs and DLC, I think someone could do it (if not myself). Also, New York is complex yes, but if broken into sections, it could be simpler. As in, start with Manhattan or Brooklyn etc and work from there. It helps as well that the roads are (fairly) simple, especially compared to UK networks.


In short, if you've ever thought of attempted or attempted or failed, let me know here please. I'd love to see pictures or just read about it.

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

I don't know if this is the right section, but you did a nice request. I would like too see that too. I remember about that project to recreate NYC, was awesome. But, sincerely, I think it's really hard, they could make thousands of MODs and still miss many of them.

[APSMS 1,892]

In doing a non-recreation of San Diego (a city that has a decently oriented Downtown street pattern, unlike NY), I can say that this is fiendishly difficult with a basic orthogonal grid.

 

Many cities are not so simply oriented, and one has to account for the fact that SC4 roads take up a set amount of space, regardless of lane count (OWR-1 still takes up one tile in width, which is the same as for the NRD-4, which has four more lanes), which means that the map will have to be accordingly bloated in some aspects. Generally true recreations are also not very fun to build due to how SC4 treats game road networks and lots, which would require a lot of work in the LE and in plopping various buildings. This is all, of course, not counting for any challenges that might be present in the form of terrain and sloped networks, as well as the road angles that currently limit streets to ortho and diagonal, and roads to ortho, diag, FAR3 and FAR2, the last of which is a ver new development and is still impractical for inner-city networks due to the extra space that FAR networks occupy. The same can be said for rail.

 

All that being said, it's not impossible, but would be fairly difficult and generally not very fun to do with any amount of precision. With large compromises you could achieve this more easily (the NYBT recreations are generally with compromises; note that many of their buildings lack a FA or diagonal version, despite their RL orientation in the NSEW grid), and perhaps with more fun. Certainly you might have better luck doing a recreation with actual models. Aside from the space constraints, it might actually be less frustrating.

[TekindusT 3,809]

We have had several partial or total city recreations in ST history. Perhaps the most remembered ones are Hanson784's recreations of and As APSMS has said, New York is a popular destination when recreating, because of the largely orthogonal grid the Manhattan island presents and the wide variety of BATs available from the great apple. lucky7 achieved a large level of accuracy on its of the upper districts, as well. kelistmac is currently the Lower Manhattan section with quite big success. 

 

This last user demonstrated its hand by recreating some years ago. This is a more partial recreation, which is a far easier approach IMO. ilikehotdogsalot also got impressive results on his CJ World by recreating parts of several cities accross the world. GreekMan is currently trying the whole city of but it's still on its planning phase. Several others have fallen at this phase and are scattered throughout the CJ forum.

 

BTW, moving this topic to the City Building Concepts forum.

[TheBonobo4 28]

Hmm. Any ideas as to a real world area that would be easier, if not easy, to replicate? And I would mean exactly, or as close as exact as possible.



As it happens, the areas I'd like to see recreated to this standard are Manchester, London, or New York (likely more but those are the first 3 I can think of). Of those three, Manchester would be my favourite since it's my home town. London would be very rewarding to recreate, but I feel would possibly be the hardest. New York would be great to make as well, but again it'd be hard. This is why any feedback or advice would be greatly appreciated.

[TheBonobo4 28]

Just a few questions. For recreating cities accurately, how would you model Water Pipes and Subways. I imagine that Subways would be modelled accurately whereas Water Pipes would be less of a concern perhaps, and any arrangement would work. However, how exactly do you ensure buildings have adequate power and water? 


Also, I've been doing a bit of research. Were I to create a New York, I'd use the map made by Izidor44, as it's large, very accurate, the most recent (I think), and covers most if not all the area I need. Furthermore, I think if I've done this right, there's an area that seems to represent a rectangle in the exact size of the UN Headquarters, meaning I'd have a sufficient reference point to start building from there. Though another thing is Central Park. Whilst simply marking the area out with roads would not be too difficult, actually recreating it exactly would be extremely difficult.

And finally, I think the hardest and perhaps most important part is simply to accurately recreate the street plan. Once that's done, that's a huge milestone and means more reference frames for buildings, (ploppable buildings with jobs are going to be incredibly useful for this)!


One last thing. I've never visited New York, so I think that could be a major handicap. That said, there should be enough information on the Internet to make a good model of it.

[cmdp123789 710]

Hey!!! I read this, and caught my eye... Im currently working on my NYC recreation. I had a CJ, but I had to stop due to changing computers... and so now that I have it, Im starting off again... I have the Manhattan grid almost done, and currently working on the dowtown area... so stay tune and maybe in 3 or 4 days you will catch an update on that...

[TheBonobo4 28]

Sounds awesome. Also your avatar looks familiar, so either you've made mods I've looked at or I've seen you around years ago when I first joined. Look forward to it. I've not played SC4 in ages but had the sudden urge to do so recently, so I'll need to install it on my laptop and download a load of mods etc. I just hope my laptop will cope. It does have 4GB of RAM, Win7 64 bit and i5 4 CPU 2.5GHz Processor, but then again, New York is huge.



Oh and how did you get the roads and street layout exact? And what about transit, water and power?

[Johan_91 179]

It is easier to recreate a medium-sized city in my opinion since a major multi-million city would be way too time consuming for an accurate recreation
But it is always possible for the ones who are up for a challenge ;D

[TheBonobo4 28]

True. But I can't think of anywhere I'd like to make like that. Most UK places would not be easy to make either.

[cmdp123789 710]

Well.. I tried some time ago trying to get the "style" on British cities, and it was hard, but you get a nice result! I must admit, that I tried 3 times to recreate London... the first one I did it by myself, including the map.. and then I used both times the London map by Drunkapple.. I never got to play it, but I laid the roads (at least main roads) I placed the important landmarks (St Pauls, some buildings from the City, etc) but then again... I got lost into the recreation because of the lack of residential buildings. To be honest, London is a great place, and it is hard to recreate, yet some of London is way easier than NYC.. the only problem with London recreations is that we do not have the architecture, we need more of those w2w sets like the Paris ones.. you know.. we have like 70 different buildings, and like 3 or 4 sets of 10 buildings each... 

 

Anyways, I started all over again, and I followed some of my old pics, which is basically why you will find some parts to be alike, BUT, its all new... and, its even better.. because of the new NAM, I was able to add some details... Of course, Im looking forward to some releases such as the Cityspire (currently in the process), the Empire State Building (in process by Vlasky), and of course, Aarons residentials, which are always, ALWAYS a must for any of my cities.

 

My stats are, i7, 8GB RAM, Win 7 64... well bla bla, the regular pc... Regarding your questions...

 

First of all, we all know that the game has its limitations.. so it is kinda obvious that there some things that wont be 100% accurate, specially in Broooklyn and Queens. What I basically do, is use the google earth measuring tool, which is the most important tool in terms of achieving the scaling right. A way to start is either by taking the tip of lower manhattan amd start working from there, or look at the piers on the west side, and see what streets follow those lines, and start from there. Of course, there are some things that wont be exact as mentioned above, for example, between the 23rd St, and the 34th, there should be 53 tiles... but inmy recreation, there are 54 tiles or else a block would be 3 tiles wide instead of 4, and that wouldnt be correct, cause there are no 3 tiles between any of those blocks.

 

The reason to that is because of the fact that streets are not exactly 16 meters (1 tile) so you end up neding an extra one because of the extra meters you give or take in any road you lay. 

 

For the subway.. well, I used a map, and followed each line, and got it pretty accurate. The only problem would be placin the stations, but then again, I could probably edit some of the RTMT in the Ilive to show up on the 2 tiles sections, hopefully LOL! The thing is, subway lines are probably te easiest in manhattan, and a pain in the $&@&$ in brooklyn and queens believe you me =p

 

Finally.. water pipes... do whatever you want, pipes ffrom simcity 4 have nothing to do with pipes in real life... just follow whatever pattern covers the most...

[TheBonobo4 28]

How big is one tile? I've read here that it's 16x16 metres, and elsewhere that it is 24 metres.

[cmdp123789 710]

It's 16 meters by 16 meters... you see, the thing is, you cant go less than a tile, so even with those tiny streets, an using the nwm, cant get like "half a tile" so you gotta planned ahead that you might need to take a tile off a block because of the street width.. or, redesign the structure. Sometimes, it is easier to make the things fit the game, and not the other way around. There are some things that just cant be made... 

 

Btw, I dont know if you are interested, but this is something I did some time ago, and I think it has its British charm!! Of course, its not complete, so please ignore the green undeveloped space =)

 

 

And an overall look...

 

[TheBonobo4 28]

Very impressive. And yeah it does look British.


Just did a few measure ups. From the UN Headquarters, my starting point, I'll have a few streets acting as markers (around the edge of the HQ), which have some pretty interesting landmarks there, such as Chrysler Building and Grand Central Terminal. Also I think I can get it to be a nice or integer number of squares. I'd love to see your NY so far though.  

[cmdp123789 710]

Hmmm alright! Using UN as a starting point sounds nice... Just make sure you measure correctly the starting point lol! Believe me when I say this... I tried it before, and sometimes only after a couple of hours of work you really get to see your mistake.... I believe that if you get the streets right, you have 50% done... You see, not only you have to think of the zoning, or the landmarks... Sometimes it's all about the ground work...

Anyways, let me get home, and I will pm you with the current work so far... I've been having a little setback (Brooklyn area). I also use a technique that works really good for me, and since its implementation, all my angle roads look correct.

[TheBonobo4 28]

The main street from the UN Headquarters I think was East 42nd Street. From there it was basically an exact integer of tiles (as in a multiple of 16m) to Chrysler Building, NY Public Library, and Grand Central Station, within a very marginal error.

 

 

 

And yeah, once I get the roads done that's actually most of the work done. Though I'm not sure which roads are roads and which are streets. One way roads are easy. I'm also unsure what's a road and what's an avenue or a motorway/highway. But I'll need NAM to get most of the streets and I'm not familiar with it at all. I guess I'll just have to play around with it and see what works.

[cmdp123789 710]

Ok, so let me guide you for a bit, or else you will end up wasting your time, by not obtaining the result you are looking for...

 

 

So, thats the new map Ive been working on since my new computer. I meant to show only Manhattan because that is the part that I have completed the most.

 

First off, GET THE NAM!! It is impossible to work on such a great project without the NAM... it is essential. Second, be ready to learn whatever is out there to make it look as close as possible ie. look at my angled roads, they look good right? Well, in order to get those right, I studied different methods used by the people in here, until I finally developed one of my own...

 

It is extremely important that you take the time to look at maps, and try to understand the way the city is developed... Here in America, the cities were designed based on the car, so you need to understand as a European, that we think in car terms lol!! 

 

Moving on, after you get the NAM, it is important to get a good water and terrain mod... just for the looks, but trust me, it will look 10 times better with those that without them. 

 

Since we are now only talking about the street layout, we will avoid lots and stuff for now.. So focusing on roads... well, you see, most of the roads in NYC are one way roads, which in the grid section of the map look easy and good, problem is when you reach the downtown area.. so I would definetly leave that as last of everything. Remember that in order to fit some buildings you will be required to work with the PIMX and re sizing the buildings, and the working on the lot editor to create new lots... but thats for another time =p

 

Finally, get the hang of the RHW, it WILL help you a lot, specially with the new flex things. 

 

Now, on terms of roads and sizes, this is what I do... Every certain number of blocks, you will find that some roads are not one way roads, instead they go both directions. Now, on those you use the Network Widening Mod. The 14th, 23rd, and 34th are 1 tile MAVE4... for the 42nd, MAVE4... 57th MAVE4.. then you get the 72nd and the 86th, which I used double tiled networks.. 

 

I think this will give you a start up guide. I think I should start a guide on building NYC lol!

 

Feel free to comment your doubts an anything you wanna share through this thread.

 

Criss

[TheBonobo4 28]

Thanks for the advice. It's worth noting though I haven't any intention to start building until Summer, and also that I'm not even sure New York is where I'll be building. Also, I said I'm unfamiliar with the NAM and similar mods, but I know to use them because they are incredibly useful.



However, a guide to this, if you're willing to write it, would be very useful indeed.

[TheBonobo4 28]

Also I see you've left a big space for Central Park. How are you going to recreate that?

[TheBonobo4 28]

Maybe I'm just being naive here, but most of Manhattan looks okay and easy to make. Maybe even fun. Long straight roads, one tile or two wide, with four or six lanes. Most streets seem to be one tile wide 4 lane roads, some one way and some both ways.

[cmdp123789 710]

Well to answer all he questions..

I might do that.. A cj tutorial lol

Hmmm Central Park will take time... A mix of mmps... And patience will do

Finally... It is easy when you look at it that way... What it's hard is to actually get those lines in the correct place.

I've been working today on the map.. Northern tip specially.. I guess I won't be updating with pics until I have something worth watching... But in the meantime.. I will probably post some guides on how to do it.

Maybe we can work on something... Pick a city you want to do.. And I might help you!

[TheBonobo4 28]

I actually want to build New York now. So much variety and variance in the architecture. Skyscrapers everywhere. Such beauty. And the sheer amount of mods does help massively with a project like this.

[TheBonobo4 28]

My starting point will definitely be the East Side. There's loads of interesting landmarks and the roads are fairly grid like there. Plus, I think it's all one big city on the map I would use. But there's Grand Central, the UN Headquarters, Rockefeller Centre, X, Y and Z buildings, Empire State Building, Guggenheim Museum, and many more. Plus it has 5th, 3rd, 4th, 2nd and 1st Avenues, as well as Park and Lexington. So all in all a great starting point I think.



Right now, I'm thinking water and power will be a huge problem, as well as subways and maybe motorways. But I suppose I can worry about those once the buildings are placed. Also, Residential and non-ploppable Commercial and Industry won't be easy. 




And you talking of the Northern tip reminds me. Not just Central Park will be difficult, but also University Campuses, as well as certain bridges and docks. Granted, I only want to make Manhattan right now, but if/when I make The Bronx and Brooklyn/Queens, that will be a huge concern. And also, Columbia University is in Manhattan, so that will be difficult.

[9gruntsand1hammer 3,195]

Not recreating a whole city but recreating downtown Toronto but it is really hard because of the lack of Toronto BATs.

[APSMS 1,892]

The closest thing you'll find to a NAM tutorial (that is comprehensive) is in the documentation. Because everyone uses the NAM differently depending on their play style, It'd be hard to even identify clearly what each bit is and when best to use it. A number of the things in the NAM have primarily cosmetic functions, with added on game-functionality. TuLEPs come to mind, as they primarily are cosmetic, but do increase intersection capacity by 25% as an added bonus for the extra effort.

 

Really if you're not planning on starting until summer I would start now with getting familiar. Adjusting to all of the new things in NAM 32 wasn't that hard for me, as I've been using it since version 30, but there is a significant learning curve that will be extremely discouraging if you have to deal with that and frustrations in the recreation.

 

Water, power, etc. should not be a problem, as a recreation should be concerned with appearance and aesthetics, not functionality. I would recommend a functioning city, but I wouldn't worry to much about using cheat lots and such to provide the necessary stuff. Also, garbage incinerators with a budget of zero work really well at disposing of your trash for low cost. It's been a long time since I placed a landfill. I wasn't willing to deal with the micromanagement that accompanied sending garbage through multiple cities to a landfill (though I might try it one day) mainly because I already spend to much time trying to get the city to look the way I want it and have it function properly (w/regards to RCI) to justify fiddling with neighbor deals and such.

[TheBonobo4 28]

One thing I've noticed, is certain streets like 5th avenue seem to be 4 lanes with a bus lane. Is there an addon for bus lanes or should I just use 4 or 5 lane, 1 tile roads? Also, some streets change diurection or lanes, so there one way and then both ways a few streets later, or they intersect and become wider or narrower.

[cmdp123789 710]

Well that's the part where I say sacrifices lol... 5th ave usually is a one tile avenue, given the fact that it is narrower than the other avenues. Since it's a one tiled road, I use the owr3.

At this point, it is up to you to use whatever method you want, but based on personal experience, I would go with what I just told you

[TowerDude 2,186]

I for one have "recreated" Hong Kong.

 

As someone versed into arts, and studying architecture, I might have a different view on city "re-creation"

 

My first point that is important, is what are you recreating? are you going to try and recreate with pain a real city, that won't look much like the real one, because it's simply too hard... and I come to wonder on how rewarding it is

 

Don't get me wrong, being near reality is crucial, but one can't be in it, as per. When building Hong Kong I found it so much more rewarding to capture the feeling of the city, than the actual built reality, so yeah some towers where badly placed, roads where not exact, but I wanted to capture the feeling

 

So for me, a successful city re-creation is one that has the feeling of it, not just a copied reality in Sim City, as I've already seen. AN interesting thing is seeing the city you've recreated in real it can be surprising.. If you wanna know more on my pov, just pm me I'll follow what's being said here, because it's a topic I love!

[TekindusT 3,809]

I for one have "recreated" Hong Kong.

I knew I was forgetting somebody on that listing. Sorry...

[crushproof 103]

Hi there,

 

I'll definitely be following this thread. Long long time Simtropolis lurker but now I'm looking to get involved.

 

I'm currently recreating Dublin and it's massively difficult to say the least. Needless to say the tile size is difficult as well as judging sea level etc. I've been using this excellent distance calculator http://www.freemaptools.com/measure-distance.htm  but even then it is difficult building a city where so many of the roads and streets are diagional.

I'm having to use the FARR alot but of course this interfers with the overall look, ie the sidewalks look too large. Also another issue is the density. As Dublin is a low density city with not much industry. I can see it difficult to build so much Residential without the services and industry for jobs.

But I'll keep you posted anyway! Good luck!