Urban Decay/Growth in Simcity 4

[starrdarcy 4]

Urban Decay/Growth cycle: concepts and ideas
By starrdarcy

Thought I would start this thread to demonstrate a few concepts in building and evolving a city centre/core.

Throughout the 60's to 70's many North American cities experienced a decline in their downtown areas due to suburban shopping malls and recessions. The end result was many large cities particularly Detroit and New York had massive areas abandon and decay into unsafe and unpleasant hoods. Over time as suburban life became bland for some and resurgence in the city center was visible, many have decided to settle in the city center. This cycle has actually occurred several times and is continuing to happen.

Below is a picture of severe urban decay in downtown Royal Oaks, notice that the area is an ugly grey - this was buildings before.
https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//decay-01[1].jpg align=baseline>

Decay in the hood
In SimCity 4, you can simulate this cycle to see the visual (and financial) effects of urban decay/growth (to some degree). First, there are a few concepts you will have to grasp before you can do this.

What is needed.
Before starting the urban decay process it

[hamsterTK 93]

i dont get get urban decay in my cities as much as i do suburban decay in my cities due to commute time. It happens in real life, my cousins part of houston is starting to expiereince this.

[tungston 19]

Starrdarcy: would you please resize your images, so you post will be easier to view.  The limit for images is 800x600.

Thank you.

[MathNerd05 0]

What a fantastic experiment! I've just started a cj about creating realistic cities, and this is definetly something I will play with. I also do not usually have urban decay problems, rather suburban decay, but this is for 2 reasons I imagine.

 

1.) I let my cities grow slowly and rezone downtown as I go. I usually end up dozing vast areas of the core when traffic becomes too bad.

 

2.) I leave most of my commercial jobs in the core or along major avenues. This provides some jobs for the suburbs, but not enough. It is a good idea to try zoning for some higher density buildings in the 'burbs.

 

Thanks again for the intrigue!

[starrdarcy 4]

sorry guys, i'll resize the images shortly, in the meantime, is there a function for resizing images here??

[BarbulaM1 38]

Nice tip there, you are a great asset so far .

As for resizing goes this was writen quite nicely I took the liberty in re-sizeing these images . As for a program that can do this easily, Im sure is posted elseware (I don't know of one that is free )

[Gen 0]

Thanks starrdarcy, for explaining the concept of decay and growth in urban city. How about explaining about how disasters can affect cities in short term or long term effect? Thanks a lot once again, I like that explanation of that concept

[MathNerd05 0]

The Gimp is a free photo editor. ( www.gimp.org )

[Rabid Tangerine 0]

A very well rounded (free) image editor, I might add. It ain't no Photosop, of course, but for free, it's gold.

[da_sim_dude 5]

Wow cool explaination about Urban Decay!!Now I get the concept!!

[Superchan 23]

nice experiment.

[Nardo69 51]

Nice experiment with a good rl background.

Nardo

PS: A nice, free and easy-use tool is Irfanview . It is a tool between an image editor and viewer, has some great resiye option and a batchmode. I use it myself eveyday.

[newy2 0]

Great info you have there starrdarcy, i found it interesting I need to try this out for myself
cheers

[ABCD12345 1]

Nice info starrdarcy and oh yeah...where did u get those grey lots?

[iquere 2]

Date: 1/5/2006 12:08:48 PM
Author: Yayo01
Nice info starrdarcy and oh yeah...where did u get those grey lots?

quote>

Yeah, I also want those grey lots!