Perfect Road Spacing

[oldnavy 11]

I have struggled through bad "how to's" and tips of how to space roads and roads to avenues correctly. None of the road spacing mods on here are good (Sorry maxisguillame and skyestorme) I had to take their tips of "between two roads, a dirt road should cost $440. (we) have no idea about avenues" and figure out stuff on my own on how to put roads, avenues, and oddly-sized megatowers all together.

 

First, you don't want to put every possible thing in your city. you want to have a couple neighboring TOWNS to support your main city. In other threads, you see people building great works of solar farms or ecologies; i personally like the international airport, two main cities on a perfectly squared & FLAT grid, and a few neighboring towns with the industry in them to fuel my two main cities.

 

In order for your cities to get a lot of people crammed in them, you need to have the road spacing as tight as possible and it IS tedious. If you place all avenues, you will take off about 250k of populatioin from the space you use up :-o. The only place you need avenues is in your COMMERCIAL section, where EVERYONE goes to work and shop. these avenues are the arteries for this commercial section and should be the center of the city. 

 

To ease traffic, you should use the UDoN (uni-directional Networks): THERE IS AN ONLINE VERSION THAT WORKS IN BOTH OFFLINE AND ONLINE (ty xoxide)! I try to make every other road, one that is not an avenue, go the opposite direction. My sims can travel on one way streets in a square/rectangle and get back where they started from. The great thing about the one way streets is not just the direction of travel but that IT GIVES YOU FOUR LANES of traffic going in the same direction and, miraculously, the cars get in the furthest lanes right or left to turn right or left, leaving center lanes clear for the traffic going straight!

 

You should put the avenues on the VERY EDGE, not the edge lines. this gives you exact spacing to use two avenues in the center as the arteries for high-traffic commerce! you should always start at these edges and STEP EACH END up toward the center, consecutively, so that any left over space will end up at the center for oddly-shaped parks to influence a bigger area! I only spend about 2k - 3k per hour on parks to get the ENTIRE map high-valued land! Tip: when placing parks, dont place new ones; instead, expand the other ones AND, once you've made a line of parks an extension of one extending as far as possible, DELETE THE ONES in the center, leaving exact space for buildings between. you now have double influence area for 1/3 the price   Play with this to see which combination gives you the most coverage for the least price! You will be surprised that it's usually not the high-maintenance ones!

 

There's no east, west, north, south but, if i start at the north and space from the avenue on the edge to a road, I should then go to the south and repeat/mirror the same. Eventually, they meet each other in the middle and, if you did the spacing perfectly as i describe below, you will end up with space to put two avenues as the arteries of your commercial. It's better to have a TAD bit of space left between these two artery avenues than to come up short! It leaves space for megatowers in the center along with a shopping/red lighta commercial district 

 

HOLDING SHIFT and Using STRAIGHT Dirt roads ONLY as a spacing ruler (deleted afterwards or upgraded), here's the ABSOLUTE spacing (not $1 of space wasted):

 

• between two heavy/medium/light roads (including UDoN one-way STREETS): $440

 

• interleave from avenue back to roads or from roads to avenue: $460

(between an avenue and a heavy/medium/light road/one-way street)

 

• Avenue to Avenue (between two avenues):  $484

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​To know how many high density buildings you can fit in a given space or how big you need to make your square...

1. Each RESIDENTIAL high-density building takes: $205² in spacing (without any room before or after for putting roads or objects).
2. Each high-density COMMECIAL takes $205 in LENGTH (in the back) and 102.5 in WIDTH [just space for 1 residential and you get 2 commerical in the same space]. 
3. Each high-density INDUSTRIAL takes $510 in WIDTH and $205 in LENGTH (for the long mills) 

• This means if you was to measure the residential building, using a dirt road, each side would cost $205 BUT would NOT leave ANY space to connect the roads! So, if you want to fit five (5) high density buildings, you would take 5 x $205 = $1025 and then, if putting roads on each end, add $15 for each side that has a road.

 

• If putting an avenue on the side, ADD $35, INSTEAD, to the sum for each side that has an avenue. THIS IS NOT to be added in addition to the $15 ( don't be confused to calculate [($5 x $205) + $15 + $35]) UNLESS you have a road on one side and avenue on the other .

 

This should help you when you start with an EMPTY map to draw out dirt roads from the edge without a connecting road, to plan for your intersections and grid. it also really helps for squeezing awkward megatowers without wasting anymore space. The reasons for this are endless, mostly for what you run into in the future that I haven't thought of. I'm a guy of MATH when it comes to games like this, to conserve space. You can take the $35 above, for example, and double it, to figure out  that the width of an avenue in dirt road cost is $70 .

 

Personally, I plan to take this information and MEASURE usable space of a new map, to then be able to know how many buildings can fit, lengthwise, after i figure out the OPTIMUM amount of buildings in a block without congesting traffic (to know how many TO ALLOW to fit before adding a cross-section of road). I also want to figure out the optimal ratio of industrial buildings (which take up $510 as high-density) to commercial buildings to population. i'm GUESSING, at the moment without testing, that for each industrial building, you want 3 commercial buildings of the same desntiy (one for each wealth class). Basically, you can take what I've given you and help me turn this game into a science

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After placing roads, ALWAYS DOUBLE CHECK the spacing again by dragging a dirt road between them; you can move your mouse by accident when ruling them but it will tell you the same $$$ amount as before you dragged it. you should get a sum that is EVENLY divisible by $205, using the ruler method I just described.