How to stop $$$-Villas growing in $$-Suburbs..

[Revolt 0]

Hi all,

 

I have been facing a small problem when zoning my residential areas, and I can't seem to find what I am doing wrong.

 

In mid- and highrise areas, I am using the CTRL-button to zone for particular lot sizes (e.g. 4x4 or 2x4, etc.). This works for both commercial and residential building.

 

However, I am now working on suburbs, and am using the CTRL-button to zone 1x2 houses only. But this doesn't work! I keep getting the $$$ big villa's (4x3), even though I am zoning each lot separately. Is there any way to prevent this? I want partciular suburbs with $$ houses only, and I am zoning special areas for the high wealth villa's.

 

Is there any other solution, other than leaving a blank area between blocks to avoid the villa's from growing? Because I still want some suburbs to look dense (for instance blocks of 10x4, and 2 rows of houses of 1x2.

 

Thanks in advance. Kind regards, R

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The deep, dark secret is to avoid creating lots that can contain these sins.  I hand zone everything, mostly 2 x 1 and 2 x 2 being careful not to create a situation where the game can merge lots into one that will hold one of these things.  Sometimes you just have to slip a small C lot in the middle of a block or on a corner to make this work so that the lots on the street behind are one grid frame out of sync.  A single occupancy 1 x 1 C lot doesn't look out of place when you think about corner stores in a neighbourhood.

[Prophet42 1,501]

Another idea is to raise taxes on the R$$$ to the point were the demand is zero or slightly negative.  However you do have to be careful with this since you may get the demand out of balance by not providing enough R$$$ employees for CO$$$, CS$$$ and I-HT.

[.anonyman 28]

I always considered this one of the game's most annoying flaws, and only recently did I find out on another thread about this mod:

 

 

It raises the requirements for R$$$ (and R$$) so they are less likely to grow in places with lower desirability -- like your medium-wealth suburbs. This leads to less abandonment of those inappropriate buildings, but the way it accomplishes it is great for the problem you're having, too.

[dawson2089 1]

 

Here is a mod that stops them from growing.

[His Divine Hand 244]

This problem can be solved through zoning  The trick is to zone your 1x2's in alternating patterns, so that you have a 1x2 res zone, then a blank spot, and then a 1x2 res zone.  Once your house grows, set as historic, and once the current zones are filled, zone the empty spaces.  No mansion can grow there as there will not enough available space due to every other zone being historic.  

[Jim14409 448]

Much of my zoning is done manually or by hand I guess you could say but when I do zone in mass I have found a way to prevent mansions from hijacking and building in areas where I don't want them.

 

Don't allow three lots to be back to back they can be in a row, but not back to back. Say you have zoned a area of lots that are three lots across and two deep (3-1x2's) and butting up on the back side you have another group of the same facing the other street and there is no unzoned space between them. The trick is to shorten ONE of the lots on either side by onegrid block. This results in one street of 3-1x2's all next to one another. Back of them on the next street you would have 2-1x2's and one lot of 1x1. A mansion will not grow here. I have found the same to be true on 1x3's and other sized lots as well. If you zone a large area just take the de-zone tool and dezone one grid block where three would butt up to three otherwise.

 

Hope this makes sense and I'll be glad to help if it is not. I had a graphic but so far can't upload it.

[crushproof 103]

This problem can be solved through zoning  The trick is to zone your 1x2's in alternating patterns, so that you have a 1x2 res zone, then a blank spot, and then a 1x2 res zone.  Once your house grows, set as historic, and once the current zones are filled, zone the empty spaces.  No mansion can grow there as there will not enough available space due to every other zone being historic.  

 

Yep as His Divine Hand says the best way to do this is by zoning the 1x2 individually, with blanks in between. Then set the new build to historic.

 

I've spent days doing this creating monotonous Irish suburban sprawl...waiting and waiting for the correct lot to build is the worst part. Demolish, and wait...and repeat. And then voila...your lot will finally appear. Just be sure to set it to historic. Nothing worse then seeing something break up the monotony of suburban bliss!

 

Also the Block All Maxis buildings helps to prevent those dam Maxis estates building up.

[cogeo 960]

Yup, His Divine Hand is right. As R$$$ lots are at least 2-tiles wide, marking lots as histrical in an alternating pattern will keep these lots from growing. Small R$$ homes grow mostly on 1-tile wide lots (1x3 and 1x2), only stage-1 ones are 2-tile wide, and these are usually subdivided very early in the city growth.

 

Another tip: 2-tile wide Maxis R$$$ villas require at least medium-density zones. Although the lots are are configured to grow on all three densities, the growth stage has been set to 4. So if your zones are low-density, villas won't grow if you have zones up to 2-tiles wide not marked historical. Btw I find this setting quite inconvenient (although in this specific case it actually helps), cause you can't control building sizes through zoning. You need a medium-density 2x3 R zone to get a villa, but the same zone can grow palazzos and condos as well. And a villa on a 2x3, or even 2x2 lot is pretty low-density development anyway, so why need medium-density for these? I have made a mod to fix this, you can download the mod from this post on SC4D, if you are interested.

 

Another way is alternating zone density: the simulator won't form lots over tiles of different-density zones, eg a 2x3 lot will not be formed on a 1x3 medium-density zone and a 1x3 high-density one.

[naftixe 131]

For my row houses, I zone alternating 2x1 (or 3x1 ) of medium and high density. Or I do alternating diagonals that give a herringbone look

[redfox85 659]

My suburbs are zoned with 1x1 squares. I have found two ways to stop them from upgrading: Eithier a) tax it out or b) mod it out. You pretty much need to do both to prevent the R$$ demand from collapsing; and CAP can also be a whole other issue.

 

[Priyon 16]

My personal strategy is to put the taxes for wealthy sims on highest, and then build the city without the villas. Once I am satisfied with the number of low and middle-wealth population, I check 'make historical' on their houses. Then I restore the taxes on the rich to normal. This prevents housing from being turned into huge, ugly villas.

[defacto123 14]

If you only want low-density residential zones, then simply refuse to water them. Low-density R$ and R$$ do not require water, whereas low-density R$$$ does. (All medium- and high-density development requires water.)

 

What if you do want higher densities? Remember that typically, a development can only replace another when it has at least the same wealth and at least the same density. (I'm talking about actual buildings; of course a R$$$ building can become distressed, but the building itself is still a R$$$ building that just happens to be occupied by R$ or R$$ Sims.) So what does this mean? Medium- or high-density buildings of any wealth cannot be replaced by villas. In my personal experience, as long as the demand is there, Sims would rather build medium-density R$ or R$$ than low-density R$$$, even in an area of very high desirability.

[Kieren Barnett 76]

Old thread. I tested this out a bit, and I think the 'in-game' way, still allowing the player to mass zone, is to not water. It makes sense, to a degree. Think of the pipes as water mains. To my knowledge, there aren't mains going under every street in every suburb, it'd be too expensive for little amount of taxes in return. There would still be pipes coming off the mains, but they'd be a lot smaller, and cater to individual houses. R$ and R$$ do not require water in low density. Typically, you wouldn't mass zone medium or high density on the streets used in suburbs, so this is not an issue to have no water. I placed my pipes down the main roads and avenues, where my commercial districts and higher density residential were. Those who want water get it, mansions don't grow, everyone's happy.

The other take away from it, is to consider what's underground in your cities. Just because you only see it in underground mode, doesn't mean you can't put a little planning into it, rather than a massive grid stretching from one corner of the map to the other.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

@Kieren Barnett

Another option I learned from an old thread and then modded is using No Kickout. Here's a recent post where I explain what it does:

On 17/06/2018 at 2:56 PM, CorinaMarie said:

For those you need to mark historical you might want to try my No Kickout mod. What it does is let homes grow and be replaced to the highest level within their wealth class (depending on demand) and yet never be replaced by a higher wealth class. This means you need not mark any historical unless you want them to stay as that exact building when another in its wealth class could replace it. Other times to still use the historical option is when a medium wealth grows on a large lot so that it doesn't later become two houses as the game tries to maximize the density of homes. (Do note that if a building abandons then any wealth level can replace it even with this mod in place.)

To get medium or high wealth to grow you can trick them by placing parks around the zoned lot and once the home(s) grow remove said parks for financial reasons. Ofc, they still need to have available employment or they will later dilapidate or abandon. With No Kickout in place, a dilapidated home can regain it's original wealth occupants when local conditions improve.

 

[Lucario Boricua 7,028]

A simple solution is using zoning layouts that avoid creating continuous areas of zoned land. Two of my favorites are leaving a strip of unzoned land in middle of the block, that's one square wide, or using a jagged zone pattern, in which I alternate two 3X1 lots with one 2X1 lot. These make the city end up less dense but leave a useful gap that can accomodate parks, vegetation or linear infrastructure (railroad, elevated rail, light rail, single row of transmission power lines, retaining wall in hilly terrain...).

A third option is to starve out the high wealth demand by creating subdivisions specific to mansions, with 4X3 and 4X4 lots to ensure these don't distribute themselves into multiple 3X1 lots where low and medium wealth housing can be built.

These options, however, require a lot of micromanagement and patience, but I at least feel these pay off.