Residential demand, how to get more?

[perafilozof 143]

I have read a lot of topics regarding population and residential demand and have had now a lot of time to play the game. The that city I will mention in the post is made on the hard mode.

 

Once I make the change from low to high density residential it becomes a lot harder to get more residential demand. OK, it makes sense in part, because now when you zone a 4x4 R zones you can get up to 18,19 households at the same space you used to get 5. But on the other hand, you are now zoning high density C zones and offices while leveling up generic industry to level 3 which all requires A LOT more workers. So the balance should be back to where it was before you went to high density R zones.

 

The Taxes also have a strong effect. I have notice that going up to 13% on high density residential will lower the demand by a lot. So I started using taxes at 11% while at the same time using the police for tax relief for HDR(-2% taxes) when I zone them and wait for buildings to come up. This helpt.. a bit. 

 

But still there is very low residential demand while even at 3% unemployment and 2,500 open jobs I have medium C and I demand and almost 0 R demand.

 

Has anyone else found some solution or a way to keep a high R demand?

 

Extra information: My average land value in R zones is about 45-50 with parks and recreation police, while with that one and high tech housing it goes up to 60 leveling up R zones to level 4. I don't have a single one at level 5. I cover all my areas with Police HQ, Fire Stations, Clinics(I don't use hospitals), crematoriums, elementary schools and high schools, and 50% of the city has university coverage. Almost 95% is cover so well with parks that the buildings are all very bright blue, signaling maximum coverage.

[gear070680 8]

I haven't had the residential bar maxed since the very start of the game, can rarely see it,but I get a steady increase of population. I am up to 180k right now. Make sure that all of the residential, commercial, and industrial all have services, police, fire, trash, etc, also make sure the happiness is good by installing parks, or your building of choice (small park is $8.00/wk , shows up for me at $9.60, wierd), and i have all of my unique buildings spread out to basically cover "everywhere".  Lastly check the land value window, see if u can get the land value up, if it isnt already, im lime green all over except for the edges. L8

[BlakeMW 84]

The usual reason for low apparent residential demand is that as residential buildings level up through increasing education, they gain increased capacity. After a glut of high density residential zoning, if your education is solid, you wont see demand for a long long time, as those buildings educate and level up. It's worth noting that newly moved in cims are always dummies, apparently only an idiot would immigrate to one of our cities, so every new cim has to be educated up from zero education, this means new apartment buildings always upgrade incrementally over time.

The low demand is not real. Demand is still increasing as normal - it's just being used up immediately filling the vacancies in the newly upgraded, roomier apartment buildings.

 

The same thing happens with C and I demand, but the difference is that because they are dependent on the education of the workers, if your workforce is highly educated C and I can upgrade almost immediately. The lag time between zoning and achieving maximum capacity, is much shorter. Although under some circumstances, like if your city is poorly serviced, and you dramatically upgrade a key service, you might get a sudden huge increase in C or I capacity, resulting in zero'd out apparent demand for a while.

 

If you want to see residential demand you just have to be conservative in zoning high density, remembering to account not only for the lvl1 capacity, but also for the maximum capacity.

 

Edit: By the way, you should be able to mostly leave taxes alone. I would certainly never put R taxes over 9%. You can get away with raising commercial or industrial taxes. On hard mode you just have to be strategic in your services. Use lots of bus because it's a brilliant money spinner and by far the lowest hanging fruit for upgrading building levels (really, once you have the bus depot, bus lines are not only free, they actually earn you money while raising building levels which dramatically increases tax income - no other service compares), use metro only to alleviate excessive traffic because it probably wont turn a profit, and passenger rail not at all. Minimize the use of cargo terminals/ports, probably about 1 per 40,000 cims assuming you make your own goods - a terminal can service so much industry, it's about 4-6 4x4 city blocks of industry, don't have more or less terminals than needed. Also get just enough incinerators to manage the city trash, use the trash view to know how many to build. Focus more on profitable services, than 'subsidized' ones. Running a lean mean economy should give you great profits at default taxes. In my hard mode city I ran a solid profit about 20,000/week with lvl6 residential. Striving for lvl6 residential actually made the city more profitable, the additional taxes outweighed the service expenses (if you think about it, lvl6 buildings don't use any more Fire, Police or recreation than lvl1, nor in practice healthcare and university, so profit margins tend to improve). I did tweak C and I taxes, but with such a large profit I certainly didn't need to.

[Mystrelia 57]

The usual reason for low apparent residential demand is that as residential buildings level up through increasing education, they gain increased capacity. After a glut of high density residential zoning, if your education is solid, you wont see demand for a long long time, as those buildings educate and level up. It's worth noting that newly moved in cims are always dummies, apparently only an idiot would immigrate to one of our cities, so every new cim has to be educated up from zero education, this means new apartment buildings always upgrade incrementally over time.

The low demand is not real. Demand is still increasing as normal - it's just being used up immediately filling the vacancies in the newly upgraded, roomier apartment buildings.

 

The same thing happens with C and I demand, but the difference is that because they are dependent on the education of the workers, if your workforce is highly educated C and I can upgrade almost immediately. The lag time between zoning and achieving maximum capacity, is much shorter. Although under some circumstances, like if your city is poorly serviced, and you dramatically upgrade a key service, you might get a sudden huge increase in C or I capacity, resulting in zero'd out apparent demand for a while.

 

If you want to see residential demand you just have to be conservative in zoning high density, remembering to account not only for the lvl1 capacity, but also for the maximum capacity.

There are a lot of things that influence residential capacity but the first obvious one is going to be education. Once they start getting educated then they'll want parks and services which increase land value and land value is a huge trigger for leveling. I usually keep a few slummy areas in my city and when I want some extra work force but don't want to be bothered to zone more residential I'll add a park and see what happens. If that gives me enough I let it go for a while. If not I'll add other services. They get all excited over everything from cemeteries to bus stops. I go with parks first since the service buildings require more employees and I'm always trying to keep education capacity below the number of citizens that can get educated.

 

And not all citizens that move in are dummies. I see a lot of Cims move into my city with education levels from bottom to top. Just level up some apartments to third, fourth or fifth tier and watch as they fill up and you'll see what I mean.

[perafilozof 143]

I agree with Mystrelia, I too thought that new Cims are only uneducated by I have seen lot's of Cims move in with all kinds of educated level. 

 

@Grater, you mean level 5 R buildings, right? The lvl6 is a typo?

 

And I am well aware of the fact that more Cims move into old R zones that get higher level buildings but I have watched by city for dozens of hours and that is not the problem I face. There is a clear difference between a new zones +200 new Cims per week and the slow trickle of +20 when the old buildings are getting filled to their 80-90% maximum capacity.

 

As for the services leveling up zones I give my R zones in advanced parks, health, death, police, fire and education and only add bus and metro stops after zoning more R.

 

The fact that taxes can go from 0 to 29% but anything over 9% at 90% R happiness slows down the R demand looks to me like a bug or a design flaw.