Do you guys build cities on hills?

[MintberryCrunch 83]

I was looking through the "Shows us your region" thread and it seems like most people's regions are either entirely flat, or if they have hills and mountains, the cities aren't built on them.

My current region is just the default Timbuktu region with some tile sizes changed--so it's pretty hilly overall and many of my cities are on hills (many of the "downtown grids" in some areas have steep streets like in San Francisco).

Obviously it's easier to get the zone shapes you want on flat land, but does anyone else build on hilly land? 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Argh!  Get off Timbuktu, it is a tutorial city and can be reset.  Pick another default or find one that suits you on the STEX.  There is at least one version of San Francisco, and there are topological maps of any type you fancy.

I am currently running on this one, and it has a nice cordillera running down the right hand side.

When I get to the area, I will work on getting something into those hills.

[Prophet42 1,503]

I usually build my cities on varied terrains that have both flat and hilly areas.  Most of the city will be on the flatter terrain.  However, I do build on the hills but it is usually low density.  At a certain point, though, if the terrain becomes too hilly I will leave it as green space.

[MintberryCrunch 83]

Argh!  Get off Timbuktu, it is a tutorial city and can be reset.  Pick another default or find one that suits you on the STEX.  There is at least one version of San Francisco, and there are topological maps of any type you fancy.

I am currently running on this one, and it has a nice cordillera running down the right hand side.

 

When I get to the area, I will work on getting something into those hills.

Oh cool--that one looks pretty good  Heh. "Cordilleras" is the name of one of my biggest cities

Yeah I know I should use a different one, it's just I've been using it for so long (over a year now); I'm getting to the point where it can't be developed any more, so after that I will find a new one. Either way, it's my own copy of Timbuktu, that I edited, so it's not exactly the original one. But yeah, when I look for a new one I'm going to try and find one that has a lot of hilly areas--a nice balance, at least. 

 

I usually build my cities on varied terrains that have both flat and hilly areas.  Most of the city will be on the flatter terrain.  However, I do build on the hills but it is usually low density.  At a certain point, though, if the terrain becomes too hilly I will leave it as green space.

My favorite is a tile with a hill-and-valley set up. If I create my own region, I'll try and create a decent number of hills and valleys (within tiles). 

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

If you decide to make your own region, try the Landscape Designer

Has lots of help files, and I recommend reading them carefully.  This is an all in one whack region creator.  Lots of controls, including own code editing if you need it.  For editing I suggest the GIMP.

[citycowboy 183]

I make lots of towns, and most of them are on hills. If you're from the west coast, you'd be surprised at how flat the majority of places are in the United States. I think most of the towns on Simtropolis are on flat terrains because people are trying to make metropolises and most metropolises have flat downtowns. Chicago is flat, Milwaukee is flat, Indianapolis is flat. Detroit is flat. Cleveland is pretty flat. Philadelphia is flat. Downtown Baltimore is flat. New York is flat. Boston is flat. Washington is flat. Charlotte is flat. Nashville has a little hill by the governors mansion or whatever it is overlooking MLK. Downtown Los Angeles is flat, the Hills are not. Phoenix is flat. Las Vegas is flat. I'd say Denver is flat but Golden is not. St. Louis is pretty flat. Kansas City is similar to Nashville where it has some hills sometimes. Et Cetera.

Seattle and San Francisco are not very flat. Portland/Vancouver is not flat. I grew up near Spokane, WA and thought Spokane was flat compared to all the cities and towns in the Rockies and Cascades. Consider that all the high rises and towers are downhill from Capitol Hill.

I think hills require lots of patience and skill. A lot of the residential R$ single family homes don't adjust to grades, so in real life you would see the front yard roll off steeply if the house was on a hill, but in SC4 it does not. There aren't a lot of dingbat options in SC4 either. Each square is about 52 1/2' X 52 1/2'. I try not to go any higher than a 7% grade at all times. Trains are capped at 3%. If I'm climbing a hill from a river, I don't like to go steeper than 15m every block of at least 8 squares. If I'm climbing a steep hill, I make sure to put in switchbacks, and if it's a highway, runaway truck lanes are needed. SC4 doesn't have a street-splitter for steep hills, so you have to think outside the box on that one. Another issue is you can't build streets under bridges, so you have to get creative there as well. If you want to get real fussy, you can consider height restriction codes and implement them into your game as well. Urban renewal, Clutter, and multi family zoning codes are fun to think about as well.

A trick that I've learned to use is becoming skilled with using the street button as an excavation tool. run the storefronts all level and place a blank HT or Wild West brown square in between, serving as an alley. This will force the hill to the alley.

Remember its your city and you can do whatever you want.

It's perfectly ok to wipe out an entire neighborhood and regrade and terrace a hill. Seattle has done it before. people playing a video game can do it too.

[matias93 7,535]

I have forced myself to build mostly in flat terrains by means of slope mods, but I'm wired to think about mountanious terrain everytime. In fact, my main city tile is basically sorrounded by pretty high hills (~300 meters of prominence), just like in the city I live.

Referential image, I've took better ones, and this one is obsolete.

___

Well, I googled Denny Hill, and definitely, I'm totally wired to like hills over flat terrains: I think they totally missed an interesting oportunity to do some great combination of buildings and sloped parks.

By the way, in the game, you can play with sloped routes using a slope mod and circundating hills to reach peaks or terraces. It would be interesting if you take inspiration from big cities located in montanious terrain. The Pacific coast is a great place to begin, from Alaska to western Patagonia, but you can find some other places, like the Alps or Himalayas; the mediterranean coast has magnificent examples too, particularly in Spain and Greece.

  Edited August 31, 2015 by matias93  

[MintberryCrunch 83]

Thanks for your responses, guys Your region looks pretty nice, matias. I love the forested hills in the upper right. And even if the city is in a flat area, cities surrounded by hills often look pretty nice. 

Yeah citycowboy, your'e right, I'm from southern California and my house is on a hill--it's just something I'm used to. I picture my region being in a hilly California-like area, with Mediterranean climate (I put palm trees everywhere), so that's part of why I choose hillier areas. They're harder to work with and most of my metropolises are in more level ground, but I think I make it work

[TekindusT 3,809]

I actually prefer building on hilly terrain. It is just less boring for me. I just don't like when I have an inmense extension of flat terrain and I have to adopt a gridded pattern for the roads, it really kills the fun of the game. Instead, building on hilly areas makes me consider approaches like respecting or not the original terrain, terracing or not, how tolerant my slopes can/will be... 

[T Wrecks 10,210]

I think it's not unrealistic at all to restrict CBDs to mostly flat terrain, but some gentle hills don't hurt. Long rows of W2W houses look absolutely great when they gently progress up a hillside IMO, and I like to build low-density residential on steeper slopes. The lots can be smaller, and there are many slope-friendly houses with custom foundations these days so that low-density neighbourhoods on a hillside can look really great.

Most hand-made regions have mountains that are either underscaled in terms of length and width or overscaled in terms of height. In any case, they rise too suddenly, so there's the "city or mountain" pattern. If you make a mountainside rise slowly across the entire width of a large city tile, and then increasingly steeper across the width of another large tile, you can build an entire city on a slope and still won't have to resort to excessively obvious or exaggerated terracing.

[Odainsaker 2,137]

Mountain fingers in Honolulu:

Real estate is at a premium, and so the sprawl works it way up the shallower slopes of the valleys along the Koʻolau Range.

Okay, that last is just getting a little over-the-top...almost literally so!

However, I must admit, I don't really build cities on mountains.  I like to use mountain ranges to frame the edges of my region map and contain the urban sprawl, while mountains within the region get treated as landmarks themselves or sacred mountains.  Hills, however, are opportunities for prominent symbolic landmarks, and major hills get developed as defensive castles, temple mounts, palatial hills, pagoda points, capitol hills, civic centers, etc., all with significant sightlines.  My personal rule-of-thumb is that comparatively important things crown hills, while the RCI fillers go in between or along the slopes.  Even mundane civic items like elementary schools, libraries, neighborhood churches, or local park lookouts should take the more prominent rise positions over zones types further down the hierarchy list.  I think of industry as requiring vast storage space and/or rail or water transport, and so they rarely go on hills.  Meanwhile, my Sims hate my traffic, for the hierarchical road layouts place the priority on symbolically interconnecting the major civic landmarks first over secondary issues like traffic capacity or commuting patterns, and as those civic landmarks are often on hills, my habit is often to first stretch axial avenues from one hill to another hill.

[MintberryCrunch 83]

So I thought I'd post an example of what I mean by hilly cities. Here's the CBD of Miramontes, one of my hilliest cities, and a city which takes its inspiration from San Francisco.

The zoning map shows the erratic nature of the grades. But despite the kinda of ugly look of the zoning map, I don't think it looks that bad with the buildings on it, at least not from this angle -_-

[matias93 7,535]

So I thought I'd post an example of what I mean by hilly cities. Here's the CBD of Miramontes, one of my hilliest cities, and a city which takes its inspiration from San Francisco.

The zoning map shows the erratic nature of the grades. But despite the kinda of ugly look of the zoning map, I don't think it looks that bad with the buildings on it, at least not from this angle -_-

The Maxis non-slope-compatible lots attack again! I hate when plopping almost anything gets you an horrible vertical wall aside of a street. I know, those things exist in RL, but they never look so straight.

[crishy 57]

I once built the core of my region in a very tall hill (and not just highly uneven, as the screenshots above) and rather steep hill, especially on the sides facing a large body of water, with skyscrapers close at or on top of the hill. I found it cute back then, though now I look back and think, geez, that looks kind of unrealistic lol.

Economic and logistical reasons make it easy for builders to build the denser areas of cities in flat areas. Even in cities known for their uneven or mountainous terrain (SF, Vancouver, Cape Town, Zurich, Pittsburgh, etc), their cores are located in the flatter areas of the region, with some of these metropolises having denser developments in hilly areas than others. Other metropolises have a lot of people living in slums in mountains and steep hills, like Rio, because they do not have anywhere else to go and decided settling on a previous unsettled area of the metropolis is the way to go. Dense but ugly and low rise. And illegal, I might add.

[MintberryCrunch 83]

Yeah, it makes sense to build the densest part of a city on flat land and most cities do. But not always. SF's core is not in the hilliest region, but it's still in a fairly hilly part of the city, which is why you have situations like this:

And Seattle's downtown core grid is on a hill that slopes down to the water. It's more unusual to have a downtown core on a hill, but it does happen. (St. John's, Newfoundland is another example). Obviously there aren't going to be many situations when the biggest skyscrapers are on the steepest hills, but there are still some cities where there are dense areas and downtowns with steep streets. I sure hate walking around cities like that, though

  Edited September 6, 2015 by MintberryCrunch  

[caligrad06 2]

I make lots of towns, and most of them are on hills. If you're from the west coast, you'd be surprised at how flat the majority of places are in the United States. I think most of the towns on Simtropolis are on flat terrains because people are trying to make metropolises and most metropolises have flat downtowns. Chicago is flat, Milwaukee is flat, Indianapolis is flat. Detroit is flat. Cleveland is pretty flat. Philadelphia is flat. Downtown Baltimore is flat. New York is flat. Boston is flat. Washington is flat. Charlotte is flat. Nashville has a little hill by the governors mansion or whatever it is overlooking MLK. Downtown Los Angeles is flat, the Hills are not. Phoenix is flat. Las Vegas is flat. I'd say Denver is flat but Golden is not. St. Louis is pretty flat. Kansas City is similar to Nashville where it has some hills sometimes. Et Cetera.

Seattle and San Francisco are not very flat. Portland/Vancouver is not flat. I grew up near Spokane, WA and thought Spokane was flat compared to all the cities and towns in the Rockies and Cascades. Consider that all the high rises and towers are downhill from Capitol Hill.

I think hills require lots of patience and skill. A lot of the residential R$ single family homes don't adjust to grades, so in real life you would see the front yard roll off steeply if the house was on a hill, but in SC4 it does not. There aren't a lot of dingbat options in SC4 either. Each square is about 52 1/2' X 52 1/2'. I try not to go any higher than a 7% grade at all times. Trains are capped at 3%. If I'm climbing a hill from a river, I don't like to go steeper than 15m every block of at least 8 squares. If I'm climbing a steep hill, I make sure to put in switchbacks, and if it's a highway, runaway truck lanes are needed. SC4 doesn't have a street-splitter for steep hills, so you have to think outside the box on that one. Another issue is you can't build streets under bridges, so you have to get creative there as well. If you want to get real fussy, you can consider height restriction codes and implement them into your game as well. Urban renewal, Clutter, and multi family zoning codes are fun to think about as well.

A trick that I've learned to use is becoming skilled with using the street button as an excavation tool. run the storefronts all level and place a blank HT or Wild West brown square in between, serving as an alley. This will force the hill to the alley.

Remember its your city and you can do whatever you want.

It's perfectly ok to wipe out an entire neighborhood and regrade and terrace a hill. Seattle has done it before. people playing a video game can do it too.

 

Actually.....,. Most of Downtown LAs central Business district ( tallest towers) are situated on hilly terrain. At the edge of whats called bunker hill. Cant tell because pictures and Hollywood know how to hide it very well. Calis biggest cities sit on hilly terrain (LA, San Fran, San Diego).

 

As for myself. I try to go the Flat route. Easier to manage and less problems to deal with when laying out a city that you wish to have a pretty descent downtown like New York, Chicago or LA.

[raynev1 1,887]

I don't tend to build cities on hills , but I do develop small neighborhoods or villages on hilly terrain . Many of the buildings lots don't conform well on hillsides . Terracing flats I haven't had much experience with , which I will be giving it a try . A must have , would be a slope mod , to give a smoother transition of networks , especially for rail 

[gviper 922]

I was looking through the "Shows us your region" thread and it seems like most people's regions are either entirely flat, or if they have hills and mountains, the cities aren't built on them.

My current region is just the default Timbuktu region with some tile sizes changed--so it's pretty hilly overall and many of my cities are on hills (many of the "downtown grids" in some areas have steep streets like in San Francisco).

Obviously it's easier to get the zone shapes you want on flat land, but does anyone else build on hilly land? 

I certainly did/do....

One of my cities; Vista Del Mar:

  Edited October 17, 2015 by gviper