Cities without industry

[GC_Vos 714]

More often than not, I find myself not building any industry whatsoever. Admittedly, I usually play sandbox with unlimited money, but I think it's interesting how you can build fully functional cities where all the goods are simply imported from outside the map, having all your peeps working in offices. It helps with traffic too because now you only get delivery trucks instead of a massive cargo influx.

Does anybody else play without industrial areas?

[Turjan 1,048]

I've never tried that. How big do your cities usually get?

[GC_Vos 714]

I don't have any giant cities but I've gotten to 50K without demand issues.

At this point I might even have some cargo stations just focused on imports.

[TekindusT 3,809]

My current city is at 132K strong and with almost constant residential and commercial demand, with near to 0 industrial demand. Around 80% of all industrial buildings are already abandoned and the city keeps growing nevertheless. I began playing used to the SC4 philosophy of zoning loads of industrial at the beginning and starting small in commercial, and it is clear that C:S style is more relaxed in this aspect.

My industrial areas area reasonally well connected via highway and rail, but many complain about the lack of resources. My workforce is highly educated and the lower-stage industries, which demand more uneducated workers do not find appropriate workers. All these problems lead to industrial abandonment so right now my city is living, almost exclusively, of logging industry (it doesn't abandon that much), commercial and offices.

  Edited October 20, 2015 by TekindusT  

[GC_Vos 714]

I have the same issue, primary reason I stopped zoning industry to begin with. In the early stages some workplaces might complain about low education, but once peeps are settled in I just do office/commercial only.

[Judazzz 1,936]

I hardly use industry either: there is one larger forestry district somewhere on the outskirts of my city, but other than that just a few industrialized patches here and there. All in all I doubt my city (which has 100k inhabitants atm.) has more than 200-250 industrial buildings.

My main reason for this is that industry was always pissing and moaning about not enough workers, even though there was plenty of industrial demand. Besides that, I want to focus on offices to begin with, because how else to fill my downtown area with glitzy skyscrapers? And lastly, I'm not too impressed by the current assortment of industrial buildings (be it generic or specialized): some of the models are pretty good, but 4x4 is not nearly enough to create convincing industrial estates. The only large industrial assets available are either unique buildings, or power/incineration plants and recycling centers, or beautification assets (like the oil storage tanks and container yards), so they don't serve any useful purpose in regard to setting up a functioning industrial supply chain. All these three factors combined raised the question: why bother? My answer to it: damn straight, I ain't.

Having said all that, I really hope that industry gets the TLC from CO it deserves, because imo. there's few things that scream urbanism more than nasty, polluted, decaying industrial area's right next to low income residential neighborhoods. Screw gentrification, I want to stink up my city, damn it!

  Edited October 20, 2015 by Judazzz  

[GC_Vos 714]

I do agree industrial areas tend to look a bit messy and unorganized. And there's not a lot of love for them from asset creators.

I'm considering doing some w2w/b2b growables which could make those areas look a bit more uniform. Maybe some kind of distribution center thingy...

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

My current city is at 132K strong and with almost constant residential and commercial demand, with near to 0 industrial demand. Around 80% of all industrial buildings are already abandoned and the city keeps growing nevertheless. I began playing used to the SC4 philosophy of zoning loads of industrial at the beginning and starting small in commercial, and it is clear that C:S style is more relaxed in this aspect.

My industrial areas area reasonally well connected via highway and rail, but many complain about the lack of resources. My workforce is highly educated and the lower-stage industries, which demand more uneducated workers do not find appropriate workers. All these problems lead to industrial abandonment so right now my city is living, almost exclusively, of logging industry (it doesn't abandon that much), commercial and offices.

TekindusT, have you tried the Dropouts mod? This increases the number of uneducated cims and thus sorts out the workforce problem industry faces when cims become too educated.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=506982407

[TekindusT 3,809]

My current city is at 132K strong and with almost constant residential and commercial demand, with near to 0 industrial demand. Around 80% of all industrial buildings are already abandoned and the city keeps growing nevertheless. I began playing used to the SC4 philosophy of zoning loads of industrial at the beginning and starting small in commercial, and it is clear that C:S style is more relaxed in this aspect.

My industrial areas area reasonally well connected via highway and rail, but many complain about the lack of resources. My workforce is highly educated and the lower-stage industries, which demand more uneducated workers do not find appropriate workers. All these problems lead to industrial abandonment so right now my city is living, almost exclusively, of logging industry (it doesn't abandon that much), commercial and offices.

TekindusT, have you tried the Dropouts mod? This increases the number of uneducated cims and thus sorts out the workforce problem industry faces when cims become too educated.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=506982407

Cool, thanks for the advice! I saw it on Steam some time ago but thought "ugh, I actually like having an educated workforce, that's my ideal world" but I see this doesn't work that well in C:S. I'll check it out right away.

[cromabianca 158]

But... wasn't there some sort of a cap in how much import could you get (hence the need for industry which has to provide to all of you commercial?)? Can anyone confirm that?

[Turjan 1,048]

I don't have any giant cities but I've gotten to 50K without demand issues.

At this point I might even have some cargo stations just focused on imports.

50k is kind of small. Problems of the industrial kind start when your city gets much bigger. My 400k city got issues with supplies for the commercial zones when it reached 250k or something like that, but that was during the times when trains started piling up at city borders. The question whether you need industry or not basically boils down to the question whether your outside connections are capable of handling the supply traffic to your commercial zones. As long as they do that, you are fine. Keep in mind that all buildings in the game spawn with a stock of supplies, so issues may show up with a delay.

As long as your industry is fully upgraded, there are no employment issues, either, because upgraded industry actually needs educated workers. Which means you will only see abandonment in specialized industries, and this only if you don't choose to keep your unemployment around 6%, which is usually the threshold where all jobs get filled, however nasty they may be. Jobs in specialized industry that are really conveniently available, like close to the city center, will be filled anyway. With specialized industry, I mean agriculture and forestry. The rest isn't worth it anyway, except for short periods when you may have trouble with your budget (and they may not be worth it even then, given the infrastructure demands of specialized industry).

Another aspect is whether you use the in-game "cheat buildings" (I just call them such as they remove game elements) or not. If you place Hadron Collider and Eden Project, it's offices all the way.

Just as an example, my current city, which, with 190k inhabitants, is still relatively small and doesn't use any monuments at all:

Agriculture seems to be kind of a darling of the developers. You can have it right in the middle of your city without problems (the highest value neighborhood in my city is right next to it):

I explain the small lots more in the way that this is the local "garden" agriculture that provides local milk and veggies for the spoiled citizens. It does even have a positive land value:

I don't mind having industry next to my preferred dwelling places:

And I don't think it looks that bad in general, even if I prefer larger buildings:

Which means I have highly educated citizens, tons of industry without abandonment, and no real traffic problems. And you don't need mods for that.

But yes, if you don't like industry, just make sure your commercial areas have easy access for deliveries through outside connections.

[Turjan 1,048]

Cool, thanks for the advice! I saw it on Steam some time ago but thought "ugh, I actually like having an educated workforce, that's my ideal world" but I see this doesn't work that well in C:S. I'll check it out right away.

There's actually a district policy in-game that does the same. It's called "School's out". Not that I think you need any of that, unless you don't care about upgrading your industry.

[BlakeMW 84]

I've been doing some playing around with cities without industry and cities without commerce (the latter is only for testing game mechanics, it is not an intelligent strategy!)

Evidence is pretty good that the game uses various feedback mechanisms to determine demand, for example if your present industry is doing well, more industrial demand will be created, if your present commercial is doing well, more commercial demand will be created. The metric of success is likely the ability to sell goods. The converse is also true, if your commercial isn't selling any goods, commercial demand will plummet. Industrial demand is not so sensitive to crashing but it will definitely be hurt.

I have tested this by starting cities from scratch and "abusing" the relevant sector by not providing access to what they need, then saving the game when high density is unlocked.

In the city where I abused commercial, there was very little commercial demand, and very little commercial moving in. Industry grew rapidly and the population growth was rapid. The city didn't seem to suffer much for the lack of commercial, the only point of pain was a poor budget surplus, commercial is basically free money while industry is basically a drain on your finances with all the garbage, power and water it consumes.

In the city where I abused industry, commercial grew well, a significant amount of industry also insisted on moving in before the city would continue growing, but not nearly as much as in the city where industry wasn't abused. The city grew much slower than a city where industry is promoted, it took about two years longer to unlock high density, indicating that industry is a great driver of population growth.

 

Industry is bad in a lot of ways, it pollutes, doesn't pay much tax, cims hate working in it, generates vast amounts of garbage, uses lots of water and electricity and generates much traffic - and the tax income is lousy considering how it costs to service. It's pretty much bad all round. BUT, it's really easy to pump up industrial demand, along with providing a solid transportation network it seems that building primary industry pumps up industrial demand like crazy (at least while the resource lasts), in turn this pumps up residential demand, which pumps up commercial demand. Your city will grow a lot faster with a strong industrial sector. Once the primary resource (oil/ore) runs out the inflated industrial demand tends to crash, but that's okay, because you can dezone the primary industry to free up workers for offices/high density commercial/lvl3 generic industry.

Late Game

With the rise of a highly educated workforce, and by implementing the "Big Business Benefactor" policy, commercial demand tends to go crazy (I think it's the feedback cycle), at this point commercial seems to become the prime driver of city growth because office always seems a bit subdued. It becomes difficult to establish new industry because cims really don't like to work in industry. Ultimately, everything except lvl3 industry is doomed to failure (unless perhaps you brutalize the education sector). However lvl3 industry is stable in an end game city even with full education. One of the neat things about lvl3 industry is that it generates little pollution, while it pollutes its own block, there is very little spill, just cross the road and the pollution is down to pale red and a couple more grid squares over it becomes zero. This makes it viable to zone blocks of lvl3 industry right inside commercial. Is it worthwhile doing this? I think in principle it is. Without home industry, you need to import goods which means lots and lots of vans. I believe a truck can carry a lot more than a van, so importing truckloads of resource to the commercial blocks, then turning those resources into goods in-place, is likely to reduce overall traffic. (Also I've observed vans leaving the industry, they are normally smart enough to deliver goods to nearby commerce, normally within a few blocks of the industry, so this principle definitely seems sound)

lvl3 industry is also a really good employer. A 4x4 lvl3 industry employs 32, while a 4x4 office employs only 27 and lvl3 commerce a mere 20. Also it requires quite a bit less service rating than lvl3 office, being consistent with the amount of service rating required for lvl5 residential, basically offering the best "service to employment" ratio. So all in all it seems there is little reason to begrudge industry a place in your city.

 

  Edited October 21, 2015 by Grater  

[BlakeMW 84]

On further investigation on mature cities, I am forced to conclude that industry represents a huge economic boost, I suppose it's not so relevant if running unlimited funds mod, but by default here is how it works:

If you run Big Business Benefactor, you will double your sales and double your commercial tax income and since it doesn't raise expenses much, massively increase your spending money. However with this policy in force, shops go through goods really quickly and need constant resupply. (BBF isn't essential to the principle at hand, the point is that commercial tax is basically a sales tax and you get it when shops sell goods, BBF just makes everything stand out more).

Importing finished goods seems to be fairly ineffective. I've observed that when a full cargo train docks, and the cargo station disgorges vehicles, it poops out about the same number of vans as trucks, that is, it could send out 20 trucks to industry, or 20 vans to commerce. The number of vehicles sent out seems about constant.

But industry in effect acts as a multiplier. A truckload of resources, via industry, might turn into say 10 van loads of goods. So those 20 truckloads of goods would become 200 van loads of goods. As such having an industrial supply chain acts as a massive efficiency multiplier on imports and makes extremely commercial heavy, extremely profitable cities possible. No Industry = No boom economy.

As such I feel confident saying that a strong industrial sector is an essential part of a fully functional city. It is dispensable in the sense that a city without industry is possible and functional, but it will be more economically subdued. In effect, a city which goes without industry becomes office heavy and commercially weak.

[Nevermore2797 112]

In my city, I haven't build Industrial buildings as well (I will do them when I get to the docks part or near my main power plant). I do also think that these levels 1 and 2 industry buildings became so tedious in the late game because of not enough workers, and some of them even won't upgrade even to the max which is level 3. Some do get to level 3, but most do not which I get annoyed to.