Cagayan de Oro - 13. San Lorenzo - The Other Island

[dedgren 830]

Wow again!  Your pics are so...intense.  Yeah, that's the right word- intense.  Somehow the detail just looks RL, but in bolder colors and sharper delineation.  The "ZETI" night pic is just a knockout, but all the rest are keepers too.  Followed!

 

David

p.s. And congrats- page 2!

[jesper107 113]

That last picture - just wow!

[Turjan 1,048]

Thank you to both of you.

Here's just a spillover pic from the last entry with houses on the shore and the station with a local train.

[dedgren 830]

Thumbs up!

 

David

[jesper107 113]

I love the density and feel of different levels on the picture. The bridge, the small houses below, then up again to the apartments and finally away to the mountains.

Great use of vertical space and a fantastic shot!

[Turjan 1,048]

Thank you very much for the kind words, both of you.

__________________________________________________________________

Thought of the Day: Changing Things up

In a discussion, someone remarked at which snail's pace my city would grow. While I also may spend my play time with different activities than building, there is one other problem: I often open the game for a specific purpose, then spot something in the city that catches my attention. Next I spend an undue amount of time with changing things that already exist. I'd just like to show a recent example about a part of the city that we visited already in entry #4. There is a bit of open space between Cagayan Central and the church of Santa Cruz:

There's a cemetery and a playground in a space that looks as if there had been houses that were removed. If this were a city like Berlin, the houses would have probably been destroyed during the war, then found some interim use that somehow managed to become hard to challenge. It doesn't look bad, but I wasn't overly happy with this. I remembered I had downloaded a unique asset that I wanted to use in the historic center, where it didn't quite work out because it was not slope-friendly. I had cut down the lot somewhat to make it fit the house grid, so I tried it here.

In RL, it's a hotel, but it may also work as guest house for the church or a nursing home, a role for which someone on the workshop actually used this model. I thought it blends in with the gables of those small Dutch houses, and the retreating facade opens up to the square with the cemetery. An LC building hides the ugly brick wall that was at the other end. I put this sculpture on the lot to somehow make the retreating house front work with the rectangle grid. The blending of the gables works quite nicely:

On the other side, the three gables mirror the three gables of the morgue:

I think it's okay, but I'm still not 100% convinced.

So, that's how I waste my time. I should really start with the CBD instead.

[jesper107 113]

Nice block! What building is that?

[Turjan 1,048]

1 hour ago, jesper107 said:

Nice block! What building is that?

This is the PURO Hotel. I just saw the author released lots of old town buildings today.

[Turjan 1,048]

I'm somewhat ill at the moment, which means the update will be belated. It's supposed to lead us up there to the top of Old Town.

So, hopefully this will be in a few days.

[Roadman20 601]

Feeling like I could use a siesta right now at one those houses near the waterfront.

[jmsepe 2,039]

Nice grid. I always love grid cities.  

[Turjan 1,048]

Finally, I'm halfway ready to do the update.

@Roadman20: Maybe they let you in when you knock at the door. Thanks.

@jmsepe: Heh, the grid is kind of enforced with the European buildings set, or you won't get any corner buildings. Although, this time, I had to abandon the grid somewhat.

________________________________________________________________________________

Entry #6: Plaza Mayor - The City's Parlor

This time, we will visit the old center of Cagayan. While most buildings are from around 1900, the southern part still mostly follows the ancient street grid, while the Harbor Line of the intracity traffic runs in the former moat that marks the location where the wall stood in old times. Nothing of this is left, as this was already an old-fashioned design when the city was founded, except the Puerta del Sol, the Sun Gate. The most prominent feature is the chain of historical buildings that is generally referred to as the Plaza Mayor ("Main Square"). The actual Plaza Mayor is relatively small and lies between the Old Town Hall and the main church of the city, but as the chain of buildings is situated more or less in a park-like strip, the name is commonly applied to the whole area.

An overview of the area shows the layout, followed by an annotated image:

When the whole area started getting revamped after a big fire in the 1880's, a new roadway to a roundabout was built as main entrance to Cagayan from Dejans on the other side of the river. This is still the major artery that connects the island with the mainland. Traffic was so bad that the old bridge had to be replaced by a motorway just recently. You can see the university hospital on the right side.

The Arco de Triunfo in the center of the new roundabout marks the main entry to the Plaza Mayor. It doesn't celebrate any military victory, but the victory of the modern times over the cramped old situation. The arch was built on purpose in the vicinity of the Puerta del Sol that was in very bad shape at that time and only survived because the storage space in it was needed. Somewhat overgrown, the arch still greets every visitor who drives into Cagayan.

Today, the Puerta del Sol, newly renovated, still allows pedestrian entrance to the Plaza, here with Harbor Line in the foreground.

The path up to the church is quite busy on normal days.

Even at night, the path is still in use.

From here, it's just a short climb to the Plaza Mayor with the church of Santa Maria en la Cerca in the east and Old Town Hall in the west. Behind the Plaza, the slope down to the Pools area is densely populated with residential blocks from around 1900.

In the morning light, Plaza Mayor already invites to a nice cup of coffee at one of the tables in the park. The plaza has long lost its function as market, which has been taken over by all the shops that you can find around it, and today it caters to residents and visitors alike as something like the parlor of the city.

If you wonder about the name of the city church (Santa Maria on the Fence), "la Cerca" stands for the buildings that surround the entrance. In former times, foreign traders had to put up their wares for sale in a fenced area around the church. With time, storage houses and guest houses for the foreigners were added, and the whole building complex inherited the name "la Cerca". The church is still part of this complex today, even if the attached buildings now house normal businesses. Now, it's tourists that send postcards like this to the world:

Most streets up here are quite steep.

Old Town Hall doesn't have much relation to the city government anymore, as it's a major tourist magnet and houses a museum about the city history with some of the historic assembly halls. Of course, there's the famous clock to look at. Also, the building still houses the registration offices and is very popular for weddings in the main hall, which makes it one of the busiest spots in the city center. The main city administration moved to the New Town Hall on the left of this image, a building from the beginning of the 20th century.

Next is one of the oldest buildings of the whole city, still from Dutch times, which is simply referred to as Casa Antigua. It was the first seat of the Spanish governors after the Dutch handed over the rule, until the governors moved to the Belvedere. The building had mostly use for storage, police functions and general administrative tasks and was in bad shape until a few years ago. However, when the plaster of centuries was removed from the walls, some beautiful brick work was uncovered. The building nowadays houses an Adult Education Center, storage place for the city, a gallery for local artists and still one or two city offices. Most people just walk through, but this is a pleasant walk.

The building at sunrise, when everything is still quiet.

The walk up from Santa Catarina with Casa Antigua at the end of the walkway.

The road here is less steep and ends up directly at the Plaza Mayor.

Let's just wrap this up with a couple of night shots.

I hope you enjoyed this entry.

[DaHindi 11]

The harbor line rail looks great.

 

nice Pics

[jesper107 113]

I can't believe how great this is looking!

Hats off to you!

The colors, the density, the curves, the terrain elevation. All of it brilliant!

[Turjan 1,048]

On 1/10/2016 at 0:54 AM, DaHindi said:

The harbor line rail looks great.

 

nice Pics

Thank you very much. We will see more of Harbor Line later.

On 1/11/2016 at 7:22 PM, jesper107 said:

I can't believe how great this is looking!

Hats off to you!

The colors, the density, the curves, the terrain elevation. All of it brilliant!

Thank you. Let's not forget all the wonderful custom content that is available on the workshop. Without the buildings and the mods that you get from there, you would not be able to build this.

[Turjan 1,048]

Slowly but surely I finish at least some areas. Isla de Cagayan is mostly done, with a bit of detailing missing. As a teaser, here's an overview of the whole island:

Looks mostly complete, eh?

[TekindusT 3,809]

Keep it awesome!

[Turjan 1,048]

16 hours ago, TekindusT said:

Keep it awesome!

I will try. I'm quite miffed at the moment though. The position of sunrise and sunset on the map suddenly (?) changed. Sunrise is behind some big mountain, and sunset doesn't reach one side of the city anymore. I will probably have to use night pictures from that side of the city now.

Sunset point was about mirrored with regard to the train track on this picture before:

I guess I'll have to adapt.

[Turjan 1,048]

#7: Santa Catarina - Of Winners Past and Present

Let's proceed with our walk through Cagayan proper. Last time, we visited the Plaza Mayor, the old heart of the city. We will now go downstream, which is an area dominated by well-off single residential homes. When disasters  like big floods struck the city, the destruction was a welcome starting point for discussions among influential friends. Land changed hands, and now the area is mostly in the hands of people who are either influential now or have been, with the exception of an area adjacent to the train station.

If you walk down from the Plaza Mayor, just across the ditch where harbor line runs, you can find the Arboretum, the former place of the governor's gardens, or at least of what is left of them after many people had acquired plots for their villas. The center is a house where lots of orchids and butterflies are kept.

The main park officer of the city doesn't like it very much, or at least you would guess so from his remark that "if you want to see a jungle you can step in front of the city." However, he has no say in this matter. Strapped for cash, the city left design and maintenance to the surrounding citizens, so the whole endeavor cost the city three signs at the entrances. Given the circumstances, the people of the area do a remarkable job, or better let it be done by hired gardeners from less affluent neighborhoods.

From the Arboretum, the road leads us into Santa Catarina proper.

You can take a left turn to the river and do a fishing tour that starts at the place of the former shallow water harbor if you feel so inclined. This is also the place, where the long river promenade starts.

If you follow the river downstream on the long path, you come to the "Great Wall of Cagayan". It was built during communist times as housing for esteemed party members and officials. The first post-communist government wanted to tear them down, as they spoil the skyline of the old city, but the inhabitants saw this as "revenge by building code." The government relented in order not to risk the truce after the preceding turmoils, and thus even nowadays, most of the apartments are still in the hands of former or current party members. The buildings are very popular with the inhabitants, at least as long as the elevators work, which isn't always the case, given the age of the buildings. The bridge of Harbor Line is situated in one of the gaps. The houses that had been standing directly on the shore had been swept away by floods a few times in a row, unfortunately sometimes including their inhabitants, which is the reason why this area was turned into a park.

 

Most of the visitors to Santa Catarina arrive at Santa Catarina Station though.

It's a busy station.

While there is a bus line to Plaza Mayor from here, many people use the generous walkway up to the center.

From here, it's only a very short walk to the church that gave this quarter of Cagayan its name.

The church is located at the Plaza de la Musica, together with the old symphony hall that sits on a promontory over Avenida Real.

On the other side of Avenida Real, we see Cagayan's former main hospital. Despite its dated looks, it has been fully modernized in the interior. Most young Cagayanons start their journey into this world in this hospital nowadays.

At the downstream tip of Isla de Cagayan, the Monumento a Los Héroes serves to remember the heroes of WW II and of the revolution. It's also home of the Cagayan Tennis Club. Membership by invitation only.

The location of the hero monument on Cagayan Island has sometimes been compared to the bow of a ship in local newspapers, when the author thought it would be a good time for the city to set sails in times of turmoil, parting to greener pastures.

The exhibition regarding "La Revolución" is still very popular with local visitors.

 

That was our walk along Isla de Cagayan. Let's finish this with a couple of night shots.

[boformer 3,169]

That's a lovely station

[Turjan 1,048]

On 1/24/2016 at 1:22 AM, boformer said:

That's a lovely station

It is, it is . I assume it looks vaguely familiar.

As it's another one of those rainy days (yes, Nußdorfer Straße waits), I thought I'd write something about building projects that don't quite work out as expected.

 

Thought of the Day:  Square Pegs and Round Holes

As one or the other reader of the CJ may notice, the lack of any suitable workshop content regarding my topic makes me embrace a rather eclectic approach. A checkered colonial past may excuse a lot of unexpected sights in the city, and I'm definitely not beyond using a hammer to make that square peg fit. However, sometimes, even though I like an asset very much, I just have to accept it won't work.

The reason for this post is that I tried out the lovely Allotment Style by ArkenbergeJoe in my city. As most proper allotments go, they live somewhere on a piece of land next to a railroad embankment, somewhere away from the city center.

The set is really very well done, and I like that it's not just built from one tile wide huts. On the overview, all the small lots directly next to the railroad contain one or two little houses, while the ones on larger lots contain three most of the time. This way you don't end up with too many actual buildings, and the theme fully grows to level 5, which most of the lots on the image are.

In principle, this would be an excellent approach to buildings like they exist in the real Cagayan, which means lots with many small buildings, probably using one cell streets in between. Anyway, here's a closer look, and while it's lovely, the birches and the flowering fruit trees scream temperate to boreal zone.

I will decide what I do with this area later, but I can heartily recommend the set to anyone who builds in central Europe. It also looks nice at night:

The next regular entry will be something a bit different.

 

[rakowozz 37]

Wow, first shot of this last post is almost a painting. The style works very well there!

[jmsepe 2,039]

Nice updates. I like that underground station. CSL has definitely improved a lot. 

[Turjan 1,048]

On 1/25/2016 at 5:44 PM, rakowozz said:

Wow, first shot of this last post is almost a painting. The style works very well there!

Thanks, and yes, it does. It's a very nice looking style, just a bit hard to fit into the topic.

On 1/26/2016 at 1:32 AM, jmsepe said:

Nice updates. I like that underground station. CSL has definitely improved a lot. 

Thank you. Yes, the community has added many amazing possibilities to the game.

____________________________________________________________________________

#8. The Last Run of Green Line

When the Americans ended the short years of independence after the Spanish defeat in 1900, they were confronted with a rather opposing elite in the city of Cagayan.  However, they had plans to bring the rather sluggish economy of the city into modern times, and besides setting up industry and adding large improvements to the harbor, they also re-founded a new city quarter, to which the power of that time shifted for a while. In a sense, they just continued a process that had already started under the Spaniards, which had started a new city government quarter on the mainland. The US administration moved even further downstream, directly to the harbor, in which they placed much hope. As much of the the area of the port, Macabalan, had burned down, they grasped the opportunity and imposed a new rigid grid on the rebuilt area. The architecture of Macabalan was supposed to show that a new era had started. Part of this was the first municipal rail solution, an elevated rail through the new quarter, the Green Line. The line will see big changes soon, as you can already see from the overhead cables above the tracks.

Green Line, named after the color of the trains and also as remembrance to the home of some of the new inhabitants, starts out in the suburb of Taplow, named after the local ore mine, which was also opened during that time. As in many suburbs, the old Russian city buses still do their work here after the city proper got their "modern" Hungarian models. A wooden panel wall shields the station against the strong winds from Macajalar Bay.

Following the coast, the train crosses the grounds of the new Macajalar Bay Aquarium, which has just recently opened.

A short stretch later, the train enters Embarcadero Station, where the passenger ferries from the rest of the country land.

While the grounds next to the station are nice enough, the station itself looks as if it could use some paint. Cagayan's transportation administration and the port authority have been arguing for years now about who should pay for the necessary work. An end of the struggle is not in sight.

The station is the main access point to some of the pubs and restaurants in the harbor area and also overlooks Macajalar Bay and the harbor.

After running along the harbor for a while, a narrow curve leads the track over the main road to Downtown.

The harbor fueled many economic hopes, and the young 20th century saw a very localized building boom. The buildings came soon into dire straits, until their potential was rediscovered when tourism found its way to the area in recent years. Nowadays, they look almost respectable.

Above and here we have Boformer Street Station, the local stop, with view in the direction of Downtown below. Note the building date, here from 1939.

"Pocket Manhattan", as the locals call it, at sunrise.

Boformer Street Station is very busy, as it's also a connecting station to a brand new metro line to Bayabas.

Here the train stops at Feindbild Street, in the heart of the former village.

The church of Santa Maria del Mar is the only remainder of the former village, and it is still oriented according to a street pattern that is long gone. The building in the back is Regal Theater, a popular destination of former times, which hopes for tourists to keep it going. Even further back on the left side you can see the entrance to Chinatown.

At the edge of Macabalan, the buildings change.

Green Line ends at Alexander Plaza, where it connects to intercity trains. The original plans saw an extension further upstream, but this never materialized. However, recent years saw the construction of a new line from Cagayan Central to Alexander Plaza Station. The future of "Green Line" is already waiting on the left side of this picture, and it doesn't look green.

The extension of "Green Line" meant that the new line needed many more trains, and the Green Line trains are so old that there simply isn't anything compatible available. In addition, the city wanted to unify the fleet of vehicles. The start of the new "Harbor Line" from Cagayan Central to Taplow is now done with the new "jet cars" visible here. They have much faster acceleration and deceleration than most trains, which is supposed to cut down on travel time a lot. So say farewell to the old cars. They will be missed.

[Feindbold 1,190]

Just wanna say thank you, for this great CJ

On 23.1.2016 at 0:43 AM, Turjan said:

 

 

Save,.. rightclick,.. set as desktop wallpaper 

[FullStrenght 74]

This is just too nice, I have no words...

[jmsepe 2,039]

Really nice update. That train looks cool.

[boformer 3,169]

On 30.1.2016 at 10:33 PM, Turjan said:

This is my favourite shot.

Just wait a little while before you head to chinatown. Soon there will be chinese lamp street lights for Network Skins

[Turjan 1,048]

On 2/1/2016 at 0:38 PM, FullStrenght said:

This is just too nice, I have no words...

Thank you very much. I'm happy you like it.

On 2/1/2016 at 11:46 PM, jmsepe said:

Really nice update. That train looks cool.

Thanks, and yup, it's a great model by Mr. Maison. I decided on a catenary-based system though, so it's the Japanese trains you saw in the sunken station that run there now.

5 hours ago, boformer said:

This is my favourite shot.

Just wait a little while before you head to chinatown. Soon there will be chinese lamp street lights for Network Skins

Thank you. I guess Chinatown will have to wait for a long time. Technically, it exists, but I'm not convinced yet. Those gates need some lights, and I'm not sure whether the street lanterns are actually lit up at the moment.

I'm so hopeless when it comes to the color red (I hardly see it), so I'm not sure whether they are lit or not. Probably not.

Also, not enough Chinese assets yet.

I'm definitely looking forward to the Network Skins mod with Chinese lamps. I hope they also work for the tiny alleys from NEXT.

[spa 970]

Thanks for this lovely CJ. It really shows everything that Cities Skylines can do. Cagayan feels like a real place and a beautiful one at that.

PS: Laughed out loud at "Cagayan Land Jellyfish." Their is a mod out that eliminate those ugly sprites now if you don't already have it