Help with My City - Pop. 80.000+

[margab 0]

Hi all,

This will be one of my few posts on these forums, even though I've been following these forums for a while. I have had this game for a while, but have only picked it up again to start a real city. I've encountered some problems though (mainly transportation problems) and I would appreciate it if you could help. Below are the questions with screenshots of my region and the specific city:

 

 

This is my region based on Istanbul region. As you can see I created a dump city for trash and besiktas is the city i'm working on:

 

 

 

This is the main view of the city. I tried to create a nice little island to the northeastern part of the island for rich folks

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//besiktas2.jpg align=baseline>

 

 

This is the zone map. As you can see I have 2 commercial districts one in the middle and one to the south. All the industry in my city is high-tech (i've gotten rid of dirty and manufacturing to keep the city clean, was this a good idea?). I have big transportation problems because as you can see i don't have any mass transit or highways. I only have a few one-way streets and boulevards, but that doesn't help traffic or commute times.

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//besiktas3.jpg align=baseline>

 

 

As you can see from this image, I have alot of abondened housing. All of them are due to commute times. But my biggest problem is that I don't have any space left so I can't build any highways and I can't build a subway because I'm already in the negative side of the budget so I can't spend that much. The only space I have left is to the west part of the map (refer to the above image) but i'm not sure if a highway there would help (and even if it would it wouldn't have an impact on the city). What I don't understand is that the commercial districts are very close to the residential areas but still have commute problems. I've read in forums that there are pathing problems (sims don't always choose the closest jobs), but they have a lot of available jobs that are close by and still abonden because of commute times. One more thing: I haven't built any bus stations because most of my citizens are medium and high wealth sims and I assumed they wouldn't use buses to go to work.

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//besiktas4.jpg align=baseline>

 

This is the desirability map of high wealth sims. What I don't understand is WHY would high-wealth sims NOT LIKE Country Club? I thought they would love it! But its the big red spot to the middle-eastern part of the map??? (Note that there is NO traffic there so i don't understand why).

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//besiktas5.jpg align=baseline>

 

I don't understand health at all. I have good coverage for the city (a little underfunded) but look at all those reds! This isn't a huge problem for me since underfunding is my fault, so I guess I can fix this one but just a little underfunding afffects it so much!

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//besiktas6.jpg align=baseline>

 

 

Well anyways that's it. I would appreciate any feedback (also suggestions to make more money, i'm in red and with these problems no more sims are moving in and I don't think I can make more money without citizens moving in).

 

Sorry this was a little long post.

 

 

[Constantina 5]

I think you have forgotten about investing recreation. Recreation can have many positive benifits on desirability.

Did you plop any business deals? If you can, demolish it as it causes negative effects on desirability; these kind of buildings are only for the toughest of financial hardship.

[GMT 389]

first of all i suggest plopping loads of parks, plazas and stuff like that to raise the value (and of course a little eye candy)
then try to provide enough hospitals, that has a great effect on the city's developpment. the red zones occure at the beginning of their development and start to turn green after a while (if there is actually enough capacity)
do you have enough educational capacities? cause school support has the same effect as medical support and has to be provided as well as health.
does the trash city dispose all the garbage your city produces?
and the traffic issue...
you don't actually need to provide public transport, but i would set up a close net of subway tubes (and of course stations)
busses would be another addition, but they will get stuck in the traffic jam so the commute time actually lowers, but not much. try to find a good balance.

maybe this will help you a little

[Nardo69 51]

Istanbullu musun?
Bana g

[soldyne 111]

Nardo69 has some good advice.  I would like to add to that advice and perhaps reitterate some of it as well.

 

Before I do I would like to say, Welcome to Simtropolis!

 

I woud like to say that SC4 is one of the most complicated city building simulations which ever graced our presence.  with that said, dont take any of our advice as being negative in anyway.  many of us here on Simtrop have been playing the game so long that complicated ideas like laying out mass transit and playing regionally have become second nature.  You are doing well to have a population of 80k and your problems are common to beginners.  this is good news for you as the answers are easy to come by.

 

1.  you definately need mass transit.  start by placing a bunch of bus stops at every other corner.  make absolutely sure that you have bus stops in both the residential and job zones (commercial and industry).  a sim can only enter a job building as a pedestrian or a car.  if they walk to the bus stop from home then they will need a bus stop at work to get off at.  this is true for all mass transit and basic transit systems.  this is what nardo meant about your avenue.  if the avenue does not connect residential with jobs then it is just eye candy and serves no purpous.

 

when the bus stops are in place, start saving a bunch of money and begin making a subway network.  in my experiences with all forms of mass transit subway is by far the most used by the sims.  it is also one of the fastest and the most expensive, but the savings on commute time is well worth it.

 

dont go crazy with mass transit though until you understand the mechanics of the game more.  subway and bus are your two best options to start with.

 

2.  parks, parks, parks.  one the newer concepts in SC4 is the idea of demand caps.  your city will only grow to a certain size regaurless of desireablility or land value if you have no demand cap relief.  relief is different for each developer type; residential want parks and recreation; commercial wants neighbor connections with transit and industry wants short frieght trips out of town.  the two best things to use are the large flower garden and the large plaza.  both have decent demand cap relief for a small city and they give great desireability too.  the two best residential demand cap relievers are rewards, the minor and major league stadium.  with both of those you can build a city up to about 500k before your demand starts to dwindle again.

 

3.  industry.  again nardo is correct when he talks about sims not all wanting to work in the same place.  in SC4 you dont just have sims walking around you have low, medium and high wealth sims all at different levels of education.  there are actually about 12 different combinations of sims in any given city and each one demands a different type of job.  your R$ sims will mostly demand Industrial Dirty (ID) for low education and Industrial Manufacturing (IM) for higher education, your R$$ sims will mostly demand IM (at low to moderate education) and Industrial High

Tech( IHT) for higher education.  The R$$$ sims demand a little IHT but mostly like CO$$ and CO$$$ (business is where the money is at).

 

This is where region play comes in.  you dont have to have industry in your city at all.  you can make a nieghbor city which has all your industry and then the residential sims who wish to work there can commute (assuming you have sufficient connections).  I like to make one neighbor with ID and IM and a seperate neighbor with IHT.  IHT has the same desirability factors as Residential which means no pollution and lots of parks.

 

4.  Zoning advice.  for your city size as it is dont zone for High Density yet.  I would stay at medium and low density for a while.  you can actually make more tax money per sim with lower density than higher density.  and please DO NOT CONFUSE density zoning with sim wealth level.  many new people to the game confuse the two and they have nothing to do with each other.  a high wealth sim can easily build in a low density zone just as a low wealth sim can live in a high density zone.  density determines the size and capacity of the building not the wealth level that lives there.

 

5. Civic coverage.  your hospitals seem to be doing well.  all the red you see in the map is actually caused by all the abandonment you are getting.  those two things dont seem to relate but they do.  when a building abandons all the sims move away.  when new sims move back in thier health and education stats are all reset to 0.  so when you have a section of town which is constantly abandoning due to commute time (or because they dont have the proper job type to work in) that section will always show up as red when looking at health or education.  the first goal is to stabalize your region, and then it just takes time to get everyone into the green.

 

I have so much more advice to tell you.  I love to share my experiences with new players (and old alike).  but most of this advice and much more can actually be found in the Omnibus section right here on Simtrop.  there are a ton of guides written by people on this site full of lots of great info.  just keep playing the game.  dont give up.  infact dont be afraid to start multiple cities and experiment.  experimenting is how I learned about the game.

 

good luck and let us know if any of this helped.

[margab 0]

Thanks for all the feedback guys. (And yes Nardo, Istanbulluyum ) Following your suggestions, I went ahead and performed a small urban renewal project. I added a massive bus system, but I think what helped with my traffic problem the most was the NAM addon. The overhead road passes are just great! They wiped out the congestions at the road intersections (even though I didn't build them on every possible intersection, truely amazing). The bus system actually helped reduce the commute times. But now that my pop is close to 110.000, the commute times are back up again. Another thing I did was to add an industrial area to Dump City to the west of Besiktas. This provided a nice jobfull zone in the western part of my city.

So now my only problem is to raise demand (I read some stuff on those demand caps, but no space for airport and such) so that my wealthy sims get more jobs. I have tons of those wealthy ones that are currently jobless (because I don't have that much Co's). So I will need to improve on that. Below are some updated screenshots if you are interested.

 

Here is my city, including my Major League stadium! Does that help Commercial demand caps? I only saw improvements to Res. after placing it. Also is the university worth it?(in terms of demand caps)

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//besiktas11.jpg align=baseline>

 

 

 

Low demand.....

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//lowdesir.jpg align=baseline>

 

 

 

Here is a closer view. You can see the overpasses. I just love them!

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//besiktas22.jpg align=baseline>

 

 

Below is the wealthy western part of my city. Even though there are still jobless people in this area, they are still better of than the rest of the city.

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//besiktas33.jpg align=baseline>

 

 

 

I guess dump city helps the growth somewhat...

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//dumpcity.jpg align=baseline>

 

Thanks again for the feedback. I will keep updating you as I go along with more regions around Besiktas and more urban renewal projects as the city gets larger.

[jackel.22 3]

you need tonnes more industy, especially when starting out.

connect at least 1-2 more cities full of industry. this will boost you residential city like nothing else.

[davejowsey 1]

i suspect you may have gone for the age old problem of reducing tax on R$$$, which brings them in but then they dont have a job. To attract R$$$ sustainably you really need to lower the tax rate of C$$$, it's all about micromanagement of the taxes.

 

AND, expand to other cities. It's difficult to improve much on that city without neighbour connections

[yayaville 0]

I have a guess as to why your Country Club shows up negative for R$$$ desirability - crime. The Country Club, beaches, cemeteries and airports always seem to attract crime and need a little extra police attention. Especially the airports.

But I don't think it's a major problem. I suspect that the country club has a city-wide effect on R$$$ demand (maybe a cap relief) that outweighs the small crime problem.

I've got the NAM but I never thought to use overpasses inside my city. It sounds like a good way to cut congestion and maybe to direct commuters onto higher capacity roads (right through the CO zones so they can spend some money and boost demand.)