Where does your inspiration come from?

[BC Canuck 207]

I'm curious to know where people get their ideas for cities, towns, rural areas etc.  Do you use Google Earth?  Your own part of the world? Batters' lots set an idea in motion?  Other CJ's?  Sometimes I run out of ideas to make something a bit more unique -  things start to look the "same".  Let me know what inspires you.  

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

My inspiration is mostly from my part of the world along with places I've been. As I grew up I spent every summer living with other families that were close friends of mom and dad. I've lived in the hills and hollows of Kentucky with no running water inside the house and cooking was done on a wood burning stove. I've lived in a teeny, tiny town in the Mojave desert where the peeps considered a half percent humidity a lot. I've lived in the outskirts of Chicago. I was in Hawaii for about a month. And many other places in or near towns and cities of various sizes. Ofc, I always came back to Indiana for school. Also, we used to go camping on any good weather weekend so I've been in well over half of our state parks and seen the land between here and there as we drove. (The walking/hiking trails in Turkey Run State Park and the caves in southern Indiana are awesome.)

I don't model any particular area per-se, but it's kind of a combination of all I've seen. I have basically no interest in trying to create any kind of close replica of any real place, but I prefer to have a random map that looks as if it could be real. Then I go for a look that is similar to the satellite views of areas around me. As part of my job as a residential real estate appraiser's assistant I create all the maps for the reports and that includes aerial views to show the surrounding influences with and without parcel zoning overlays. I'm learning how proximity to things such as a big reservoir or dirty industrial complex affects the market value of homes. I kind of try to incorporate those concepts in to what I make in SC4.

And if you've followed my farm picture posts in the show us thread, you can see I really prefer the rural areas to be predominate with small towns hither and yon for added (simulated) realism.

[Haljackey 17,302]

I guess for me its a mix of Hong Kong and Huston. My cities are dense yet have sprawling highway networks.

I also take a lot of inspiration from Toronto, my closest 'big' city.

I also like Dutch designs, even though I am not Dutch (I blame @MandelSoft for this influence)

[Handyman 765]

I'm not sure I have any specific influence. I like to have water on my maps, maybe because I grew up on Lake Erie. Other than that I usually succumb to impulse. My cities tend to morph as I go.

[icantthinkofaname 56]

I usually make American-type cities with the super average suburbs, ghetto areas sometimes, generally based off of the Dallas area. I usually make my land flat, put alot of parks, have dense cookie cutter neighborhoods, with schools every few blocks.

[BC Canuck 207]

@CorinaMarie  Holy Moly the Mojave desert no less! Than must have been an experience.  I prefer cooler climes myself.  I was born and partly raised in the Yukon (sub-Arctic) and then my family moved to Montreal and many years ago moved back to the West Coast.  

I like all the seasons (sometimes around here we get all 4 in one day)

The only part of Canada I haven't seen is Newfoundland and the "true" Arctic.  Otherwise I have covered a good bit through holidays, and moving across the country two times in my life.  Love our National Parks and the wilderness areas. 

 

@Haljackey  I'm always amazed at your interchanges.  How do you keep track of what is connected to what and everyone is going the right way.  I can't seem to do a simple overpass without a lot of hassle so I give up... 

I knew you were from the GTO but I suspected you were channelling LA.  I can see Hong Kong but I'm not too familiar with Huston.  Dutch design- hmmm  I'll have to look up Mandelsoft.  I was in The Netherlands in May.  Amazingly flat landscape - the dikes are the only high point.

 

@Handyman  I hear you about the water.  I live beside the Pacific so I like to include water as well.

 

@icantthinkofaname (love your handle - very funny)  Have you ever shown a CJ.   Your take on Dallas sounds interesting.

 

[icantthinkofaname 56]

13 hours ago, BC Canuck said:

@icantthinkofaname(love your handle - very funny)  Have you ever shown a CJ.   Your take on Dallas sounds interesting.

 

I have a few, including one where I attempted to recreate the suburb I live in but bc of how bad I am with that kind of stuff and how I didn't really like it, it never took off. Same with some others. One of the ones I did had a suburb where I tried to emulate some cities around here with skyscrapers in them.

[markussaage 762]

My ideas are pure fictional... Go with the flow of my brain. If it feels right, I'll do it, if not, I bulldoze it again. Pretty simple!

Kind regards!

[jmsepe 2,038]

I take inspiration from Asian cities mostly those located in Japan, China and Southeast Asia. However, in general, I just plop things and let the city grow haphazardly in all directions.  It is always fun seeing a sprawling city full of traffic. It's when the city is large enough (I'm taking about multiple city tiles here) that I actually decide how to do some urban renewal by adding new mass transit lines and highways.

[cifer00 12]

my ideas mostly come from looking at small towns on google maps and seeing how their roads are formatted, and where the comercial and residential districts are.i dont have a particular way of building, it justs how i feel doing it.

[redfox85 659]

Mine are the city I grew up in - Calgary and the city I now reside in - Toronto. Calgary for its endless sprawl and supergrids into the praries, Toronto for its older feel and downtown, as well as suburban communities.

[huzman 445]

Imagination is a question of keeping your eyes open and adding a slurp of curiosity.
It also comes from learning something about from Archeology to Zoology. It produces coincidences, similitudes and contradictions that leaves you awed.
Thus, my signature with Mister Huxley's quote.

Personally I was turned on by Architecture in my early teens and collected a lot of pix about it. But that is only one example, but I didn't become an architect.
Another example of what I'm trying to say is: "What is the relation between quantum theory and fine art (painting)?" Answer: Cubism. Picasso did it.
 

[T Wrecks 10,209]

For me, it's a mixture of pretty much everything:

• Cool stuff I see in CJs
• My own imagination
• Real-world sceneries that I may see on pictures or while driving

I tend to have a vague overall environment in mind. For me, that's generally a temperate climate, older US-styled buildings (from wooden houses in the countryside through brownstones in the suburbs to Art Deco skyscrapers in the city centre). For the finer details (road markings, traffic lights, rail catenary styles), I just choose whatever I think looks cool, no matter whether it's authentic or not. (For example, I like yellow zebra crossings. I just like them, so I use them if and when I can).

Going from there, I "dissect" this overall picture into indidual details or features that catch my attention. That may be a small detail such as a tree-lined road through the countryside with a drainage channel running alongside. Or maybe a village sitting on a plateau on the inside of a river bend. Or a rocky coast. I'll then take this as a leading theme for a city tile and build the rest around it. Some city tiles will not have a theme at all, they'll become mere fillers, designed to be unspectacular (but hopefully realistic).

For big tiles, there may be several themes going on. Peninsula with a park and a monument at its tip here, mountain with some communications tower on top there, and a generic city in the middle.

Since SimCity is never entirely predictable if you actually grow stuff, themes and features can also develop as you go - some examples:

• if a surprisingly large commercial building grows in a suburb, you may surround it with parking and other suburban offices, and there's your office park you had never thought of before.
• if you zoned for industrial in a valley a bit out of town, but the first building(s) you get are really grungy, why not pick up the idea and turn the whole valley into a "run-down old industry" theme?
• Several identical or similar R$ housing blocks grew in close proximity to one another? Well, why not bulldoze the better buildings inbetween (they can regrow elsewhere) and turn everything into a council housing estate?
• Similarly, two identical office highrises growing next to another may become the twin towers of your city.
• If traffic outgrows your existing road network, you can take the opportunity to wiggle a highway through your city or to squeeze some El-rail over road into it, which will help give your city a unique character.

The hardest challenge for me is another very important aspect: Just leave some space alone. Of course, this cannot be applied to a CBD city tile, but generally a city benefits a lot if there's some breathing room around it. So I also recommend leaving some nature untouched (or only slightly trimmed) because it will also turn into a unique feature that gives your city some character.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

My inspirations come on multiple levels. I chose (and rendered) the life-sized SF Bay Area because I grew up and lived in various towns around there for 31 years. That gives me a sense of familiarity, sense of scale, a ready source of recognizable town/neighborhood names etc. I allowed the real freeway system to guide me in terms of how many freeways to build and how far apart, but I decided early that I wouldn't bind myself to a precise replication. Instead, the boundaries of game's city-sectors (the need for connections) trumped reality for the large-scale freeway and rail nets.

At a lower level, I play the game rather than modeling reality. There are too many traffic idiosyncrasies and growable-lot mysteries for me to recreate the real world. Besides, I am way too lazy to do the research. So I instead set a few strategic goals, such as delivering all garbage to garbage docks, fetching all fresh water from high hills, and drawing all electric power from (for now) just one sacrificial (and mostly water anyway) sector loaded with cheap dirty coal plants.

My primary inspiration (or organizing principle) is to use railroad stations and major crossroads as seeds for founding villages. I put one rail station in each sector entered by any of my railroads. I also laid out some avenues (now mostly TLA-5). Where I had rails, I aimed at least one avenue to cross (or FLUP under) near the passenger station. It was around the rail station (and around major intersections in sectors without rails) that I built one little village per "city". I am growing each one somewhat organically from that tiny center, adding zones and services only when needed. I hop from city to city adjusting the power, water & garbage imports before running 4+ months to recalc the commuter routes (and hopefully adjust commuter emigration too).

One other inspiration came from Stanford U's nickname, "The Farm". Because of it, I labeled one large sector as "Stanford" at about its real-world location, and I paved it over with farms surrounding a small, primitive village. It's now providing thousands of jobs that are driving residential and commercial development in all of the nearby sectors. The education level at Stanford is shockingly low, and without even its junior university, it's unlikely to ever improve much... Would anyone care to guess where in the Bay Area I went to college?

[Bdub01 201]

I spend time on my map app on my iPhone or iPad and put it in ‘terrain’ mode and look at how the big and small city streets are formed. Also I go old school when driving somewhere I just look around and get ideas. 

[Silur 3,304]

My inspiration is to build the city from scratch. I want to build a railway, but I have no sea port ...

[Twisters 8]

 

I provide my city with highway, given extremely long express lane. This is inspired by elevated express highway in most populated island in the world. This is Jakarta-Cikampek Elevated (38-39 km running from Bekasi to Karawang), soon to enter top 20 list for longest elevated structure in the world. 

I have many experiences with this project since I often go from Jakarta, that capital of Indonesia, to Bandung. Imagine building elevated toll highway in blood-red traffic (especially in holidays beside Christmas and Eid Mubarak), no land clearing thus makes workspace really narrow, bypass through overpasses, political deadline in 2019, project hold due to various reasons, and so many challenges.

So, I think it would be very great when I can build a highway with express lanes. In my SC4 cities, express lane runs through end-to-end of the city with no interchange at all, thus make it unenterable. Exception for a city named Tanah Tinggi (Highlands), where access to southbound and eastbound elevated highway is available. Soon I will build elevated express highway to northbound of the region. Total built elevated line is now around 45 km.

For inspirations of city layout, I usually built it sporadically. Since I've got 4x4 space, it becomes harder to build like that, implied by no jobs and no population growth (even the city profits with RCI mod). I try to build not too sporadic, but still retaining Southeast Asia's narrow living space character. 

Construct all the roads and rails first by sitemap, placing civics, then lotting as I want. Btw, rail dominates in my cities, with super-long stations (12 blocks (12x15m) is the shortest, stations indicated by pedmalls), inspired by Commuter Line in Jakarta that has maximum of 12- car trains (around 250 m)