How to make a Road Free Residential Zone?

[qtwqwd 15]

Hi.

When I'm looking into an industrial zone, industrial buildings have some interesting properties

- can be growable in condition of being connected to pedestrian tile

- can be growable without road connection, if its adjacent building has

just like the picture below.

I wanna make these things possible in residential area, modifying datas with ilives reader program.

But I don't know how to do it.

Especially, I wanna make the 2nd property possible in residential area to construct a Road Free Residential Zone!

 

Please help me. Tell me what to do.

Share your knowledge about ilives reader or anything related to modifying datas.

If it already exists a mode that would make my idea come true, please tell me the address, because I cannot find anything.

Thanks!

 

 

[rsc204 21,808]

I'm sorry to tell you but it's simply not possible to make this setup work with Residential buildings in the game, due to the underlying mechanics at work here. Industrial receives workers which can get to the lot via roads/pedmalls etc. The way industrial was designed, a complex of lots, called Anchor, Mech and Out will combine to be a single lot for all the workers to arrive and freight to leave. If you look closely, whilst workers can get to these complexes without a proper road connection, freight is unable to leave the lot this way. For that to happen you must have either a road or rail network bordering them, in the latter case it also required a freight rail depot somewhere too.

This is the crux of why such things can never work for Residentials, because Residents must be able to leave the lot. Otherwise they won't be able to find jobs and the buildings will quickly abandon. This only works when a proper dedicated road connection is present and such residents can not traverse connected lots to do this.

In short people have been trying to find a way to do this for the longest time, but it's pretty much impossible with the way the game was designed. IF, and I mean IF, you could somehow re-write the source code, that would be the only way around this limitation.

[Handyman 765]

13 hours ago, qtwqwd said:

Isn't it awsome idea?

This is the same thing I thought a couple years ago, I tried a lot of strategies, some worked, but were very clunky and did not satisfy me, so I kept trying anything I thought had a chance to work. I won't drag you all the way down that winding road, just a few of the steps to my current strategy.

The ultimate goal for me was to have  Sims use only pedmalls and mass transit. Zero cars. Ironically it was the NAM that made it possible for me to finally get rid of all automobiles by providing pedmalls that were not just decorations.

There are a few things, regarding game mechanics(as stated by @rsc204), that need to be considered and, ultimately, some concessions to the game reality:

- Sims require access to jobs;

        -It was actually a post by @rsc204 that helped me turn the corner, I don't remember where I saw it but the general idea was, if you have a street/road in front the residential zone and pedmall behind the residential zone the sims would use the pedmall. I tried this and I did indeed see Sims on the pedmalls, but they also still drove their cars. So I thought what if I put the pedmalls in front of the residential zone and the streets behind and this also worked, but I still see cars. Darn cars!

Jump ahead, and now instead of streets behind the residential zone I use transparent flups. Yeah, no cars! (Technically the cars are there but they are underground.)

I just realized the time, my apologies, but I have a job scheduled this morning so I will just leave you with a teaser and finish this later.

This is a screencap of my largest city without cars. Steppes currently has a population of just over one million, with room to grow.

 

So, as I was saying, the flups can take the place of a road for making the connection to a job.

There are some options in how you use the flups tiles :

         - You can string them along to a transit station or commercial / industrial zone. In this case you will see some Sims on the pedmalls but most will drive their cars underground through the flups tiles. In the case of the commercial / industrial connection, small zones can be moved into the neighbourhood making it easier to connect.

        - Another way to use them also involves moving jobs into the neighbourhood, This time we do that by creating home based businesses. I do this with a mod from the  RCImulti - MODpack  by Nilo ( This modpack has been instrumental in making my citiies possible. Thank you @nilo ). Now you only need a connection to a couple neighbours. In this case you won't need as many flups tiles and if your pedmalls connect to other jobs in the city the Sims in that particular neighbourhood will also walk to other jobs not directly connected by flups/street/road.

      - The third option involves using flups pedmalls, thereby eliminating the need for two separate systems. These can be used as in the first option, by stringing them to a transit connection or job, or, as in the second option, by connecting a few neighbours and infilling with standard pedmalls.

There is one other important thing to consider, and that is, FIRE!!. Once again @nilo to the rescue with a 'no fire' mod, also included in the RCImulti - MODpack.

Hope this helps get you started. Post back if you have questions / suggestions.

https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/22255-rcimulti-modpack-for-sc4-deluxrushhour/

  Edited November 18, 2017 by Handyman  
Completed post.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

37 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

... in the latter case it also required a freight rail depot somewhere too.

Or just a rail connection to another tile.

[Handyman 765]

7 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Or just a rail connection to another tile

Yes, that's how I handle it. All my industry has a rail line immediately behind it, which I funnel out to another city tile or the region. Freight and passenger rail run on separate lines.

[qtwqwd 15]

21 hours ago, rsc204 said:

In short people have been trying to find a way to do this for the longest time, but it's pretty much impossible with the way the game was designed. IF, and I mean IF, you could somehow re-write the source code, that would be the only way around this limitation.

I understand how the game works with labor path finding due to your reply. Thanks a lot

[LightSkinnedPisces 71]

@Handyman is that a trail in the res zone? how u do that with no road? and only rail to industry? what are those things around the industry zone? ped mall?

[rsc204 21,808]

1 hour ago, LightSkinnedPisces said:

@Handyman is that a trail in the res zone? how u do that with no road? and only rail to industry? what are those things around the industry zone? ped mall?

Both the trail and the things around the industry zone are PedMalls. You need to tab through the available PedMall options to find the other textures like the trails.

[LightSkinnedPisces 71]

I see that but that's enough for transportation around industry?? and what about the residential zoning with the trails? how do they get around ??

[rsc204 21,808]

On 18/11/2017 at 1:58 PM, Handyman said:

Jump ahead, and now instead of streets behind the residential zone I use transparent flups. Yeah, no cars! (Technically the cars are there but they are underground.)

 

[Naomi57 2,985]

On 18/11/2017 at 11:58 PM, Handyman said:

The third option involves using flups pedmalls, thereby eliminating the need for two separate systems. These can be used as in the first option, by stringing them to a transit connection or job, or, as in the second option, by connecting a few neighbours and infilling with standard pedmalls.

Using FLUPs Pedmalls a really neat idea!

I don't want to make an entirely roadless city, but I do like the idea of making roadless neighbourhoods.

Back in SimCity 4 vanilla (before FLUPs and Pedmalls), I made some neighbourhoods that had no Roads at all, but they still had Streets  ... just not connected to anything but the local amenities.  Along those lines, the Street Addon Mod SAM 1 in the NAM is an interesting way to disguise streets as driveways.  See the vertical red arrows pointing out the SAM 1 in the screenshot below ... it looks like parking bays, but they are functionally streets.

SAM 3 (Dirt Roads) and SAM 4 (Gravel Roads) provide some interesting variety, too.

... or SAM 6 for a parkland feel:

It all comes down to what you're after.  Is it enough to disguise the streets with Pedmall FLUPs and SAM, and encourage much higher uptake of Mass Transit, or do you want to eliminate cars altogether?

Are you wanting to eliminate Bus Stops, too?  Because Bus Stops are usually the most plentiful form of Mass Transit, if you ditch them, you'll need to think about providing Trams, or Subways or Heavy Rail everywhere.  When you consider that Subways are REALLY expensive, and if you're going to have Trams, maybe it's worth doing Trams in Streets.

You might find this other post a useful read.

https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/73630-car-free-industrial-area-issues/

[Handyman 765]

20 hours ago, LightSkinnedPisces said:

@Handyman is that a trail in the res zone? how u do that with no road? and only rail to industry? what are those things around the industry zone? ped mall?

Sorry I am a little late to the game (been busy with RL issues) but I see you found most of what you need. I need to add that creating functional residential zones requires at least one thing from the RCImulti MODpac. That is a 'homejobs.dat', I use the 10% version. Also remember that if there are no roads then the fire trucks can't get to those areas, so I also use the 'no-fire.dat.
Hope this helps. If you have any more questions I will try to answer them as soon as I can.

 

[LightSkinnedPisces 71]

oh ok gotcha , didn't know u used a mod for that gotcha makes sense.