Selective Residential Revamping

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

A long, long time ago in sector I6 in the land of Corillion in an unnamed town north of Residential Branches there was a medium wealth Small Condos which the R$$ Sims abandoned. The low wealth Sims took it over and (basically) trashed the place. It was secretly renamed by the mayor:

 

On this date in the year 1433 it was deemed to be a fire hazard due to the shoddy upkeep and, without warning to the inhabitants, condemned for demolition:

 

Kaboom:

 

The zoning was revealed to be medium density:

 

Which was then rescinded:

 

It was decided that the riff-raff low wealth Sims should have a residential tower built specifically for them. In order to ensure the right building was constructed, the mayor checked the current demands which showed the R$ was slightly higher than the other two:

 

Inspecting the current tax rates:

 

And then adjustments were made to dissuade higher wealth Simizens from taking an interest in this plot of ground:

 

After a wee bit of time this discouraged those of greater financial means:

 

The parcel was re-zoned for high density and some amenities added to help attract new growth:

 

Construction style was set to New York 1940:

 

Soon later, after the original building was razed and all permits signed, the crews arrived and started construction of the new residential tower:

 

The Concrete Manor is now the tallest building in this tiny, unnamed town:

 

Which nearly caused strikes at the Elementary School and Medical Clinic:

 

Funding was quickly adjusted and in time the new occupants found work:

 

So, just a little topic showing how I utilize the tax rate and Ctrl+Zoning to get exactly what I want to grow. Afterwards I set the taxes back how they were before and since I use NKO there's no worry about the building being replaced with higher wealth later on. (For peeps who don't use this mod it could be marked historical to preserve it.)

[Cyclone Boom 17,016]

Very cool. It just goes to show how as evidenced, taxes can be used as a highly beneficial specialist tool for controlling RCI growth management.

In the example here, the original R$$ tower block dilapidated to a R$ and was in a state of disrepair, hence the very fitting "Riff-Raff Residence" name. When demolishing and re-zoning to high density, along with those extra amenities (Park Effect I've also found is useful for encouraging development), the increasing of the R$$ and R$$$ taxes discouraged them from building, and allowed the low wealth tower to construct instead. With the original building clearly suffering from the effects of low desirability, the area wasn't best suited for a medium wealth development, and so this technique of selective construction is an effective means of getting what one wants, to build where one wants. Using NKO also is ideal for this, since with it being a low wealth building again, there's no concern about forgetting to enable the Make Hysterical option.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

4 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

the Make Hysterical option

[RobertLM78 1,598]

Hehehehe..... the "Concrete Manor"..... xDDD

[Spamoidutout 124]

Pretty nice!! Also I'm surprised to see a good old vanilla bus stop 

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

53 minutes ago, Spamoidutout said:

Also I'm surprised to see a good old vanilla bus stop 

Yep. They serve me well and you'll see oodles of vanilla stuff in my cities.

 

Here's a similar concept utilizing Ctrl+Zoning again. In this case Mr. Jez Knight has decided he has too many Acres of crops. As you can see he's gotten too old to even maintain his barn. He's sold out most, but not all, of his crop field to a residential developer.

The streets go in first. Then the crops are de-zoned for where the best home sites will be. And finally, some educational facilities are added to attract home buyers with young children. (Taxes have been set so only medium wealth will be interested in this new neighborhood.)

 

Using Ctrl+Zoning, I've laid out the parcels. While this doesn't prevent the game from growing smaller 1 wide homes there, it does make it consider the larger footprint first.

 

Once these grow I do mark them hysterical because even NKO doesn't keep the game from later splitting them and growing two houses since it believes more homes are better.

 

Now for the infill housing:

 

None of these need marked because they won't subdivide anyhow.

 

I feel that adds a real worldliness to the housing addition rather than everything being the same sized lots.

[Cyclone Boom 17,016]

14 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

18 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

the Make Hysterical option

Yep, indeed it is...

Spoiler

 

Getting back specifically to Cori's selective zoning topic...
 

4 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I feel that adds a real worldliness to the housing addition rather than everything being the same sized lots.

Indeed. Very much so, and it really is an effective method there as well.

The idea of zoning residential in stages sure does create both a varied and realistic effect. Yet more proof what can be achieved using minimal plugins, making the most of a mostly vanilla game. Finding ways to define what's allowed to grow, such as though using different parcel sizes and Ctrl zoning can be applied with custom content too. It's all about observing the simulation and being patient. There are numerous inspired possibilities from selectively persevering when developing. Also as you've done there using the Chicago tileset, to constrain architectural styles to specific neighbourhoods or suburban areas, creating variations between areas built through the years.

I encourage everyone reading to give these techniques a try too.

[The Edge 215]

Great tutorial! What kind of train is that to the right of the train station? Never seen one of those before.

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

5 hours ago, The Edge said:

What kind of train is that to the right of the train station? Never seen one of those before.

That would be the Flying Scotsman by @rivit.

 

(Sometimes I even drive the train myself.)

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

Following the same technique I used in Post 1 of this Topic, I had two objectives to achieve and I started by tweaking taxes to adjust the demands.

Here's my RCI demand before starting:

 

I've strategically increased the taxes to reduce demand for the two higher wealth residential and the first 4 commercial to just below zero:

 

My previously tiny farming villiage has grown a bit and a commercial office building has their eye on some land at the busiest crossroads cross-streets. However, there are some riff-raff darling little Sims living there:

 

Outside of the bustling inner city town, I've zoned the exact same size parcels for them to build new homes:

 

By leaving the R$ tax rates normal and increasing that for the higher two wealths, the low wealth homes were the only ones which would grow:

 

With the Sims resettled in their new ramshackle homes, the old ones were razed with controlled fire:

 

Next the area was cleaned up and rezoned for high density commercial. The parking lots were extended for the additional volume of cars expected:

 

Again, due to how I tweaked the tax rates to adjust the demand, the only thing which will grow here is CO$$$:

 

And once these two projects were finished, I set the tax rates back to normal and all demand bars are back to positive as seen in the first pic.

Here's the after picture zoomed out another notch:

[Prophet42 1,503]

How did you build the parking lot next to the new commercial building?  I haven't seen a 'branched' lot like that before.  I'm assuming you used the parking lot texture from the NAM.

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

10 hours ago, Prophet42 said:

How did you build the parking lot next to the new commercial building?  I haven't seen a 'branched' lot like that before.

@Naomi57 mentioned the SAM-1 parking lots of NAM here (with a picture) and so I started playing around with them. They do make excellent parking lot stubs off of roads as she shows. They are also a full draggable parking lot creation tool themselves.
 

So, in a test tile, here's a similar setup to what you saw above. I'm using the SAM-7 Hableurg's Asphalt Street as my main thoroughfare just like my live city. That adds a complication (which connecting to roads does not have). (More on that soon.)

 

Next grab the SAM-1 Starter Piece and plop it:

 

Now grab the street tool and drag thru it:

 

Then drag thru the other direction. (Note: I'm not yet connecting to the Asphalt Street for a reason.)

 

Next we drag six little one cell stubs off of it and as we do so, it changes the center to the part that is somewhat drivewayish looking:

^ Note: I said one cell for the side lots, but they can be more than that to make a huge parking lot. The one part was just to match the image you asked about.

 

And doing the last of the six:

 

Now the complication I mentioned comes in when I want to connect the SAM-1 streets (which look like parking lots) to the north/south street which is SAM-7:

 

It changes part of the parking lot to the asphalt:

 

This is just how the re-texturing works in the game. It will arbitrarily bleed one into the other. So, a workaround (which is not endorsed by NAM) is to use a SAM Stopper. I've bulldozed two cells and plopped the stopper lot:

 

What I didn't quite like (besides the water bug it has) is that the stopper doesn't have any of the random cars appearing. Then also, I wanted lines on the pavement and didn't really care for the trees in the SAM-1. Where I live, that isn't common to have trees throughout a large parking lot. Chatting with CB and he removed the trees and added car props for me while I painted white lines on copies of the textures as well as removing the water bug. We made this as an override to the SAM-1 itself of NAM.

Then we decided the Stopper could be fixed up too. I used the same texture I tweaked before and he created a new stopper lot. Here's how it looks with those changes and as seen in my post above:

 

Then, because that looks a little unusual with parking lots to drivewayish to parking lots again, we created a separate stopper to be that drivewayish piece:

 

In my prior post that stopper with the parking lot looked fine for the single building it served originally, but extending the whole parking lot and I should've updated the stopper too. I've now done that in my live city and it looks like this:

 

And just to recap the point that'll make it easier:

Connecting SAM-1 (or any other SAM streets) to Roads and there is no need for a Stopper lot. They are only for those of us who model rural areas and small towns where various types of SAM streets need to connect to each other and where having the separation between them must appear at an exact place.

Ofc, once we got started on these we made overrides to the other Stoppers that also had the water bug and created new ones which the original set doesn't have.

[Naomi57 2,985]

That driveway SAM-1 stopper lot is attractive, Cori.  There's no way to do that with SAM-1 unless you have a bend or intersection.

11 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Then, because that looks a little unusual with parking lots to drivewayish to parking lots again, we created a separate stopper to be that drivewayish piece:

Here's my latest play with SAM-1, which demonstrates a technique I found to avoid using SAM stopper lots.  I also just wanted to show off the pic.  

As a complete aside, these are 10 metre terraces (though they only look 4½ metres to me) using two plops of the Street FLUPs on-slope tunnel with the NAM Hole Digger tool.  I'm just getting into using the NAM with a bit of terrain, rather than almost completely flat ... thoroughly enjoying myself ... even without a slope mod (yet).   

Those two red arrows are pointing at SAM-1 and SAM-10 starter pieces.  Plonking them right next to each other achieves the same effect as using the Stopper Lots, but this way you get RCI street access, too, very useful for the low-density commercial lot indicated by the orange arrow.

My only problem with this technique is that SAM starter pieces always flatten the tile.  I'm guessing that SAM stopper lots have the same limitation?

Probably my favourite thing about SAM-1 is the combination of the diverse trees with RCI access, providing street frontage for residential and commercial lots.  The cars fading in and out are a definite bonus — very atmospheric.  The SAM-1 trees blend very well with the other trees I've planted.

My favourite thing about SAM-10 is the little pedestrian crossings, keeping my sims a little safer, especially with kids around, and SAM-10 blends very well with the SAM-1.

PS.  I find it quite fascinating to see little leftover pieces of farms amongst your developing residential and commercial.  

On 19/03/2020 at 6:04 PM, CorinaMarie said:

Here's the after picture zoomed out another notch:

 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

11 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

Those two red arrows are pointing at SAM-1 and SAM-10 starter pieces.  Plonking them right next to each other achieves the same effect as using the Stopper Lots, but this way you get RCI street access, too, very useful for the low-density commercial lot indicated by the orange arrow.

That's a useful tip.   I'll give it a try myself.

 

11 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

My only problem with this technique is that SAM starter pieces always flatten the tile.

I remember this from another thread:

On 13/03/2017 at 4:59 PM, APSMS said:

It's just single road tiles plopped next to each other to produce the leveling that is caused by the game's treatment of intersections as necessarily level (auto-flattening).

^ This was in reply to someone with regard to using road stubs to level terrain, but the key part is that game automatically flattens the terrain for intersections.

 

11 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

I'm guessing that SAM stopper lots have the same limitation?

Turns out to be no, but there is a caveat.

Here's one of the Stoppers plopped on the side of a hill:

 

To test how this might work, I've placed a SAM-9 street going up a gentle incline:

 

Bulldozed out a 2 cell section:

 

Plopped the Stopper in the gap:

 

And the slope mod I use says we cannot connect:

 

So, I saved, quit, and removed the slope mod. Now it I have the option to join the street and the stopper:

 

However, on the other side (with no slope mod) the game insists on doing some goofy raising:

 

And then it looks really silly:

 

I saved anyhow, quit, and reinstalled the slope mod I use. Then drew roads on both sides:

 

And now it's much better, but still not ideal:

 

11 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

PS.  I find it quite fascinating to see little leftover pieces of farms amongst your developing residential and commercial. 

Thanks.

Here's the same town, but zoomed out. The new commercial from my above post is now in the upper right of the pic:

^ The original settlers of this area are quite reluctant to sell their land for redevelopment and it often requires the Mayor to invoke the right of eminent domain. While she generally will not totally evict them (leaving them their basic farm anchor lot and a couple or three acres), she will carve out portions of their crop fields as needed for the town's expansion.

There on the left is the Jez Knight family's farm. Using bribery shrewd negotiations, they have managed to keep their original plot of ground (and stand to receive a substantially higher price from it when they do have to sell).

[Naomi57 2,985]

8 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

17 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

I'm guessing that SAM stopper lots have the same limitation?

Turns out to be no, but there is a caveat.

Here's one of the Stoppers plopped on the side of a hill:

To test how this might work, I've placed a SAM-9 street going up a gentle incline:

Bulldozed out a 2 cell section:

Plopped the Stopper in the gap:

And the slope mod I use says we cannot connect:

So, I saved, quit, and removed the slope mod. Now it I have the option to join the street and the stopper:

However, on the other side (with no slope mod) the game insists on doing some goofy raising:

And then it looks really silly:

I saved anyhow, quit, and reinstalled the slope mod I use. Then drew roads on both sides:

And now it's much better, but still not ideal:

 

Interesting to see how it goes bumpy when you draw the street into the stopper lot!

Have you tried using the NAM Disconnector?  To show what I mean, here's a story about the little tram that could.

The Disconnector leaves the traffic paths of adjacent tiles intact, so I'm thinking it should line up with the SAM Stopper just by "disconnecting" two of the street tiles and plopping the SAM Stopper lot in the gap.  I wonder if that might avoid the "goofy raising"?

If it does work, I might even put the SAM Stopper back on my list of mods to try one day, because changing SAM style halfway up a hill is sometimes very appealing!

Here's a screenshot of various SAM styles butting up against each other, using adjacent SAM Starter pieces.  It all works, from a traffic perspective.  Some of them blend better than others.

Another SAM Stopper Lot idea I'd love to see is a smooth transition from one SAM style to another, like the TLA-3 to ARD-3 NWM transition at the bottom of the screenshot ... I'm guessing that is probably rather hard to do, and with all the combinations of SAM styles, it would only make sense to try to do very few combinations!  

As an aside, another use I have for SAM Starter tiles is faking neighbour connections, when I want it to look like a neighbour connection but it isn't!  I describe that in this post about a mosaic screenshot across city borders.

https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/14932-show-us-your-mosaics/?page=10&tab=comments#comment-1725868

On the same topic, I just spotted this comment from @paeng, on one of his mods.

https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/28814-paengs-grunge-ind-alleys/?tab=comments#comment-627612

On 29/06/2013 at 8:56 PM, paeng said:

Will it act like SAM, as if you connect a road to it and it will unwillingly take on the new 'skin'?

Well, depends :-)   For example - if you plop the Cross, Tee or Straight  and draw a road stub in each direction - you can then run up to 4 different SAM streets into that 'intersection' and they will keep their individual 'skin'... like a SAM Stopper.

... and here's another interesting mod, which should achieve a similar result, RTMT for SAM streets, which at a guess probably works similar to the SFBT Simple Tram Stop on Street in the NAM.  If you're gonna have a transit lot as a SAM stopper, might as well make it a bus stop, too!  

https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/26725-jb-sam-bus-stops/

[xxdita 1,097]

The only issue I have with the SAM 'parking lots' is that they don't actually provide parking. Functionally, it's no different than any other street. 

[xxdita 1,097]

On 12/21/2018 at 9:37 AM, CorinaMarie said:

So, just a little topic showing how I utilize the tax rate and Ctrl+Zoning to get exactly what I want to grow. Afterwards I set the taxes back how they were before and since I use NKO there's no worry about the building being replaced with higher wealth later on. (For peeps who don't use this mod it could be marked historical to preserve it.)

If the tract can't support R$$ for desirability reasons, then it's very unlikely they would have returned after you demolished the building anyway. Granted, the new bus stop would have provided a certain amount of Transient Aura inflating the Desirability in the area, but as there seems to be a bus stop directly across the street, I don't see why a new one was necessary. 

In these cases, I generally try to fix the desirability issues, instead of catering to the lower wealths that have moved in. 

[Cyclone Boom 17,016]

2 hours ago, xxdita said:

I don't see why a new one was necessary.

I remember Cori made a post on to explain how bus stops are useful for a short-term growth boost. They provide a temporary Transient Aura effect for around 6 game months, and so that's why plopping it would've contributed in that way. The same likewise with the Parks Aura effect produced by the playground.

Also see this guide which @Naomi57 created for insightful bus stop info: The mysterious powers of the SimCity 4 Bus Stop

Specifically this part as applicable:

"It even has a high density YIMBY effect, encouraging development of high rise residential blocks, and commercial towers, of any wealth level."

 

2 hours ago, xxdita said:

In these cases, I generally try to fix the desirability issues, instead of catering to the lower wealths that have moved in.

There are indeed so many ways to develop cities.

I suppose it's the way that works best for each of us, whether looking for urban renewal with developing areas to be more predominantly desirable to higher wealth citizens, or being selective to encourage only a specific developer type to build. Tax rates can be quite sensitive when adjusting them in their thresholds, and so often it doesn't take much of an increment on the 1 decimal point scale before demand can rise or fall dramatically. It's great there's lots of tools and so many ways to use them.

It's useful with Cori's method for how tax rates are the key to control citywide RCI growth, even with these effects present in a local area. The idea for building the bus stop and the park is to encourage a new high density residential tower to develop, with the resulting demand dictating that R$ was more likely to grow as desired.

[xxdita 1,097]

I have no idea what your post was trying to convey. But it doesn't explain anything that was questioned in any way. 

Are you recommending that bus stops be placed across the street and every 3 tiles from one another? Even if we're talking about the vanilla bus stop, with a capacity of 1000 and not the NAM override with 17,000 capacity, that seems like overkill for a town with a population of 41,000, as shown in the OP. You can tell by the blue line that none of the pedestrians heading to the new stop are using the buses. Instead, they're going to work in the 2 civic jobs the building provides. 

Why would the transient aura or park effect be necessary to bring in R$s? If the desirability had been that bad for any reason, the building would have simply abandoned, instead of downgrading. Since that didn't happen, any discussion of these things is fairly pointless. It is quite likely that the R$$s moved in because of the transient aura effect of that first bus stop across the street, and when that dissipated, the desirability dropped back down to normal, which was under the R$$ requirements, but not under the R$ requirements. 

So yeah. The exact same end results very likely could have been achieved by demolishing the building and changing nothing other than the tileset. And if I understand the NKO mod, even after adding the new bus stop and playground, the R$s would have stayed put, or upgraded when it became time. So literally everything else was unnecessary to achieve the desired goal. 

I haven't tested the NKO myself. I don't see how it would benefit my playing style at all. 

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

47 minutes ago, xxdita said:

The exact same end results very likely could have been achieved by demolishing the building and changing nothing other than the tileset.

While this is possible, the method described ensured it happened as I wanted.

[xxdita 1,097]

1 minute ago, CorinaMarie said:

While this is possible, the method described ensured it happened as I wanted.

Basic game mechanics would have insured it as well. 

[Naomi57 2,985]

6 hours ago, xxdita said:

Granted, the new bus stop would have provided a certain amount of Transient Aura inflating the Desirability in the area, but as there seems to be a bus stop directly across the street, I don't see why a new one was necessary. 

Bus Stops are extraordinarily good at providing a sizeable transient aura boost, much more effective than trees, which you can see in the Desirability views.

Just the same way that newly planted trees are more "desirable" than old trees, a shiny new Bus Stop is more "desirable" than the old rusty one across the street  ... for a few months at least.  All transient aura effects.

1 hour ago, xxdita said:

Basic game mechanics would have insured it as well. 

In my experience of growing R$ tenements, transient aura effects are extremely useful, so I agree with @CorinaMarie on this one.

I think of it like a PR campaign, §150 for shiny bus stop + §10 for bulldozing, all to improve desirability.  You can even do it twice on the exact same tile (or even three or four times).  Here's the Bus Stop plop and bulldoze in R$$ Desirability view.

  

Inside 1 month, the transient aura boost shows up, and you can repeat the Bus Stop plop and demolish for a second transient aura boost.

In this area of my city, with both Landfill and two Waste to Energy Plants, the bulldozed Bus Stop is about the only desirable thing they've got, atm.  

For the story line of Cori's original post, bulldozing the brand new Bus Stop and Playground would have looked mean.  

You can do a similar transient aura thing with a Small Park Green, for §40 plop + §10 for bulldozing.  But I like the speed of Ctrl+Shift+R, click, B, click.  A Bus Stop also has the advantage of being one of the few things that R$ residents find MORE DESIRABLE than R$$$ residents do.

That's worth saying again.  A Bus Stop also has the advantage of being one of the things that R$ residents find MORE DESIRABLE than R$$$ residents do.  That's got nothing to do with any transient aura or desirability view, but rather to do with Mass Transit Usage parameters by wealth in the TSCT.  While a second Bus Stop may yield uncertain benefit to Mass Transit commute benefits in this case, in many similar cases a Bus Stop is intensely important for ensuring that R$ tenements do not delapidate and abandon, especially if Cori's two parallel streets ever become an AVE-4.

6 hours ago, xxdita said:

The only issue I have with the SAM 'parking lots' is that they don't actually provide parking. Functionally, it's no different than any other street.

Funny, that's actually what I LOVE about SAM-1 'parking lots'.    They provide street-side RCI access, while looking like a parking lot or parking area.  It's an excellent option for certain frontage roads, with the commercial street-frontage on the SAM-1 street (collecting business prosperity from the highway on their backdoor), and they don't need any police protection, either.  No crimes ever happen on a SAM-1 'parking lot'.  

SAM-1 also delivers a more realistic look, with on-street parking or extended parking areas for nearby businesses, in areas where the game mechanics would make zero use of a functional parking station ... unless you use "Park and Ride" TSCT option.

If I want a functional parking station, I'll plop a Maxis Passenger Station, or a Ninja Kiosk (underground parking), or a BriPizza 15m Multi-Purpose Station with Parking, or I could grab a parking lot plop off the STEX ... any number of options.  SAM-1 streets disguised as 'parking lots', on the other hand, is irreplaceable.  

BriPizza 15m Multi-Purpose Station with Parking with SAM-1 streets on the right

[xxdita 1,097]

10 minutes ago, Naomi57 said:

Bus Stops are extraordinarily good at providing a sizeable transient aura boost, much more effective than trees, which you can see in the Desirability views.

Just the same way that newly planted trees are more "desirable" than old trees, a shiny new Bus Stop is more "desirable" than the old rusty one across the street  ... for a few months at least.  All transient aura effects.

In my experience of growing R$ tenements, transient aura effects are extremely useful, so I agree with @CorinaMarie on this one.

I think of it like a PR campaign, §150 for shiny bus stop + §10 for bulldozing, all to improve desirability.  You can even do it twice on the exact same tile (or even three or four times).  Here's the Bus Stop plop and bulldoze in R$$ Desirability view.

  

Inside 1 month, the transient aura boost shows up, and you can repeat the Bus Stop plop and demolish for a second transient aura boost.

In this area of my city, with both Landfill and two Waste to Energy Plants, the bulldozed Bus Stop is about the only desirable thing they've got, atm.  

For the story line of Cori's original post, bulldozing the brand new Bus Stop and Playground would have looked mean.  

You can do a similar transient aura thing with a Small Park Green, for §40 plop + §10 for bulldozing.  But I like the speed of Ctrl+Shift+R, click, B, click.  A Bus Stop also has the advantage of being one of the few things that R$ residents find MORE DESIRABLE than R$$$ residents do.

It's not about bulldozing the new bus stop or playground. These things weren't in place when the building was demolished. So R$ would have grown just fine without them. Which is my whole point. 

Images of R$$ desirability really don't mean anything to R$. 

You don't have to take my word for it. The math is fairly clear. R$ has a baseline desirability of 25 (0x00000019), and can grow when desirability reaches 50 (0x00000032). It will likewise abandon if desirability falls under 50. Since images in the first post show 611 R$s living in the dilapidated R$$ building to start with, it is fairly obvious that the desirability is at or over 50 for at least one tract of the 2x3 lot. Otherwise it would have abandoned completely and this would have been a totally different thread. 

After placing the playground and additional bus stop, I understand why it was necessary to raise taxes to prevent the R$$s from returning, but neither one serves any purposes but overcomplicating the desired goal of giving the R$s a place of their own. And again, with the NKO mod in use, both could have been added after the building grew. 

So why did a much larger building grow in its place? That can only happen when regional residential capacity allows it. There may be a way to control kicking out lower wealth, but the game will never kick out higher wealth in favor of lower wealths to grow. So the options when similar cases present themselves is to demolish the dilapidated buildings, as @CorinaMarie did, or to fix the desirability issues for the R$$, which could easily change the whole dynamic of the area. 

1 hour ago, Naomi57 said:

That's worth saying again.  A Bus Stop also has the advantage of being one of the things that R$ residents find MORE DESIRABLE than R$$$ residents do. 

Yes and no.

It is certainly true that R$ is more inclined to use a bus stop than R$$$. But R$$$ still benefits greatly from them even if they don't use them as much. Because bus stops ease traffic congestion, which clears the route to work. This can make a world of difference if road networks are at or over capacity, raising the desirability factors of both Trip Length and Traffic Effect. 

I should point out that I am talking about the vanilla traffic simulator or any traffic simulator that existed before the current Simulator Z. This can also be changed in the NAM Traffic Tool by making sure the Buses Contribute to Traffic option is toggled off, and I would personally recommend doing so in order to get the true benefits of buses. I would also recommend trying out prior versions of the Traffic Simulator, which can still be found on the LEX. Keep in mind, these are no longer supported by the NAM Team. But I am quite fond of Simulator A Easy. 

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

5 minutes ago, xxdita said:

I should point out that I am talking about the vanilla traffic simulator or any traffic simulator that existed before the current Simulator Z.

Since you mention this, I'll clarify that I do indeed have NAM installed and it is present in the original post.

[xxdita 1,097]

2 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Since you mention this, I'll clarify that I do indeed have NAM installed and it is present in the original post.

With the talk about SAM, I kinda figured. Out of curiosity, which Traffic Simulator do you use? And have you modded it with the Traffic Tool?

[Flat Raver 59]

It's kind of frustrating how the game's engine isn't capable of simulating either public housing or gentrification...

[Naomi57 2,985]

On 28/03/2020 at 8:00 AM, xxdita said:

You don't have to take my word for it. The math is fairly clear. R$ has a baseline desirability of 25 (0x00000019), and can grow when desirability reaches 50 (0x00000032). It will likewise abandon if desirability falls under 50. Since images in the first post show 611 R$s living in the dilapidated R$$ building to start with, it is fairly obvious that the desirability is at or over 50 for at least one tract of the 2x3 lot. Otherwise it would have abandoned completely and this would have been a totally different thread. 
...
So why did a much larger building grow in its place? That can only happen when regional residential capacity allows it.

Without the transient aura uptick, the likelihood of a lower density building growing is much more likely.  I've verified that many times.

Dilapidation and abandonment will also occur in relation to lack of accessible jobs, for which a close Bus Stop going in the right direction can make a noticeable difference for R$ sims, far more so than for R$$$ sims in my experience.  Of course, many, many variables involved in access to jobs.

Cori did a test that verified office workers are happier to commute further than factory workers are, which matches my observations, too.  In a similar way, I've run tests that verify different kind of civic jobs accommodate different kinds of commute timeframes, with police being happiest to commute the furthest.  Exactly what difference the Bus Stop makes to commute times and employment is rather complex and varies between neighbourhoods, but is often useful for R$ employment levels, in my experience.

[Naomi57 2,985]

On 28/03/2020 at 7:52 PM, Flat Raver said:

It's kind of frustrating how the game's engine isn't capable of simulating either public housing or gentrification...

I actually kinda see the R$ tenements as public housing, for the working poor, not the unemployed.  These public housing recipients all have the benefits of excellent transport infrastructure, and water views, too.  

Here's some real-life public housing in Brownsville, New York:

... and my attempts to reproduce this style of public housing in my Brownsville city in SC4.

But very importantly, they all have jobs.

If you want tips on building groups of R$ tenements, very happy to help you that way.  If you're wanting large numbers of unemployed R$ residents, unfortunately, you're 100% correct, SC4 doesn't do that!  

Gentrification occurs when you develop medium wealth and high wealth commercial offices (CO$$ and CO$$$) with carefully designed highways and mass transport networks.  Here's a tutorial of mine on that topic, if that's useful to you.

https://community.simtropolis.com/journals/entry/29039-ten-silent-killers-of-SimCity-4-commercial-growth/

The combination of gentrified residential neighbourhoods, and working poor R$ tenement neighbourhoods, is actually a really good combination.

[infamousjbe 593]

Don't know about your game play, but gentrification happens only when & where I want it too.  Other wise everything is locked down in historical till I'm ready to redevelop areas. 

[xxdita 1,097]

Gentrification happens where I want it to as well. But again, it's a matter of math. The first step is to raise education levels, which changes the census drives, so that R$ will start demanding CO$$, CS$$, and IM jobs. When those grow, they'll then raise R$$ workforce drives. It's all very circular. 

An improperly modded or cheat school can throw things off completely, if you aren't expecting it.