Realistic gentrification in SC4

[StuporMundi 2]

Hello fellow SC4 fanatics,

Long-time reader but first-time poster here. Have been playing SimCity 4 on and off for about ten years and I'm recently getting back into it for real. One thing I really enjoy is focussing on realistic city and region dynamics - the nitty gritty if you will, instead of living out my urban fantasies. Lately I have been dealing professionally with socio-economic housing dynamics and one thing really always bugged me:

Growable buildings in SC4 may, depending on many factors, "dilapidate" or go down in wealth level. This is realistic and something we see in the real world - particularly in waves. Over the last couple of decades, however, we see - influenced by trends such as housing shortages and re-urbanism - the reverse happening: buildings going "up" rather than down in wealth level, i.e. the building being used by people of a "higher wealth level" than the people for whom the building was originally intended. I myself live in a building that people of similar means 100 years ago when it was erected could never have afforded and I turn cannot possibly afford a more middle class dwelling from that point in history. Without arguing too much about definitions, let's call this gentrification.

Part of the "story" or progression of SC4, if you will, is about cities progressing from a primarily rural economy to an industrial one to one based on high-tech industry and the commercial sector. In a way this mirrors our real world and arguably the lives of your sims get better over time. I would love to be able to "revitalise" neighbourhoods in that way and play around with that changing population dynamics within the city - particularly in combination with the No-kickout mod. I guess it's just a particular interest of mine.

So without further ado - since so many of you are proficient at modding the game - would it be possible to reverse these dynamics for buildings and have them go up in wealth? It seems like by changing building properties it may be done, but I have no clue how.

Any thoughts? Thanks!

[Matrim Cauthon 344]

Not an expert on the topic, but isn't this basically the vanilla behavior?

Growable zones dynamically react to the economic and transit simulations, and re-develop into higher wealth buildings as long as the demand exists and the location meets requirements.

Essentially, the reverse of diplidation is redevelopment into a higher value lot.

Now that said, I think you can actually create the gameplay you're looking for by using both Cori's no kickout mod and the "Less abandonment mod" and then bulldozing the zones you want to "gentrify" as those mods tend to leave you with excess demand you can use to drive the process.

They should fill back in with higher wealth level buildings as long as you have the demand to allow it.

I realize that's not quite what you're asking for, but AFAIK states like dilapidation are hardcoded and can't simply be added in. I would think that if doing so was possible, it might involve something like reworking dilapidation to work in reverse, losing you the other side of the feature.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

22 minutes ago, Matrim Cauthon said:

Not an expert on the topic, but isn't this the vanilla behavior?

Growable zones dynamically react to the economic and transit simulations, and re-develop into higher wealth buildings as long as the demand exists and the location meets requirements.

Essentially, the reverse of diplidation is redevelopment into a higher value lot.

Now that said, I think you can actually create the gameplay you're looking for by using both Cori's no kickout mod and the "Less abandonment mod" and then bulldozing the zones you want to "gentrify" as those mods tend to leave you with excess demand you can use to drive the process.

They should fill back in with higher wealth level buildings as long as you have the demand to allow it.

I think what he means is that, rather than having areas gentrify by the current game mechanics (which replaces lower wealth buildings with new buildings of a higher wealth level), he'd like to see actual buildings gentrify as happens in real life (that is, the buildings remain the same, but they upgrade in wealth).

To give a real-life example, in the city where I live, many homes that were originally working class are now worth substantially more as a result of housing scarcity. Another common example would be old industrial warehouses that have been converted into lofts or office space (though, in those cases, the actual function of the building has also changed).

I'm not sure whether there's a workaround here or not, but here's what I would assume:

1. I don't think there's way to make this work in the base game. That is, I don't think it's possible to have a "reverse-dilapidation" feature where lots naturally upgrade in wealth.
2. There are probably a few different workarounds that you could try, some of which would be more complicated than others. In any case, I think it would require a lot of hands-on work. That is, the game wouldn't naturally upgrade lots, so whatever workaround you chose, you would need to go around updating lots manually.

One of the easier workarounds that comes to mind is simply creating two different versions of a lot. For example, you could create an industrial lot that's a big bulky warehouse with a bunch of trucks, crates, and other industrial props. Then you could create a second version of that lot in which the warehouse has been renovated into offices. When you want the building to gentrify, you bulldoze the industrial lot and replace it with a ploppable version of the commercial lot.

That said, there are a couple of problems with this that immediately come to mind. First, ploppable industrial and commercial lots can throw the game's demand simulator off balance, so unless you're very careful about when you "gentrify" buildings, you could end up causing serious problems in your cities this way. Second, ploppable residential buildings simply don't work -- the residents can't leave the lots, so they're unable to find jobs.

There's a way to achieve something similar with growable lots, which won't have the problems that I outlined above, but you would need to precisely control when and where these buildings grow. That's possible, but it requires a lot of micromanaging.

[Matrim Cauthon 344]

Yeah, I clarified a bit in my edit that I figured that was the behavior wanted, basically making a building a $$+ instead of a $$-, but didn't think it was particularly feasible.

[rsc204 21,808]

If the basic premise is that $$$ sims would live in housing originally intended for $$ or $ sims and so on, there is no simple way to make this change. You can mod buildings/lots, such that the growables normally used for $$ sims, would grow with $$$ sims inside them, it's not a particularly difficult thing to change. But the sheer number of lots would potentially make it a project requiring commitment.

However, making that happen dynamically without re-growing, i.e. the game "upgrading" the lot in question, I do not believe is possible. Likewise, this would come unstuck if you changed all $$ Res to have $$$ sims, because then where would the $$ sims live?

I think on balance, whilst theoretically possible, there is no good solution to making this happen.

[Propfam 2,287]

15 hours ago, rsc204 said:

If the basic premise is that $$$ sims would live in housing originally intended for $$ or $ sims and so on, there is no simple way to make this change. You can mod buildings/lots, such that the growables normally used for $$ sims, would grow with $$$ sims inside them, it's not a particularly difficult thing to change. But the sheer number of lots would potentially make it a project requiring commitment.

However, making that happen dynamically without re-growing, i.e. the game "upgrading" the lot in question, I do not believe is possible. Likewise, this would come unstuck if you changed all $$ Res to have $$$ sims, because then where would the $$ sims live?

I think on balance, whilst theoretically possible, there is no good solution to making this happen.

Can we use PIM-X for changing wealth?

[rsc204 21,808]

Off the top of my head, I believe you can use the Recompute As option to do this, but I'd have to double-check to be certain. If that didn't work, you certainly could create a duplicate Exemplar under the different wealth category.

It's not really as simple as just changing the wealth, because by doing so, you should recalculate the occupancy figures, which may not be identical between wealth types.

[Propfam 2,287]

27 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

Off the top of my head, I believe you can use the Recompute As option to do this, but I'd have to double-check to be certain. If that didn't work, you certainly could create a duplicate Exemplar under the different wealth category.

It's not really as simple as just changing the wealth, because by doing so, you should recalculate the occupancy figures, which may not be identical between wealth types.

That's what I mean but the question is they require a model of the BAT. I don't know to extract or better (in terms of ethics), referencing a model from a mod. I could drag the model into the respective wealth.

Another question, how to automatically set a filling rate? I obviously can't easily measure the volume of the BAT accurately unless if I have an access to the model itself or make a real world replica of the BAT and put into a glass with some water filled in and measure the difference of the volume.