Natural Growth Philosophies / Mindsets

[Oidaas 1,696]

Thanks for an interesting thread. I've been thinking about the subject, here's my phillosophy on the subject. Worth mentioning is that this philosophy has its ground in the north of Sweden.

1300-1600, villages start to appear around shore lines, gatering places and hills.

This is because of the gracing possibiliies that is around shores and the possibilities for trade. Gathering places are church villages, villages that have a church with small cottages that are used for trade and for the central goverment to claim the trade that is used in the area. It is in this time frame that agiculture is made permanent, before that agiculture was if used as small plots in the forest.

1700-1800 Villages with agiculture, new settlements, fishing, farms, villages are used for a purpose (fishing, agiculture, etc). grids.

Now settlements that ware temporary were made permanent.Villages were also abuilt with a purpose at hand, for instantace fishing, transport, agiculture. There is also settlements built by settlers coming from other places in the region. Agiculture is now established and good soils are at hand, gracing has now alseo meant that land can be fertilized by livestock. Cities are expanding and grids are being used. Grids were established in the 1600's when cities had plans for expansions.There is also industries coming to life with early establishments for instance ore are being shipped from point A, mine to point B where the blastfurnace is.

1800-1900 Industrialisation, railways, towns, forrestry, wide streets, grand houses in perticular firestations and markethalls, regiments.

Railways with their villages established are being built. towns are expanding, industrialisation are now in full swing, this means that sawmills, mines, factories are being built. Strategic places, ares with strategic importance are built with a regiment for protection. Now a reform of agiculture is implemented called lagaskifte.This means that instead of farmers having to walk across each others fields the fields are merged. This with the result that the villages became split this because the farmers soil became merged but spread out.

1900-1930 Hills are being built apon, artsy block, garden town, functionalism.

As the towns are expanding, hills are being built upon. This might be confusion considering due the fact that early towns are being built upon hills. The difference is that here hilly areas that are being built upon rather than a hill upon it self if that makes sense. Satelites are being built, this is a precursor to the suburbs. These areas are what we call garden towns due to the fact that they are conformed to the terrain meaning that they have streets that are ”soft”, following the terrain. The houses are either villas or rowhouses. They can have a church, small square and some shops. Functionalism means that there is a separation of industrial, commercial, and residental and nature.

1930-1950

3-4 stories multifamily homes, functionalism and community areas. This means that multifamily homes that are comprised of 3-4 stories that are being built, see commie block. Community areas mean that areas that are made to be self sufficient. This is a precoursor of the millionprogram areas. This is eqvilament to suburbs without commieblocks. ABC is also prevalent, this means that the towns or areas built during this time are being built with workspaces furtherst out from the center of the towns community area. Then one family homes, then multifamily homes and a city function.

1960-1975 Suburbs, SCAFT and demolition of old houses.

SCAFT means that we have suburbs built around a green core meaning either a forrest patch or a park. A SCAFT area is built so there is a ringroad surronding the development from whom there are streets in the direction of the centre of the area. SCAFT also meant that there is a separation of traffic, pedestrians and cars for instance. Then there is demolitions that occured during this epoc. This was because of in part of making cities built for cars but also for modernisation purposes. This was accomplished through cityplans.

1975- Erskine, small-scale residential areas, citydevelopment areas, sustainability.

Now buildings were and are built with the terrain in mind. There is also repurposnes and gentrification. An example of this is industrialareas being demolished for projects like “Hammarby Sjöstad” or Hammarby seatown. There are also small scale projects either ine small scale house areas or at a demolition property.
 

Now for infrastructure (if your still reading this)

Roads

1300 – Paths who are being built by using the terrain as a guide.

1300- 1900 Paths being transformed into narrow streets.

1800 – Ferries starts to appear along the shoreline, this means that if an area is to faraway build a ferry route istead of a street/road.

1900-1950 Streets/roads are being bult using straight lines instead of terrain considerations.

1950- Énvironmental considerations are now used as a guideline in laying out streets/roads.

1950- Increase in roadtraffic

1960-1970 The car now has an impackt in cityplanning in part of streets getting wider or interchanges and parkinghouses.

1980-Walkingstreets as the cars are being phased out in consideration when planning a city.

Railways

1850-1870 Limited use of STR.

1870-1900 Explosion of STR lines and limited lines converted to DTR.

1900-1950 Electrification starts around 1930. And some newbuilding.

1950-1990 Improvement of certain lines, newbuilding, Automatic distance controll, higher speed, Some lines are being closed due to the cars influenc

1990-Improvments continues to be built, regional and local trains are being established, motorcarriges replacing passenger trains with a separate engine.

I hope this is helping someone (if anyone read it in full that is). I intend to build my new region in accordance with this philosopy. This because i felt that my region was unrealistic considering it was built around a railway and big town first instead of natur growth.

[Daeris 1,116]

@Oidaas Thanks so much for your contribution to the thread. That's some really useful information, and I'm sure I'll glance back at it while I further develop my region. I'm eager to see your new region using this method as well, so please share more as you proceed. 

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

18 hours ago, Oidaas said:

I hope this is helping someone (if anyone read it in full that is).

Yes indeed! I found that very helpful and I did read it in full.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,109]

One thing I certainly find limiting is the power requirement that @Oidaas mentioned.

This forces most of us to, sort of, start our cities during the Industrial Revolution. This narrows the town estabilishment time frame down considerably and is not entirely "natural".

I think this is an important consideration for cities like @Daeris' which are clearly set in the times when electricity has not yet been discovered.  Easily worked around with the power cheat though...

[Daeris 1,116]

I personally love using this for all my early power needs: https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=485

This allows me to kinda have some head-canon that electricity isn't needed yet, and "power" is more like other early resources needed (like kinetic power of some kind, from mills). Later in time, power will actually mean electricity.

[Morgan R 156]

4 hours ago, Daeris said:

I personally love using this for all my early power needs: https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=485

This allows me to kinda have some head-canon that electricity isn't needed yet, and "power" is more like other early resources needed (like kinetic power of some kind, from mills). Later in time, power will actually mean electricity.

Another idea I haven't seen mentioned yet: While the earliest electric power stations date to ca. 1880, there had for decades in industrialized cities of any decent size already been another public utility that provided residents with power distributed from a central plant, with its own side-effect of pollution: a municipal gasworks. While piped underground, in most respects it functioned just like the power plants in the game do, powering the streetlights and lamps in houses and businesses, and later stoves and heat sources. These works functioned into the mid-20th century, by which point the exploitation of natural gas and the ability to store and transport gas in a compressed or liquefied form meant the pollution-heavy gasification plants and enormous gasometers were mostly obsolete.

As BATs to that effect have already been done, all that needs to be done is a bit of period-correct lotting, and stats such that a gasworks could power a small city. In the meantime, here are the closest I have found that already does this to some extent:

Likewise, while its stats have it as acting as a commercial landmark following adaptive reuse, this BAT is just waiting to be re-lotted into a large gasworks:

There are also a few other gasholders floating around in the various industrial prop packs, which could be used to round out the lots or serve as the main structures for much smaller works.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,109]

Just now, Morgan R said:

While the earliest electric power stations date to ca. 1880, for decades in industrialized cities of any decent size there already had been another public utility that provided residents with power distributed from a central plant, with its own side-effect of pollution: a municipal gasworks.

D'oh! How come I didn't come up with this! 

Indeed! Lots of European cities are replete with examples of "gasometers"! One of the most known is located in Vienna. There are more of course in London, Warsaw, Saint Petersburg and lots of other cities!

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

On the subject of gasometers, here's a cool short video I found about them:
 

Also the link to that old BBC article is here.

[Oidaas 1,696]

13 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

One thing I certainly find limiting is the power requirement that @Oidaas mentioned.

This forces most of us to, sort of, start our cities during the Industrial Revolution. This narrows the town estabilishment time frame down considerably and is not entirely "natural".

I think this is an important consideration for cities like @Daeris' which are clearly set in the times when electricity has not yet been discovered.  Easily worked around with the power cheat though...

Powerplants as you rightfully pointed out didn't exist untill 1800. However a solution to that problem is either by the powercheat. I've been thinking about this problem thought, water is pretty easy to work around, make a lot with a well or modifying 3rr rapids. Power if a though one, an argument for the power cheat is that the homes were self suffient with heat from fireplaces. How to solve this without that assumption then, hard question perharps with Daeris suggestion of kinetic power.

The reason i've decided to start this philosophy in the 1200's is because alot of the villages near my hometown were founded the. Another reason is that it was the start of a more firm sociaty in the sense of villages and such, before that the society was a hunter gatherer society. Of course one can argue that the start of a resident society in the north of Sweden was during the Viking age 700-1100 ac.

So to conclude the reason for a start in 1200 ac is because of a more residental living.

A md i've taken a lot of inspiration from is Andau 2000 years of history by Kwakelaar.

https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=8812.0 

Anyway hope this explains it.

[Morgan R 156]

On a different note, here is a question I am having about a natural growth method in SC4.

Suppose I want build an archetypical city in the USA, and proceed to build up and out a sizeable urban core (in the fashion of the 19th and early 20th centuries). Suppose around the hypothetical "Year 1950", I then wanted to build large swaths of suburban sprawl to recreate the post-war building boom.

The way I am reading the forum posts regarding stage limits (mainly this one here) , it appears that it may reach a point where I could zone for all the low-density residential sprawl I wanted, but even with all the demand in the simworld, it would never develop a single house because the stage limit percentages for growth stages 1/2/3 were already maxed out from growth of the original city core. Is this a correct interpretation of how stage limits affect the developers? Have I been misreading what I have been able to glean? Or are those levels so inordinately high I will never have to worry about them even in a large region?

Most of the prior threads I found involved people complaining about having trouble getting skyscrapers, but I am wondering if it is possible to build a city like DC-Northern Virginia, with its endless suburban tract housing and apartments? Or might it require modding the growth developer files to produce this kind of city?

[Daeris 1,116]

On 11/29/2020 at 12:13 AM, Naomi57 said:

Hi @Naomi57, do you know what marina/dock lot that is? I did a little searching but couldn't locate it. I like the minimalistic nature of it!  It would be good in some of my smaller villages.

[rsc204 21,866]

On 28/01/2021 at 2:11 AM, Morgan R said:

The way I am reading the forum posts regarding stage limits (mainly this one here) , it appears that it may reach a point where I could zone for all the low-density residential sprawl I wanted, but even with all the demand in the simworld, it would never develop a single house because the stage limit percentages for growth stages 1/2/3 were already maxed out from growth of the original city core. Is this a correct interpretation of how stage limits affect the developers? Have I been misreading what I have been able to glean? Or are those levels so inordinately high I will never have to worry about them even in a large region?

Most of the prior threads I found involved people complaining about having trouble getting skyscrapers, but I am wondering if it is possible to build a city like DC-Northern Virginia, with its endless suburban tract housing and apartments? Or might it require modding the growth developer files to produce this kind of city?

My understanding is that the stage limits represent the maximum % of a given growth stage, based on population. In other words it's the opposite of what you are thinking, you can only have x % of the larger buildings, but that shouldn't stop lower ones growing in their place.

Likewise an endless sprawl doesn't pose any problems I'm aware of, so long as you keep the R/C/I balance in check, you should be fine. If we assume you'd be mostly sticking with farms, it would help to have a mod that gives them more jobs, because by default it's very few per farm. Other difficulties arise when you want utilities to handle larger radii, whilst not costing more than your more limited population can support, due to its low density. All of this can be modded around, for the most part things probably already exist. It really comes down to how much effort you are willing to put it.

For an extreme example, take a look at Ærden over on SC4D by Vortext, it shows how you can just ignore the way the game was designed completely and do your own thing. But this would have been countless hours of work to achieve. ^{I do hope at the least, he's still playing from time to time, it would be a shame to think that all ended abruptly after all the effort he put into it.}

[Naomi57 2,985]

5 hours ago, Daeris said:

On 29/11/2020 at 4:13 PM, Naomi57 said:

Hi @Naomi57, do you know what marina/dock lot that is? I did a little searching but couldn't locate it. I like the minimalistic nature of it!  It would be good in some of my smaller villages.

Hi @Daeris, that's actually just the Maxis vanilla Marina, accessed on the Water Transportation menu, next to the Ferries and Seaports.  You might need Ctrl+X  you don't deserve it , to unlock it.  Be warned, however, that the vanilla Marina costs §90/month, and increases R$$$ rich sim caps.  You might need to increase your R$$$ tax rate a little, if you want to avoid your city getting swamped by too many R$$$ sim residents.

The vanilla Marina brings hang gliders to your city, too.  I really love the hang gliders  ... but some people hate them so much that someone made a hang glider automata remover mod!

One curious feature of the vanilla Marina, is that it employs 12 to 334 sims.  That's enough traffic to prime a back street with customers for some successful little shops.  

[Daeris 1,116]

2 minutes ago, Naomi57 said:

Hi @Daeris, that's actually just the Maxis vanilla Marina, accessed on the Water Transportation menu, next to the Ferries and Seaports

Omg I feel so silly, I always thought the standard marina was bigger than that. Oh sheesh, thanks! 

[Naomi57 2,985]

2 minutes ago, Daeris said:

Omg I feel so silly, I always thought the standard marina was bigger than that. Oh sheesh, thanks! 

The combination of close up, plus the natural setting with trees, horses, SAM-1 and SAM-6, does alter the look quite a bit!  

[rsc204 21,866]

6 minutes ago, Naomi57 said:

but some people hate them so much that someone made a hang glider automata remover mod!

Really, I had to add the generator to a custom lot because I stopped using the Maxis one.

8 minutes ago, Daeris said:

Omg I feel so silly, I always thought the standard marina was bigger than that. Oh sheesh, thanks! 

Don't, I just had to open my game to check, then quickly realised it REALLY was the Maxis Marina. That little Parking Lot/SAM-1 end is what threw me off!

[Naomi57 2,985]

3 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

Really, I had to add the generator to a custom lot because I stopped using the Maxis one.

In preparation for (eventually) doing a landlocked city, is your hang glider automata generator on the STEX somewhere?

[Kloudkicker 4,565]

2 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

In preparation for (eventually) doing a landlocked city, is your hang glider automata generator on the STEX somewhere?

I found this has one a lot that says it has an extra file for generating hang gliders.

Also there is this lot I haven't had a chance to plop yet, but looked cool enough to DL. Don't know if it generates any automata, but could use both lots if not. Or wait for rsc204 to reply.

 

[rsc204 21,866]

8 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

In preparation for (eventually) doing a landlocked city, is your hang glider automata generator on the STEX somewhere?

I say "generator", it's simply an effect or Prop you add to a lot. I just chucked mine onto one of the Pegasus waterfront lots I think, so when I use that content, my gliders come back. It's a few seconds work to copy/paste such a prop between lots, if you had a specific lot that you'd want it on, I could do that for you. Otherwise I could just stick it on a 1x1 neutral lot with or without a texture?

6 hours ago, Kloudkicker said:

I found this has one a lot that says it has an extra file for generating hang gliders.

Yes, I use many of Fanta's excellent automata overrides including this one, highly recommended.

[Oidaas 1,696]

WARNING Pictureheavy post

An example of an older village from the period 1300-1600 ish note the water at the left, that was an old seaway to the oldest part of town.

1300-1990 This is an example of how an village can evolve with time. Older part of the village is the green marked area is the older part of town. The pink area is the area used for farming and gracing early on. The red area is the expansion that happened in the period 1975-1990. The yellow area is the old route, called "kustlandsvägen"

1300-1600. This an example of a churchtown. In the middle of the picture you see the old church, in this case built 1300 ac. The smaller structures surrounding the curch is small huts used for sleeping when attending mass.

1600- This is an example of an gridded city. Originaly the city had streets more in line with the above example. We see here in red an are built in the 1960-1970. In yellow we see the old administrative structures when this city became the capital of the region in 1800's. The green are is the blocks near the church and is the oldest area of the city. In blue we se an area constructed in 1980 as an repurposing of the oldr docks located there. In brown we see and area comprised of older buildings moved there in th 1980's to make and old town area

1800's This is an area of the same city were the workers lived next to the industry and the old harbour (not seen in this picture).

1700-1800 This is an example of two villages. The one to the right is the older village founded in the 1700's. The one to the left was founded when the railway was constructed. Notice how the younger railway villages have a gridded structure opposed to the older village at the right.

1910-1930, This is an example of an garden town. See how the streets are oriented, blocks the are formed in accordance with nature.

1880-1970 This is an example of how an town are structured in whole. The red areas are the company areas, built by the mining company. The blue area is the cityplanned area as opposed to the red areas whitch were planned by the company. the are to the bottom right is a garden town. Te brown area is the city center with school, shops and oldfolks home. Next to it we see the an area reconstructed in the 60's. The planned area is with some exeptions built within a grid.

1940-1950 Returning to the same city i showed earlier.This is an area known as ABC area. A stand for work, B residental and C Center area. In blue we see the center area, with shops somehighrise houses and community school and a church. In yellow we see the recreational area. In green and brown we see the residental areas, the one in brown are one family homes and green multifamily housing.

1970- This is an example of how new areas are built with an example of SCAFT. The red area was built 1970-1990. We see how streets are branching out from the main road.We see how single family homes are built in the fringes of the area and the multifamily houses are built closer to the road. In the middle of the area we see the centre area, with school, shops and recreational area. The pink area is an suburbb being built, we see how the single family homes are branched out from the main road. Also to note is how the streets are being laid out, no grid more like the garden town. In green we see the older part of the village built in the period 1300-1800. In orange we see the recreational homes built in the 1940's.

With this i hope i provided some inspiration to draw from.

 

[Daeris 1,116]

2 hours ago, Oidaas said:

With this i hope i provided some inspiration to draw from.

Very much so; such an inspiring post. Thank you for more contribution.

[Ardelia 30]

This turned into a novel of a history lesson
..my apologies, but I felt like some context would be helpful for the game-implication takeaways at the end.

One aspect of road development and upgrade I haven't seen discussed (and my apologies if I missed it) is that historically, the primary driver of settlement-to-settlement road improvement has been military, not civil or commercial. ..and that leads to very different models when comparing Europe, the American East Coast, and the United States west of the Appalachians. It really wasn't until the mid 20th century that civil and commercial use became the primary driver of road development.

The European model often saw paving and upgrading of inter-city roads fairly early, but only in periods with a strong and stable enough government structure to support it. the Roman highway network is a great example. A more modern example is the British introduction of "metalled" (tarmac) roads between England and Scotland as early at the 18th century. These varied on whether they followed existing, terrain-observant paths or whether they cut straighter. The Roman system was often an example of the latter...so much so that there are examples of the military road routes driving settlement formation, rather than the other way around. You can find echoes of that in the later development of carriage houses and the settlements that developed around them.

The Eastern US largely developed on the European model, but there were some odd quirks. Settlements were more planned and less organic, as European settlers took advantage of what was, to them at least, a blank slate. At the same time, while strong central governments that could plan and finance road networks certainly existed at this point, colonies were investments first and foremost, and most Eurpoean colonial powers didn't want to dedicate that kind of capital to their colonies. Adding to that phenomenon was the fact that the colonies all shared a common seaboard, coastal travel was faster and safer, and the majority of early (non-slave) American settlers were Anglo or Celtic in origin, with a strong maritime tradition. The result of all that is that as of the War of 1812, the Eastern American road network was pretty garbage.

The Western US (here, "Western"  means west of the Appalachians, and especially the Louisiana Purchase) is an entirely different animal, involving a truly unique (historically) degree of non-organic planning, dictated largely by the expansion of the American rail network.

Settlements that were founded before the rail network expanded to that location were almost invariably set up according to the location of military installations...the fact that the US Army was organized around existing rivers (e.g. the "Department of the Platte") helped here. A quirk of most mid-size towns and cities in the Missouri Valley is that nearly all of them have a Military Road...a broad, well-paved road that runs almost the entire length of the original city boundaries because it connected the original areas of settlement, and was later integrated into the formal state highway system.

As the railroad network expanded, the Army leveraged it for most of their troop movement and supply activities. This changed road layout to largely spur roads connecting areas of interest to the nearest rail line...and settlement again followed. A consequence here is that some settlements that were geographically quite close together didn't have road connections to each other at all if they happened to be located closer to different rail mainlines. This was one of the flaws the Eisenhower Interstate System later tried to fix.

GAME IMPLICATIONS

The takeaway here is that playing for organic growth means EITHER consciously deciding both what region and historical timeframe you want to emulate, OR realizing that historical examples like early maps and plots of your area may not be a helpful model.

For example, you'd mentioned a couple times that you live in the northern Midwest. If you want to emulate the settlement of that region, you'll be looking at a pretty large degree of planning, probably tied to a rail system. Most Midwestern cities are grid-based (I live in Omaha, and grew up in Northern Iowa) as a function of when and why they were settled. 

Also, since the game doesn't model either macro government policy or military concerns, if you do want to emulate a particular region and timeframe, you may want to role-play those items out in your head to help inform your decisions on things like road upgrading and placement.

Alternatively, if you feel like that kind of planning is too contrary to the organic growth model you're looking for, you'd chuck both of those ideas, and just go with what the game dictates. In that case, your road and street setup probably isn't going to look much like early maps and planning documents for your area.

I'm not advocating either approach, and of course they can be combined for whatever results are the most fun for your playthrough. I just got the impression that road network development was something you wanted to logically make sense, and that model is both highly variable depending on where and when you're trying to model, and might not be as organic as what you want.

[Propfam 2,306]

On 8/3/2021 at 2:42 AM, Ardelia said:

This turned into a novel of a history lesson
..my apologies, but I felt like some context would be helpful for the game-implication takeaways at the end.

One aspect of road development and upgrade I haven't seen discussed (and my apologies if I missed it) is that historically, the primary driver of settlement-to-settlement road improvement has been military, not civil or commercial. ..and that leads to very different models when comparing Europe, the American East Coast, and the United States west of the Appalachians. It really wasn't until the mid 20th century that civil and commercial use became the primary driver of road development.

The European model often saw paving and upgrading of inter-city roads fairly early, but only in periods with a strong and stable enough government structure to support it. the Roman highway network is a great example. A more modern example is the British introduction of "metalled" (tarmac) roads between England and Scotland as early at the 18th century. These varied on whether they followed existing, terrain-observant paths or whether they cut straighter. The Roman system was often an example of the latter...so much so that there are examples of the military road routes driving settlement formation, rather than the other way around. You can find echoes of that in the later development of carriage houses and the settlements that developed around them.

The Eastern US largely developed on the European model, but there were some odd quirks. Settlements were more planned and less organic, as European settlers took advantage of what was, to them at least, a blank slate. At the same time, while strong central governments that could plan and finance road networks certainly existed at this point, colonies were investments first and foremost, and most Eurpoean colonial powers didn't want to dedicate that kind of capital to their colonies. Adding to that phenomenon was the fact that the colonies all shared a common seaboard, coastal travel was faster and safer, and the majority of early (non-slave) American settlers were Anglo or Celtic in origin, with a strong maritime tradition. The result of all that is that as of the War of 1812, the Eastern American road network was pretty garbage.

The Western US (here, "Western"  means west of the Appalachians, and especially the Louisiana Purchase) is an entirely different animal, involving a truly unique (historically) degree of non-organic planning, dictated largely by the expansion of the American rail network.

Settlements that were founded before the rail network expanded to that location were almost invariably set up according to the location of military installations...the fact that the US Army was organized around existing rivers (e.g. the "Department of the Platte") helped here. A quirk of most mid-size towns and cities in the Missouri Valley is that nearly all of them have a Military Road...a broad, well-paved road that runs almost the entire length of the original city boundaries because it connected the original areas of settlement, and was later integrated into the formal state highway system.

As the railroad network expanded, the Army leveraged it for most of their troop movement and supply activities. This changed road layout to largely spur roads connecting areas of interest to the nearest rail line...and settlement again followed. A consequence here is that some settlements that were geographically quite close together didn't have road connections to each other at all if they happened to be located closer to different rail mainlines. This was one of the flaws the Eisenhower Interstate System later tried to fix.

GAME IMPLICATIONS

The takeaway here is that playing for organic growth means EITHER consciously deciding both what region and historical timeframe you want to emulate, OR realizing that historical examples like early maps and plots of your area may not be a helpful model.

For example, you'd mentioned a couple times that you live in the northern Midwest. If you want to emulate the settlement of that region, you'll be looking at a pretty large degree of planning, probably tied to a rail system. Most Midwestern cities are grid-based (I live in Omaha, and grew up in Northern Iowa) as a function of when and why they were settled. 

Also, since the game doesn't model either macro government policy or military concerns, if you do want to emulate a particular region and timeframe, you may want to role-play those items out in your head to help inform your decisions on things like road upgrading and placement.

Alternatively, if you feel like that kind of planning is too contrary to the organic growth model you're looking for, you'd chuck both of those ideas, and just go with what the game dictates. In that case, your road and street setup probably isn't going to look much like early maps and planning documents for your area.

I'm not advocating either approach, and of course they can be combined for whatever results are the most fun for your playthrough. I just got the impression that road network development was something you wanted to logically make sense, and that model is both highly variable depending on where and when you're trying to model, and might not be as organic as what you want.

The Roman highway was arguably as important as the Interstate in the past. All roads are into Rome, indeed.

[topmintone 5]

I think brick paved roads were arriving in the wealthiest places also around 1900 or so, and in 1956 the interstate system was commenced (and technically not finalized until 2018). As of 2008, about 67% of US roads were paved. Again, how I translate these figures into the game I'm still unsure. I basically only want to provide upgraded roads and utilities/services when the city needs it and when it makes the most sense to do so.  vidmate insta save 

[younghappy 308]

Enjoyed reading through this topic.  I'll add a few examples to the mix that I have seen here in Ireland.

In this first example, we have the Finvoy Road. What you are seeing here is the original road and the modern realigned road bisecting it (yes that is a solar farm that you can see in the bottom left, believe it or not!):

The original road had more bends.  It was built centuries ago, long before there were motor vehicles.  It would have connected little hamlets, farms, churches etc, and the bends were maybe there to avoid going over a small hill, to avoid a bog or a stream or whatever.  The original road probably wasn't centrally planned, maybe there were just little farmers lanes that eventually all linked up.

But at some point in the mid 20th century when cars had become more common, the govt set about improving the road network. By this stage they had access to heavy machinery like bulldozers and mechanically quarried stone, so the terrain was less of an issue.  Hills could be removed, lower stretches could be filled with stone.

So they set about building a new road. For the most part, they kept to the original route, but at this particular section, you see where they have made the road straighter.  What is nice is that you can still see the original route, and  people have built houses in these little loops so that their driveway is not directly onto the fast and busy main road.

Road traffic can travel at a consistent speed, without having to go round sharp corners, or avoid zooooming too close to the older houses, churches, schools and farms along the route.

Another example: The Armagh road. Upgraded to an A road in the 20th century. Here you can see that the road has been straightened slightly. The small stretch of abandoned old road has been claimed by a scrap metal company, so they have a really long yard here, pretty useful for them to have a pre existing paved area like this, with good transport access to the whole country.  

So basically what point I'm trying to make it that if you are following a natural growth approach and you get to the point where you want to make a modern road network.  Before, you go bulldozing all of your old roads, think about what happens in real life, where old roads are kept and have value, and are thus repurposed in some way.

With more recent road upgrades in Ireland, it has become unfeasible to widen the existing roads because so many houses are built along the route, so they have had to resort to building entirely new roads that run parallel to the old ones, that way you can avoid having to destroy so many houses and gardens.

V I can't seem to get rid of this picture below ^^

  Edited March 24, 2021 by Cyclone Boom  
Fixed duplicate pic.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

8 minutes ago, younghappy said:

I can't seem to get rid of this picture below

Nice post, and I've fixed it for you!

This is a bit of a goof with the post editor as it needs the trash can icon clicking to delete it. Otherwise it gets re-added again when not otherwise inserted.

[zahrul3 472]

I am starting to wonder if Cities Skylines players could also play like this as well; from various YouTube videos, Reddit posters and the few that actually post here, it seems they ignore natural growth mindsets completely when building a city and go against game mechanics that (in theory) should encourage that much more so than SC4 (esp. if they have Industries DLC installed).

[Daeris 1,116]

On 3/20/2021 at 3:03 AM, topmintone said:

Again, how I translate these figures into the game I'm still unsure. I basically only want to provide upgraded roads and utilities/services when the city needs it and when it makes the most sense to do so.

I do the same thing with my approach. I don't have a strict definitive rule per se, but basically what I do is I start out with the curvy & winding dirt streets, and I get all my villages set up first. Then when the traffic density starts to become a widespread problem, I'll begin to upgrade some sections to road. Then I sorta let the same thing occur... I let the roads develop up until traffic becomes a noticeable issue again, and then perhaps start laying down bigger highways and avenues. Eventually, when it's clear there are multiple bigger commercial hubs, I will begin considering the groundwork for an actual freeway that will connect all those bigger commercial hubs.

I am thinking I will start laying a rail system before actual roads develop, since this seems in line with the way the American West was built up. From what I know, it was mostly just paths and trails heading out west, until the rail industry boomed and connected many of the larger towns out there, linking the western frontier with the civilized cities of the East. Eventually the roads made their way out West, but not before the railroads.
 

@younghappy - Great post! I absolutely love how well the visuals you shared communicate your points.

 

On 3/24/2021 at 10:18 AM, zahrul3 said:

I am starting to wonder if Cities Skylines players could also play like this as well; from various YouTube videos, Reddit posters and the few that actually post here, it seems they ignore natural growth mindsets completely when building a city and go against game mechanics that (in theory) should encourage that much more so than SC4 (esp. if they have Industries DLC installed).

Interesting question. I haven't paid much attention to Cities Skylines in many years. I don't think it's a bad game, but it's definitely a different approach than SC4. To me, I tend to consider Cities Skylines more as a City Painter than a City Builder/Developer. The regions are pretty, and the buildings and transit networks are absolutely pretty, but to me they lack the realistic and "natural" character that can be captured with SC4. That's why I still consider SC4 the better game overall.... to me it really lends itself more to the Natural Growth playstyle, and therefore there's a greater sense of wonder when playing SC4. To me, SC4 regions take on a life of their own more than Cities Skylines regions, which makes sense if you consider what I said: That CS is more of a City Painter (the artist is in control), and SC4 is more of a City Builder/Developer/Simulation (you control it, but it takes on a life of its own). Just my take. I hope CS has released some mods to give it more character.

[zahrul3 472]

On 3/27/2021 at 1:31 AM, Daeris said:

That CS is more of a City Painter (the artist is in control), and SC4 is more of a City Builder/Developer/Simulation (you control it, but it takes on a life of its own). Just my take. I hope CS has released some mods to give it more character.

Without cheats and mods, Cities Skylines does ask the player to grow out a region naturally; there are also mods that improve upon this (ie. RealTime, Realistic Population, Realistic Consumption) and DLCs also encourage this (the Industries DLC comes to mind!). Facilities and further map expansion is supposed to be "unlocked" by achieving certain targets. Developing everything all at once will result in massive deathwaves. Likewise, CS has growth stages just like SC4

To play CS as a city painter, one has to basically turn off or completely ignore the game's core gameplay elements that isn't traffic related. 

I'd say the reason why CS players play the way they do; perhaps they don't want to demolish something they spent hours detailing for the sake of "natural growth". Perhaps its influenced by the fact that it attracted a different demographic from SC4; the community is dominated by those who never played any SimCity game (hence the relative lack of Cities Skylines content on Simtropolis despite its popularity), AKA people who started off playing games like SimCity 5, RCT3, Planet Coaster, and so on. 

[Oidaas 1,696]

This is from a region i decided to rebuild for realism sake. I've built farms around the rivers. This is because the rivers will fertilize the fields in case of floods, due to this i've decided to place the residental ares on higher ground. Now the region has around 4000 inhabitants i will continue this stratgy further inland.