How much time....... ?...

[SuperBeber 0]

'lo all,

I was wondering something : how much time on average do you spend for each stage : plan, build and fit out your cities ? Do you mix thoses stages ?...

Do you build a little city, and then when it grows build progressively all the embellishments, parks and others ?... Or do you plan and build all your parks, canals, trees... I mean all the embellishment and improvement, on all the city map before building your residential, commercial and industrial zones, and after, watch it grows ?...

thanks for your answers

[coolotter88 2]

my cities grow in chunks, i've always done it that way, i just arbitrarily draw out some roads, zone some zones, add water pipes and i'll just watch it grow. i add parks when i feel like it (which is usually never, lol)

[Dolfan348488 0]

If i put any sort of thought into it at all, ill spend about 3 hours just laying out roads and stuff.

[LordoftheWise 0]

My cities are all about planning. It takes me days/months to plan a city. I start by laying down the initial main arteries; highways and raillines. I also make a plan what kind of city/town I want; rural, big, suburban etc. I also layout waterways first; I either make them by terraforming the area or I plop canals. This way it is easy to establish your city/towns centre; it should be at a central location somewhere you would expect a city/town to be in real life; crosspoint of roads and rail or on the water/canalside.

 

Then I lay out parks and main sites such as churches, townhall, schools/university, etc. Then I make the city/towns business centre by laying out the main commercial district. From there I develope surrounding residential areas and from there it takes over *grin*.

 

The most important thing I find, is to keep with the initial plan of the kind of town; for example a small town has lots of streets, a few roads, little or no avenues and is often not very close to a highway. The buildings have lots of open space between them and all buildings are low-rise. The bigger the town/city the more roads/avenues and even highways and the higher the buildings and less open space. That's basicly it. Man I wrote a whole story on this topic. Sorry about that!

 

Greetz

Alexander

 

[Zugtroll 3]

Surely an interesting question, SuperBeber.

I can spend several days planning and creating a region. I name most of the cities, and then build the regional transportation network (Highways and Rails). In my naming of the cities I try to hint the planned purpose of the city. (Eg. Waston or Wasteland for garbage dumps, Harfleur, Silverbeach,Mountain Trail,Old Rail Works, and so on).

 

Then, with all major connections being planned, it's quite easy to imagine where the metropoles should be.

 

Still I try to make the zoning and development of each individual citiy as slowly as my patience allows, especially trying to keep the development of huge expensive parks out of head. Often shifting between three or four cities at a time.

 

Three bonmotes:

Better planning gives more room for improvisation.

It's a bad plan that can't be altered.

Failing to plan is planing to fail.  

Hmm... wise guy.

[Joe 90 358]

Date: 1/29/2006 4:53:40 PM Author: Zugtroll

Surely an interesting question, SuperBeber.

I can spend several days planning and creating a region. I name most of the cities, and then build the regional transportation network (Highways and Rails)...

 

What he said 

I've got a rather large spreadsheet for planning my region, which plots where main cross-regional roads and railways go (on a regional level only - I don't bother with city-level detail); where villages, towns and cities are (again, dot-on-a-map stuff - the dot is usually larger than the actual town); and a dump for names & ideas I might use in the future.

 

When it comes to building, the main transport network planned above comes first, with alterations to fit any localised features. Second comes the town and country. I build on a whim - any given city could be completely different based on my mood at the time. Parks etc are placed to achieve a certain look rather than for any functional purpose, so 'nice' areas get more parks, for instance.

Farming-based small city tiles with a small town can take as little as half an hour to fully develop, while a large city can take a week or two and 30-odd sim years on snail pace to get right. Mind you, my cities aren't exactly huge metropoli, I think the largest is just over 15k.

[simoplis_mayor 3]

i plan out almost everything in my cities like in my biggest city i planed out it was goingh to be with 2 miilon ppl in it i think that if you plan before you build it makes the city a bit better