Some Important Questions!

[Tennant 0]

 Some questtions I need answered by the experts like you

 

Skyscrapers/High Density Buildings

 

 Okay, I should say more specifically - getting a rich ($$$) city with High Wealth Office Commercial and High Wealth Residential (Dense) in a downtown area.

 I currently have a region with over 200,000 Sims, my biggest city according to everything I have read should have quite a few Huge Commerical Office Skyscrapers. Yet the highest I have is a Yates Insurance. I have a few nice, but not very high Residential towers too.

 

 Wait! Before you say Is your city watered?. Duh. My city is watered. I have a highly educated work force (180+), 110, 000 people in this city. 53,000 Commercial Jobs. And Commercial zones near many residential zones.

 

 Yes! Crime is LOW. Pollution is LOW! (I have a small Industrial Sector almost all of which is High Tech). I have all of the Commercial Rewards, the Tourism Ordiance, A medium sized airport, and high land value.  Oh! And I have almost perfect helathcare. Low pollution. The whole deal. In Simcity 2 or 3 I would have many skyscrapers - both Residential and Commercial. I have high wealth citizens all over the place.

 

 The ONLY thing I am noticing is Low Customers in most areas. But from what I have read and searched on this site, that usually doesn't effect things too much. (Am I wrong?)

 

 I understand this city may be beyond salvagable, so my idea now is to start fresh - How can I make this idea work. I want a densely packed city (The one I talked about is all High Density). How can I make this work?  I understand this question has been asked 100's of times and I have searched and found broken answers with things like Are your buildings watered?. Of course they are. JHC. Can someone give me a HUGE list of things that WILL LEAD TO CO$$$ DEVELOPMENT? R$$$ HIGH RISE DEVELOPMENT?

 

 Railroads and Parking Garages - How to make them work?

 

Okay. So I place Railroad Stations near Residential and Business/Industrial areas and they are used at most to 25% capacity! No one uses them! Why? Parking Garages are even worse - YES! I do have the NAM. They are still not working. I know wealthy sims will not take busses but If you put a parking garage beside a Train Station(how close does it have to be??) should they not park and take the trains? How many train stations do I need in Residential Areas and Commercial Areas?? Please help me! (Yes... my train stations are watered LOL)

 

 Commuters: None

 

 What? But the building right next to it has 25 commuters? How come some houses are listed as having commuters while others have (none)? Same with businesss Workers: none

 How many glitches are in this game? How come some buildings have no workers (thus no routes for me to see how people are getting there!) but when I query them it says they have many workers??

 

 I would love to search and look up MORE AND MORE AND MORE responses to these stupid probably overasked questions, but for some reason this forum goes REEEEAAAAALLLLY slow on my computer, so if someone can just help me out here with asnwers... full answers please... it would be greatly and utterly appreciated! PLEEEASE!

 

 

 

 

 

[Prophet42 1,500]

How is your public transportation system.  You mentions parking garages and railstations.  Do you have a subway, El-Train and bus stops in you city.  You should place several kinds of transportation stops close to each other.  Place bus stops near your parking garages and train stations.  I often find that after I place several kinds of transportation stops in an area it will redevelope into higher density buildings.

Another suggestion to get the higher density skyscrapers is to place large plaza's around the downtown area.  Large commercial buildings seem to be attracted to the plaza's.  Good luck.

[Tennant 0]

 I place a bus stop near every Rail station and I have Bus stops every 3 streets/roads or so. I have lots of bus stops in my city so it can't be that.

 However, I have no elevated train, no monorail, and no subways... would this really make a difference? How many stops/stations should I put for these following systems? Are elevated rails the same as normal rail stations except with elevated stations? Should I have Subway stops in the same density as bus stops? How about Monorails?

 

 I do not have many Large Plaza's downtown... I would place parks/Playgrounds - any of the green things - in areas to make certain places look greener. Is it true (I just heard this) that placing Playgrounds, Basketball Courts, FlowerGardens, Parks, ect in COMMERCIAL Areas do nothing for the land value? That they will only take note to Plaza's, where as Residential areas are the opposite?

 

 I will have to try placing more Plaza's and using more types of transportation! Any other tips! I really need them!!!! This will help me but I need more tips! MORE!

 

 How come my education rate is climbing incredibly slow in one city despite having many education facilities and high funding! I have even looked at the EDUCATION BY AGE and I have enough for the population? Any pointers on that(I have the main library and university and even a Reading Ordinance!)

[Peorth 17]

Okay, I'm really not an expert in the game but here are some of my thoughts:

First of all, SC4/RH is tougher than the any of the older incarnations of the game. This time, it is harder to get skyscrapers, among other things.

Second, I won't discuss here things like... water , and I'll skip discussions for more obvious things like education, parks, etc., maybe for later.

POPULATION
Getting skyscrapers is basically a function of demand. Whenever R/C/I demand rises, the simulator grows a particular building appropriate to the demand. Thus if your R$$ demand bar is hitting 6000, a Zaidi Apartments (which holds a maximum of 4603 R$$ sims) might suddenly sprout. The easiest way to achieve the demands necessary for skyscraper growth is to simply build you population greatly. Two-hundred thousand in a region isn't very large at all; in fact you can fit that in a third of a medium map or less. I would suggest that you start building your population in the range of a million or more. That way you can see the uber-skyscrapers like the Calahane Communications or the Pedriana Pharmaceuticals sprouting.

TRAFFIC
Everybody knows that R's hate traffic (traffic noise) while C's love it. While traffic is not a really a prerequisite to forming skyscrapers, it can accelerate their formation significantly. Zone in areas of high traffic to accelerate your skyscraper growth. However, NEVER try to create traffic/congestion just to help your C's along, as it will ultimately be deterimental in the long run.

Advanced topic: Traffic funneling
The point of this is to try controlling the flow of traffic and utilizing it for C growth. The simplest way would be to create areas of R and I and connecting the two with some high-capacity method like avenues and/or highways. You should then flank the connection with C zones. Something like this:

RR CCCCC I I I
RR ----------- I I I
RR CCCCC I I I

Needless to say, this works on the concept of isolating R/C/I's into areas or islands, as opposed to distributed zoning wherein RCI's are scattered about. One way to go about this is something like below:

[city 1] | [city 2]
RRRR CCC |CCC IIII
RRRR ===|== IIII
RRRR C CC|CCC IIII
|
| <- city border

and = is some high-capacity transport. This INTER-city design (as opposed to intra) takes advantage of several facts, namely 1) cross-city traffic is much easier to predict because sims can only cross borders via the routes you provide them 2) it takes into account the common practice of connecting neighbors to share demand and help growth. I've experimented with this concept on a small scale, wherein C's were flanking avenues with heavy traffic (around 2-3k or more) and I noticed that skyscraper growth was significantly accelerated in these areas.

SPECIALIZED CITIES
This is also one of ongoing my experiments concurrent with traffic funneling. The main point with this is trying to concentrate the upper wealth sims in a single city while getting most of the R$'s from neighbors. The idea is that the rich sims are very near to the C zones, thus spurring their growth. Basic idea:

[city 1] | [city 2]
| R$$$
R$ ---------> CCCC
| R$$

Getting the R$'s out of the city is basically to assure that bulk of the R zones will only develop R$$/R$$$'s. So far, the results have been encouraging. I have virtually no distress and skyscrapers have been popping up in shorter time than I've experienced before. Here's a breakdown of the wealth classes:



education:


Note the immense number of R$$'s compared to R$'s. (total city population is 96,927). The R$$$ seems on the low side but this is DELIBERATE, using a 9.5% tax rate, to prevent R$$$ dilapidation.

IMPORTANT CONCEPT
So why the few R$$$'s compared to R$$? The answer:
____\_Jobs Provided
Jobs_\R$___R$$__R$$$
CS$___100%_0%___0%
CS$$__68%__27%__5%
CS$$$_62%__30%__8%
CO$$__40%__50%__10%
CO$$$_20%__65%__15%
IA____100%_0%___0%
ID____100%_0%___0%
IM____50%__45%__5%
IH____10%__80%__10%

People often have mistaken notions that the ultimate city should be composed of mostly, if not all R$$$'s. This is farthest from the truth. The rich sims, as in REAL LIFE, should comprise the SMALLEST portion of your population. Even in an immensely successful corporation, there are only a few CEO's/division bosses (R$$$'s), many office workers (R$$), and a fair number of janitors, maintainance people, clerks (R$'s). That's what the chart above represents. A healthy city is one that contains just the correct proportion of wealth classes.

Thus, do not make the mistake of dropping your R$$$ taxes (e.g to 5%) to encourage R$$$ growth. This will only lead to an ARTIFICIAL demand in which excess R$$$'s move in, find no jobs, leave, and cause dilapidation. The way to create ACTUAL demand is to drop commercial taxes, causing the corporations and high-wealth services to move in, in turn creating a real demand for R$$'s and R$$$'s.

[Tennant 0]

 Not an expert? You fooled me!

 

I am going to try everything you said. If 200,000 isn't enough than that could be the reason. I am going to try your traffic funneling methods...

 

 and guess what the taxes are for my R$$$ - less than 5.0... and they get progressivley higher for the poorer R's... no wonder a few of my R$$$ are getting NO JOB things over thier buildings!

 

 How do I get that Jobs in CO$$, CS$$$ ect chart... the Demand for jobs in each $ level? You have it showing the population of poor/middle/rich sims... I have never seen it and it will definately help.

 

 How far apart should Commercial/Residential Zones be from Dirty Industry as to not get affected my pollution?  As I don't want my Commercial/Residential zones getting affected by the dirty Industrial zones I may have(I dont want ALL of my cities having High tech industry!)  One of my maps has Pure Red environment... I don't know why... I don't even have that much dirty industry... and I have been placing parks and trees regularily. I only have one power plant but the Environment is super low... and not rising...

 

 OHHH! And when you place a Zone... does it really matter how big the lots are. For example... When you place stuff in a 4 x 3 zone... Two boxes will appear facing one way that are 2x2, and then 4 1x1 zones will appear facing the other way(onto the streets along side the zone). Does this mean in those predesignated Zones, for the entire time im playing(unless I change them) will only 2x2 properties develop(as opposed to the old system where big buildings will just randomly sprout?

 

 I hope you get what I mean - does using Ctrl while Zoning make a BIG difference on whether I get big sky scrapers(so I can make 4x4 zones for them to develop?)

 

 Thanks! Keep giving me tips! I'm lovin it!

 

 

[Peorth 17]

Regarding the traffic method, if you extend it citywide you'll end up with a so-called commercial rim. Basically the rim of your city is made of entirely C zones that feed of between intercity traffic, which can become very heavy once high density buildings have sprouted on both sides. Note however that this idea requires some advanced planning since high-density C's can hold enormous number of jobs, e.g. 6000. The additional number of people commuting to the C's can be disastrous later on so you need to have contingency plans for mass transport.

Regarding pollution, one way to limit it is via a green belt. This is a band of densely-packed trees (God mode or planted) between I zones and your R/C zones. I generally keep that space to 6 tiles, not because it's effective but because I use it for future expansion (a 6 tile gap allows a highway with two parallel avenues). I discovered that 6 tiles is actually insufficient. I've read in some old experiments that the pollution in a power plant can be contained within a 12 tiles filled with trees only, but this is obviously impractical. Some approaches to pollution:

1. Break up your industrial zones in order to distribute pollution
2. Keep green belts in between zones. Parks will also work aside from trees.
3. Remember that I-D employs 100% R$'s which can live in polluted areas. So you shouldn't be overly concerned about it, unless you want to shift I-D to I-M and I-HT later.
4. You might want to place some C zones between your I and R areas, just to increase the gap (note that this is also a small scale traffic funneling). Of course nice buildings won't really sprout there, you'll probably end up with some Bob's Grease Pits
5. Get some pollution control buildings. There are a couple in the STEX which work very nicely.

Regarding zoning, remember that the simulator can fuse smaller lots but cannot make large lots smaller; meaning that four 1x1's can be consolidated into one 2x2, but not the reverse. Thus you should not zone with very large lots in the beginning.