Three Rivers Region

[Shadow Assassin 336]

So I'll conclude that the game engine does not "do" major RL city suburbia well (at least on its own, but that's a topic for a whole 'nother post).quote>

I know, it's just odd that a R$$ house, for example, has 14 people, when it should be less than half that, considering the average family has 2.2 kids [unfortunately, that's declining, I believe]. Not to mention the divorce rate, and extended families, etc.

Not again... your last Google Map post isn't showing either. Still maintain a conspiracy here... It's random, though. I see your problem, that's kinda... a little dense in freeways, though, that's more in part due to the way the game engine works, really... so obviously, you're inclined to fudge it a little to ensure it works...

So, what will you do about your little freeway problem: will you demolish a few freeways or completely rebuild the inner core of Three Rivers?

Waiting to see how you deal with it.

Or you could always compare it with LA

Cheers, --SA

[Nik-nik 3]

So I would guess less highways then?

I noticed S_A point and come to the conclusion that the average R$$ house has rabbits living (with 14 inhabitants) in it instead of people (average 4.2). The fact that you see those rabbits as sims in the game mearly underlines my theory that this world is dominated by rabbits in disguise. 

eeeeeeeehh what's up Doc (come to think of it it is only Monday the week has bearly begun...).

Nik-Nik

[jacqulina 162]

excellent work and pics david i do like your maps

[dedgren 830]

We're going to leave the Chicago area seeking some answers...

...but first I need to undertake a labor of love.  For those of you who will bear with me for a minute, you might gain some insight into the basis for my SC4 jones [ linkie ].

You now know, if you've followed 3RR for a while, that I love freeways, I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, I collected (and still have) a large number of roadmaps from the 1950s-70s, and I'm a really, really nice guy...

...no- the last can only be inferred...

...okay, so the very, very perceptive among you will know that I'm a really, really nice guy.  Whatever.  Anyway...

Let me put these things together for you a little bit more.

As a kid in the late 50s and early 60s, I felt pretty underprivileged.  Every summer most of my friends would take these great road trips.  My best friend Jay Rogers would always drive with his folks, for example, to Florida.  Other friends would hit the road and go to the east coast, or California, or to some big national park out west.  To add insult to injury, my grandparents (my mom's parents) would do the same thing.  Trips to Minneapolis some years and Seattle in the others (I had no idea at the time, of course, that my grandmother was going to clinics for yearly cancer treatments).  Always by car.  Always to somewhere that sounded incredibly wonderful.  Always to somewhere that I knew I'd never get to...

...because the only place my parents, brother and sister went to over those years was to Wisconsin.  To Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin [ linkie ], to be exact.  And we'd fish...

...fish, fish, fish, fish, fish...

...the whole week my dad had for vacation, then we'd drive home.  Oh, I'm exaggerating a little...one year we drove to the Boundary Waters area [ linkie ] in northern Minnesota...and fished.  Another year, we drove all the way to Manitoulin Island [ linkie ], in Ontario, Canada...and fished.  Or rather, my family all fished.  I only pretended to fish.  What I was really doing was thinking about the great time Jay was having driving back and forth all the way to Florida and while he was there.  And about California.  And Seattle.  And Maine.  And Yellowstone National Park.

And I'd ask my friends and my grandma and grandpa to bring me back one thing from their travels.  Road maps!  And they did.

I wound up with road maps of most every state, Canadian province and major North American city.  Road maps from oil companies, many now long gone, that I had never heard of:  Chevron, Esso, Sohio, Sunoco, Union 76, Utoco, as well as from some I had: Standard, Mobil, Cities Service, Enco, Shell, Texaco, Phillips 66.  I treasured every one of them.  I'd get a new trove from some returning traveler, and stay awake for hours at night with our family's "for emergencies" flashlight smuggled under my bedcovers tracing my fingers up and down those thin red and blue lines.  I'd marvel that many U.S. highways out west were still marked as gravel roads.  I'd plot the paths of the still mostly proposed Interstate Highway System and think, in the ignorance of youth, how great it would be not to have to drive through all those little towns or wind from here to there and back on roads that didn't seem to share my sense of urgency about getting from point "A" to point "B."  I traveled untold hundreds of thousands of miles in my head, and was a source of constant amazement to my parents, who just couldn't figure out why their nine year old child could give turn-by-turn directions to visitors to our home they were chatting with about a planned trip to Omaha.

And those journeys always started close to home...

...because within just a few miles of where I lived were some of what I considered to be the greatest roads in this country.

It all started with U.S. Route 6.  My lucky number, my favorite road of all.  The longest US highway: Provincetown, Massachusetts on the tip of Cape Cod [ linkie ] all the way to Long Beach, California (I never acknowledged the action of the California DOT in arbitraily chopping off the last few hundred miles and ignomiously  EDIT: ignominiously  (Woo Boy- missed that one!) terminating 6 at Bishop in 1964- they never asked me).  6 ran just a few miles south of where I lived.  I was convinced that I knew a better route through Illinois- one that would have taken it down Warren Avenue at the end of the block I lived on, but I was, again, only 8 or 9- nobody wanted my opinion about that, either.  Another thing that was great about 6 is that it was at the end of the block, runing on Ridge Road, from my maternal grandparents' home in Munster, Indiana.  So every few months I could just walk down the street, set foot on it (minding the traffic- the drivers of which I'm sure thought I was nuts), and be carried away to Cleveland, to Denver, to New Haven and Providence, and to L.A.  

Then there was U.S. , a few miles to the north and east of Downers Grove.  Running east, it took me to Detroit, and west to the wilds of Montana, and later (maybe in some Karmic swap for chopping off 6 at Bishop), on to the coast in Washington state, crossing Idaho along what I mistakenly then though to be "The River of No Return" I had seen once in a movie.  U.S. 12 was cool because it went through the Wisconsin Dells area [ linkie ], which I thought to be most definitely cool.  U.S. , also a few miles to the north and east, started in my very own (at least I considered it so) Chicago and wound up, having grazed the mysterious Devil's Tower [ linkie ] on the way, at Yellowstone Park [ linkie ].  U.S. , Lake Street, followed the course of 12 around the outskirts of Chicago.  It was the second, with 6 and U.S. 30, of the three coast-to-coast US highways running within a few miles of where I lived.  It would take me, to the east, to Toledo, and Erie, Pennsylvania, Albany, New York, a few miles north of where my daughter Liz would graduate from college about 40 years later (R.P.I., 2005), and wind up in Boston, where I imagined Paul Revere riding along its predecessor 200 years before.  West, 20 was what I imagined to be the quintessential great plains route- miles and miles of two lane, straight as an arrow, rising and falling over long low hills out into a distant sunset.  20 somehow survived being "killed" by its transit of Yellowstone (every other numbered highway goes in and, just like the Roach Motel [ linkie ], never comes out.  From there, on to the beautiful Oregon coast, where I pictured 20 arriving, still full of energy from its brash, direct trip across the country, and finally only stymied by the indescribably wide Pacific Ocean (I didn't see an ocean until I was in my 20s, and grew up with concept of the Great Lakes [ linkie ] as being vast beyond imagining).  Just a few miles to the south ran 20's even numbered companion, U.S. .  From Atlantic City, my concept of which was formed by the board game Monopoly [ linkie ], through Philadelphia, Pittburgh, and then across endless miles of midwest corn fields past my hometown and out to Omaha, 30 was only second to 6 in appeal to me.  It was the route my friends who went east for the summer said their dads swore by.  Plus, it had all sorts of alternates in the Chicago area, which I thought added somehow to its importance.  Once past Omaha, I imagined 30 as a sort of paved "Oregon Trail" [ linkie ], passing forts and indian villages and all sorts of other Westernalia on its way through Portland, Oregon to the Pacific coast at Astoria.  I was always bothered by the western ends of 30 and 20 getting switched (20 ends at Newport, Oregon, over 100 miles south of 30's western terminus), as 20 isn't supposed to run south of 30 under the US highway numbering scheme [ linkie ].  Once again, nobody asked me.  U.S.  was the route closest to home:  Ogden Avenue, a four lane road about four city blocks north of my house.  Pull on to Ogden and drive east to the foot of Buckingham Fountain [ linkie ] in Chicago, where I still remember the old "End 34-66" road sign, marking (what else) the common eastern terminus of 34 and U.S. 66, of which I will say more in a minute.  To the west, 34 didn't have to do anything other than pass through Rocky Mountain National Park [ linkie ] on the way to its western terminus at Granby, Colorado to be OK in my book.  Actually, I always saw 34 west of Chicago as a sort of lesser alternate to 6, as it paralleled the latter usually a few 10s of miles to the north or south all the way out to Colorado.  Furthest away from my home was U.S. , paralleling the shore of Lake Michigan as (what else?) Lake Shore Drive in downtown Chicago, having swooped down from Michigan's upper peninsula from the mysterious and (in my mind, anyway) perpetually fogbound Keweenaw Peninsula at Lake Superior [ linkie ] through Milwaukee, and then on south to Miami, Florida, spawning all sorts of odd-numbered progeny (U.S. 441 and 641, for examples) along the way.  My mind vacation travels down 41 would take me through Nashville and Chattanooga, Tennessee, which for some reason I always thought was more or less the area that was the geographic center of the U.S. Civil War [ linkie ], then Atlanta, Georgia, and finally through the Florida Everglades [ linkie ], where I imagined alligators lying in wait at every pullout for the occasional incautious child....  U.S. , which ran north-south about 6 miles east of Downers Grove on Mannheim Road multiplexed with 12 and 20, always seemed to me to be U.S. 41's evil twin Skippy [ linkie ].  They both start up at Lake Superior, but 45 doesn't quite make it onto the Keweenaw Peninsula, and then sort of meanders south through Wisconsin, missing along the way anything significant.  It skirts Chicago, then heads south, where about the first interesting place it gets to is Tupelo, Mississippi, birthplace of The King: Elvis Presley [ linkie ].  It finally makes it to the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile, Alabama.  My 60s era central United States maps show 45 as a blue highway [ linkie ] down its entire length.  Nowadays, I'd take that as a virtue.  U.S.  ran, with 6, 30 and Alternate 66, through Joliet, a then run-down town to the south and west of Downers Grove known for little more than being home to the exceedingly grim Stateville Penitentiary [ linkie ], and being the place from where "Joliet" Jake [ linkie ] derived his nickname. 52 was probably, after 6 and 30, my third favorite of the time, for a number of reasons.  First is that it ran, before the bypass was built, a block from my paternal grandparents' home in West Lafayette, Indiana as Northwestern Avenue (my grandfather was a professor at Purdue University just down the street).  Second, 52 is the odd-duck of major US routes, in that it is the only one to travel any appreciable distance from northwest to southeast.  52 cuts across the United States from the Canadian border (Saskatchewan Province) to the Atlantic Ocean at an absolutely relentless 45 degree angle for most of its length.  It exercised, to the northwest, an inexorable pull on me that I truly believe has something to do with me being here in Alaska today.  To the southwest, it took in Cincinnati, Ohio, Winston-Salem, North Carolina and finally Charleston, South Carolina as places along the way.  It is probably the route I would most, if I could take the time, like to drive the length of today.  U.S.  is another diagonal route, this time from northeast to southwest.  It was also (no longer- thanks for nothing, ILDOT) another road that had its terminus in Chicago.  I always considered it, much like 45, sort of an inferior analogue of another nearby route, this time U.S. 66.  They (54 and 66) both started in downtown Chicago, both headed southwest out of the city and across Illinois toward the land of renewed hopes and dreams full of energy and promise, then along the way something happened to 54.  Where 66 wound up, after triumphantly crossing seven UPDATE: eight (sorry, Kansas, forgot about that 13 mile stretch) states and winding up at the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, California (I mean, who wouldn't want that?), 54 sort of just lost altitude and ultimately nose-dived into the muddy Rio Grande River at El Paso, Texas.  Along the way, it missed Dodge City, Kansas [ linkie ] and just about anywhere else that would have interested a nine year old.  Given a choice, who would have followed this dog of a highway on a trip west?  Having now lived in El Paso and driven some distance on its westernmost stretches, I grew up to belatedly give 54 the respect it deserved all along.

Finally, there's

What can I say- just a few miles south of my boyhood home.  Read the article [ linkie ].  It's all true.

I'll never be a kid again.  I'll never again be able to look at a new map of a state I've never been to (I've now been to all of them) and spend hours in my mind traveling up and down its roads imaging what might be here and what might be there and what might be around around the corner if I was to turn left or right.  The mystery is all gone from my real world.  It's all mapped and known.

SC4, on the other hand...

Thanks for reading this.

Later.

[Rayden 7]

It's surely a lot of reading in here, lucky I woke up a bit earlier this morning and had time to read most of it. The rest I'll do it later. About all those places you missed when you were a kid, I'm sure you have been to all of them now. I too, love to drive around as well. I love to go to new places, I can drive for hours. Usually on my yearly trips to Andorra, I'm the "officially" driver of the group. Last year, I was the one who drove in one go, a few stops during the way for coffee and muscle stretch, 850 miles.

[jacqulina 162]

wonderfull work, i like how you tell us about your travels that as a kid you didnt go, but now you have been to those places they sound beautifull too,i havnt travelled much at all,so i do love to read and see other peoples if that makes sence lol.

[teddyrised 1]

I'm simply amazed by your map-making skills! And it is surely wonderful that you can use real life examples to compare and evaluation and critically comment The last few posts of yours are surely jam-packed with nice stuff which I've never seen on Simtrop before!

Take care!

[Shadow Assassin 336]

Okay, that's just scary. Only just this morning, bored and browsing the Wiki, I read the article on Route 66, only to see that same article pop up again here... just scary.

Shame they decommisioned it.

Speaking of Route 666 (side topic here)... shame they renamed it to Route 491.

Well, I wonder what will happen with your situation regarding 3RR

[ElBarto92 7]

David - I can't leave a long comment - I'm in a bit of a squeeze for time - but I did read that last update. What a great recollection - you should definately write a book or something.

-Andr

[Gaston 0]

    Okay David this is gonna sound a bit wierd, but here it goes.     I too am a nut about maps.   Every time I cross into another state I have to stop at the "welcome station" to get the latest copy of that states highway map.  I actually plan my trips accordingly to arrive when the welcome areas are open.    If I miss one for whatever reason, I have to stop at the first available gas station to get a map.    I however have only got maps dating back to the early eighties.

   But I remember going on those same sort of road trips that you dreamed of and having my father and my uncle (We always went on vacation with my uncle's family  in thier "family truckster"  LOL) always getting me my own copy of the maps.    That same uncle (Uncle Neddy BTW) owned one of those gas stations that you mentioned (A Mobil Station) and would always give me a map if I asked for one.    I think he made me sweep or clean windshields or something for it.  O that was back when there were no self service stations that I remember anyway.   Those were deffinately great days.

As far as the routes you mentioned.  I have an odd conection with some of these. 

  

, Lake Street, followed the course of 12 around the outskirts of Chicago.  It was the second, with 6 and U.S. 30, of the three coast-to-coast US highways running within a few miles of where I lived.  It would take me, to the east, to Toledo, and Erie, Pennsylvania, Albany, New York, a few miles north of where my daughter Liz would graduate from college about 40 years later (R.P.I., 2005), and wind up in Boston, where I imagined Paul Revere riding along its predecessor 200 years before.  West, 20 was what I imagined to be the quintessential great plains route- miles and miles of two lane, straight as an arrow, rising and falling over long low hills out into a distant sunset.  20 somehow survived being "killed" by its transit of Yellowstone (every other numbered highway goes in and, just like the Roach Motel [ linkie ], never comes out.  From there, on to the beautiful Oregon coast, where I pictured 20 arriving, still full of energy from its brash, direct trip across the country, and finally only stymied by the indescribably wide Pacific Ocean (I didn't see an ocean until I was in my 20s, and grew up with concept of the Great Lakes [ linkie ] as being vast beyond imagining).quote>

Currently, I live in Dubuque, IA.   I can look out the window of my computer room (looking out the open window) and see and hear highway 20.    I have tried, unsuccessfully I might add, to make the same look to the highways in SC4 as what 20 looks like as it comes up the hill and passes my house.   (Only about a block from here.)

As to the following route...

 

Furthest away from my home was U.S. , paralleling the shore of Lake Michigan as (what else?) Lake Shore Drive in downtown Chicago, having swooped down from Michigan's upper peninsula from the mysterious and (in my mind, anyway) perpetually fogbound Keweenaw Peninsula at Lake Superior [ linkie ] through Milwaukee, and then on south to Miami, Florida, spawning all sorts of odd-numbered progeny (U.S. 441 and 641, for examples) along the way.  My mind vacation travels down 41 would take me through Nashville and Chattanooga, Tennessee, which for some reason I always thought was more or less the area that was the geographic center of the U.S. Civil War [ linkie ], then Atlanta, Georgia, and finally through the Florida Everglades [ linkie ], where I imagined alligators lying in wait at every pullout for the occasional incautious child....quote>

... I spent the majority of my informative years living within a mile or so of 41.   I was raised (6th grade on) in Manchester, TN.     I lived in Nashville and in Chattanooga.   

I learned how to drive, how to drink, how to make lo.. (Well you get the point) either on or damm near that stretch of road.    It was THE highway to me.   Yes there was the interstate but I never took that if I could help it.   41 was the most important road to me.  It was the way to get home.   If I could find 41 I could find home again.   No matter how far I strayed.

    Odd how small the world seems when you look at it on a map and think about what is happening at any moment along those little blue and red lines.  Anyway, sorry about waxing philisophically.     Odd connections, you have to admit.   lol

   Oh BTW, I loved the update.

---Gaston

[Tommy_Vercetti3 3]

Cool mountains in the picture up some... I didn't read what you posted.....well not all of it yet. I will continue when i get back tomorrow. Looks informative though.

[Menotyou 0]

Interesting, it seem to me that you have a higher freeway denser than Houston. Is that because of the sims inibility to travel very to get to the highway? I have had sims who will travel across a city to take a monorail to ride it back to five blocks away from they had started. Then I had some sims who were three blocks away from the highway and that was the best way to get were they were going but the still took the surface streets, and then they said that the commute was to long. Or is it some unforeseenable error in city planing. It seem that like you said the game makes the cities to compressed to have them be real scale. I belive that I have a realistic system of highways with two going though each of my cities, and because of this realistic layout of highways almost no one uses it. My monorail system with it's many stations and track going everywhere, many sims use it and it is in danger of overuse. However it seems that even two highways is too much, but I fear that if I remove one that the other will fall into complect disary and it will have to be destory also. Are your highways well used? I see that you have central highways. Is that helpful in having the highways used?

[tchaos713 5]

David, as a child (and as a young adult), I have shared a similar fascination with maps... Interstates and US highways in particular. I was fortunate to grow up not to far from the grandaddies of them all: US 30 (Lincoln Highway), US 40 (National Road), US 1, US 50 and I-70. I would spend hours on the floor looking at my parents beat up 1989 Rand-McNally atlas looking at where roads go. I still stop at every state's rest areas to get a state map. I did take it one step further. I drew maps - of totally fictional places... Of course, as my knowledge of the Interstate and US highway systems grew, so did the accuracy of my maps (as in actually having routes that were geographically compatable).

Thought I'd share,

Daniel

[teddyrised 1]

Wow! I seemed to share the same interest with you Dedgren! I love browsing through street directories and maps. This sounds very very weird indeed but it is very veyr true too. Everytime I drop by some bookstore the first thing I go is the street directories and maps section. I love "navigating" through the streets of Paris and New York with my fingers running all over the road map... and I trace them to far away places

Maybe because SC4 is not a real life city growth and development simulation programme that's why the optimum transportation layout is slightly different, e.g. highways tend to be denser and the scales are quite weird indeed. But who cares? SC4 lets me build, play and even destroy (hehe) my cities... and thing that we can't really do in real life unless we become mayors (and mayors rarely go destroy their cities).

Have a nice day and keep it up!

[dedgren 830]

So, detour back to my childhood navigated, we pick back up here our quest for answers to questions of scale.

As promised [ linkie ], we'll leave the Chicago area, hopping on Route .

...well, no- not actually...

U.S. 66 has been "decommissioned" in Illinois, along with every other state through which it once passed.  Why?  Because it has been replaced, along its entire length, by limited access highways that are part of the US National System of Defense and Interstate Highways, commonly called the "Interstate System" [ linkie ].  The system, as a bit of trivia, commemorates US President Dwight D. ("Ike") Eisenhower [ linkie ], during whose administration they were conceived and their construction commenced in 1956.  Ike had been impressed during an extended visit to Europe the previous decade [ linkie ] with the system of Autobahns [ linkie ] he saw in Germany, and thought construction of such a system would benefit his own country as well.

Along its length, 66 was replaced with various Interstate route numbers.  I won't take the time to detail them here, but the Wikipedia article on 66 cited in my previous post [ linkie ] has that info and much more, if you are interested.  Suffice it to say that, in Illinois, 66 was replaced along its entire route by

and that's what we'll see reflected on the maps we'll be looking at today.

You will recall that I have expressed the concept of 3RR as follows:

...an urban "core" area of about 5 miles on each side (the original four (SC4 large city) townships of Pineshore, Wind River, Cold Lake and Grand Lake) surrounded by farms, woodlands and other open space...quote>

That would look something like this...

...with urbanized areas represented by yellow and the remaining area in green.

Now, RL areas will not fit my grid perfectly, but I think you get the picture of what I'm looking for.

The first place we'll stop is tiny Chenoa, Illinois.

Chenoa, with a population estimated in 2005 to be 1,805 [ linkie ], is quite evidently surrounded by lots of open space, but has an urbanized "footprint" that is clearly far too small to be a RL scale model for 3RR.

Further along I-55, we arrive in Lincoln (Illinois is "The Land of Lincoln" - it's where Honest Abe [ linkie ] made his adulthood home, practised law and entered politics).

Lincoln, with an urbanized area a little larger than that of Chenoa, has a 2005 estimated population of 14,971.  Lincoln is also, with reference to our Mondrianesque [ linkie ] map above, is too small to be a good RL model for 3RR.

About 25 miles further down the road, we reach Springfield, the state capitol.

Springfield, with a 2005 estimated population of 115,668, has some open space around it, but to the west and southeast is developed more or less out to the edge of the 10 mile by 10 mile box we put it in.  While it's a nice place, it is just more total development out to the edges of the region than I would want.

So, we have Chenoa- way too small, Lincoln- too small, Springfield- too big.. What I'm looking for, just like Goldilocks [ linkie ], is just right.

The next major place to the south along I-55 is the urbanized area around St. Louis.  There's no potential.

Lets head back to Bloomington, the home (in it's suburb Normal) of Illinois State University [ linkie ], which we skipped...

...where we may have struck gold.  Let's overlay it with the 3RR township grid and see.

That appears, as they say, just about right.

So, Bloomington (including Normal) has an estimated 2005 population of 119,676 (Bloomington: 69,749 and Normal: 49,927).  I would guess, looking at the map immediately above, that about 75% of that number, let's say about 90,000, live in the four large central squares, meaning (again these are very unscientific estimates), that those four urbanized areas contain between 20-25,000 inhabitants.  It's interesting that this density is substantially greater than we found in the western suburbs of Chicago several posts ago [ linkie ].  Is it anywhere near the population density that SC4 medium residential zoning applied uniformly over the same game area would result in?  The answer is again clearly no, by a factor of about 10.  It is relatively simple to achieve a "game" large city population of 200,000 or so, assuming a reasonable effort at "region" play.  As is evident from other CJs on this forum, much higher populations can be attained.  So, if we would be starting from scratch with the concept we've developed for 3RR, again

...an urban "core" area of about 5 miles on each side (the original four (SC4 large city) townships of Pineshore, Wind River, Cold Lake and Grand Lake) surrounded by farms, woodlands and other open space...quote>

Bloomington-Normal would work as a model from an area standpoint, but would limit us to very low density residential development.  It would also limit us in another regard- the one that resulted in the undertaking of this inquiry on my part in the first place.  The RL region is served by three interstate highways:   from the northeast to southwest,  from the northwest to southeast, and , which is not named on the above map, coming in from the north.  There's just a simple bypass to the north and west carrying the multiplexed routes around the city; no city freeways, no spurs, no dedicated freeways to serve industry, and so on.

Here, to make things complete, is a side-by-side with 3RR.

In so many words, if Bloomington's the model, 3RR as we know it is toast.

Bummer.

That's a wrap for this post.

Later.

 

I have to suspend this here and leave for the office (9:30 a.m. AST).  If you are seeing this message, please check back later today (10-5-06) as I intend to complete the post during the day today.

UPDATE:  (10-4-06 about 6:30 p.m.)  Working, working...  Significant edits, to include adding Springfield and correcting Bloomington's population to include Normal, which is more than 3/4 the size of its sister city.  I'll continue to work on this after dinner.

UPDATE2:  (10-6-06 about 4:45 a.m.)  Finished things up starting at around the comparison with Chicago-area suburban density.

[asturianu 4]

Hello, good morning, David, well to me good evening-night. This maps from Northamerica are nice, Chenoa, hehehehe, Chenoa is a Spanish singer. Will you do the map of 3RR with street names?, it is so difficult!

[dedgren 830]

I'm going to say something here- don't get me wrong.

I have a sense, based on the number of comments and who is making them over the past few weeks, that I really may have reached the "eyes glaze over" point with most folks on my mapping stuff, and especially the content about map scale.  I'm seeing far fewer comments, and even page views have dropped off to less than 100 per day, after running at that level for about a month and a half.

I can understand this- there's nothing worse than going to a party where one's intention is to have a bit of fun and do something interesting, then have some bore you can't seem to escape from go on and on and on...

...and on...

...about some topic that you would kill not to have to hear one more thing about.

I realize I'm thinking out loud here, in public.  I don't want to bore anyone, but, speaking for myself, I really, really need to work the mapping thing out before I return to SC4 content.

My choices are, like last summer, to take another break and return once I'm ready to move forward again.  As I intend to continue to work on the mapping issues- because I intend that 3RR would ultimately become a journal about developing a plan for the region and then implementing it, that would mean I would take however long it took (another month or so in my estimation) and the simply return with the answer and proceed from that point.

Some of you, I know, are really into what I'm doing now.  I don't want to disappoint anyone- I have considered taking 3RR off ST and making it available as a private sort of blog, and would certainly be willing to do that if interest warranted.  Putting these posts together to document my thinking would certainly be something I would be more than happy to take the time to do if anyone else would consider it worth the time.

I'm not looking for encouragement here- I'm going to continue until I'm done, but don't want to take anyone along who isn't up for the ride.  There's way too much great content in the CJ section of the forums to spend time looking for something in this particular CJ that simply won't be available for a while.

So, if you have thoughts on this, let me know.  I'm going to finish updating the last post, but would plan, after I have thought this over a bit more, to make another post over the weekend describing what it is that I will be doing.

Thanks, as always, for your interest in 3RR.

David

[Rayden 7]

Well, if you take this away from here, make sure you let me know where it will be held so I can still follow this either as a CJ or as a blog. It doesn't matter, I love it

[Darmok 34]

David,

there's a saying:

"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" humm... now that is a very profound and bold saying.... HEY! no laughing at the back of the class! I saw you!

This being said allow me please to also think out loud.

While personally I'm more interested in your terraforming prowess than your mapping techniques (which by the way I'm jealous of...), I really think that moving part of 3RR out of ST would be a mistake. 3RR is a whole, and part of it is that mapping section, however big it may be, sure those who are less "map inclined" will only be lurking while it's lasting, BUT I'm certain that once you resume the more "conventional" (and I'm not saying this in a pejorative way believe me, I really am a fan) way of CJ'ing, "they" will come back (hummm... isn't this a movie line??? linkie ).

Look at AVR these days, I barely make the 100 visit per day, but I'm not worried, people have so much choice CJ wise these days that's it's understandable.

So please David, for the sake of continuity and if I may say so, the "wholesomeness" of 3RR, keep this mapping section here. I know I haven't commented as regularly in that particular endeavour of yours, but my interest is still there! (even if there's no hobbits here... is there?) WINK

I know that "BLOGS" are the craze of the moment David, but please don't split 3RR!

Here it is, you asked for our thoughts on the matter, there you have it!

In the end I know you'll do what's better for you, and know that I'll continue to look into your CJ even in a "trendy" Blog if that's what you end up doing....

Have a great day my friend!

John

EDITED:

I know you don't like this but hey! we must respect the traditions! Hum.... here it is...

Hear Ye, Hear Ye,

It's my privilege to open page 33 of this great CJ...

Do you know that 33 is a significant number? Oh yes it's the year Tiberius created a credit Bank in Rome! (He must be VISA's ancestor!!!)

Here's to many more my friend!

[owenluby 1]

Hear hear! Well said John, I would've said something like that... but seeing as my vocabulary and age are not even near to yours (No harm intended!) it would take a lot of good hard thinking, and I cant be bothered at 10:30 on a thursday night...

So you get my drift.

I totally agree with you though. I am not a fan of blogs and myspaces etc. and i think it would ruin to send parts of it over there.

Just my thoughts!

[Nik-nik 3]

no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no,no, no, no, do not leave this CJ David.

Although I do not have the time each day to look at 3RR I enjoy everything about it. Your struggle with scale is something we all experience in SC4 and I love to see how you come to a conclusion (if ever, else I love to look at you struggling  .

I love all your linkies and sometimes they do take me exploring Wikipedia even further (I learn a lot this way about the US) my boss will not like it.

Finally I quote:  "I have considered taking 3RR off ST and making it available as a private sort of blog, and would certainly be willing to do that if interest warranted". Was that before or after your serious head injury? So stop being silly and continue reminiscing your childhood fantasies with us.

Nik-Nik

[tchaos713 5]

David,

Personally, I am getting a great deal of enjoyment out of this. Please, please, please keep this on ST... otherwise, please send me the link to wherever you put it. I plan to use all of this when(ever) I start my CJ.

[Tarkus 6,932]

David-

I usually don't follow the City Journals that much, but I've been watching yours for a little while now (I guess I'm a "lurker") and I think some of the things you are doing on here are quite interesting and very useful to anyone who wants to create accurately-scaled cities, or maps of their transportation networks.  I'd really like to see you keep going with the Three Rivers Region CJ here at ST. 

The scale thing is really an interesting issue, and it is one that I have been grappling with for quite awhile.  I too have found that my cities are overly dense with highways and avenues, and definitely think that the overinflated figures on the residential buildings have a very conspicuous effect on it.  I have been thinking of possible solutions to this problem and there are two that I can think of: increasing the capacity of the road networks (which can be done with larsz's Traffic Cop program) or decreasing the number of sims housed in each residential building (which is also possible, through SC4Tool).  Obviously, it would be quicker to modify the capacity of the roadways, but it would be much more realistic to modify the residential buildings, so that the population is more in line with a real world city.

As far as the mapping goes, that's what initially got me following TRR, after I followed the link from the "Show us your transportation maps" thread in the City-Building Concepts forum.  I've been working on getting a map extracted from my region like yours or the other ones at that thread, but I'm having problems getting the region oriented correctly and not totally blurry.  (I might have to change some settings in SC4).

Anyway, keep up the good work with TRR.  I've had a great time following it, and hope that you keep it alive here at ST.

-Tarkus

[Gaston 0]

Okay David.

     I understand your frustration with the number of views being less that it was.   I see why you might not think anyone wanted to read this.    I have to tell you that that is just not the case.     Yes, some people are interested in other aspects of CJ's.    I enjoy going to some other CJ's as well.    (I'm sorry if that hurts you but we never said we were going to be mutually exclusive. )

     I LOVE coming here to see your mapping.   It is fascinating to me the way you link so much information together.   If you were to remove this CJ it would leave a HUGE void.    I cannot think of ANY other CJ that holds the same kind of interest that this one does.

     There are days that I feel like some kinda drug addict.   I have to come here and get my fix of 3RR.    If I had to go elsewhere to get it I would but I don't think it would be quite the same.   If you are asking for my opinion on this (and you didn't),  I say to keep going with this CJ in the way you have been.   You may not get as many views as you once did but alot of us will still continue to come here and see what you have decided to enrich our lives with next.     [besides this is my cat's favorite CJ and she wouldn't know what to look at if it was gone.    She sits on my desk, watching the computer screen.   She waits patiently for me to scroll down for her because she reads much faster than I do and she doesn't have thumbs either.   That makes it difficult for her to type.]   

     Hopefully I have gotten across to you how important this CJ is to me [and Bunches the cat].   I know ultimately the decision will be yours to make.    But to alot of us this is more that just a CJ.   We feel a link to it, to you, and to each other here.   It has become a part of my life.    All that being said, I am only going to ask you once and very unobtrusively.....

Please, please, please, please, please, please don't take 3RR away from us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

Thanks for taking a moment to read this post.  Your friend,

---Gaston

[teddyrised 1]

Hy dedgren, do not feel so depressed about the issue. The crux of the problem does not lie with your CJ's content, but how people perceive it. You know, people tend to be more interesed in picture driven CJs, but I must say that CJ is not only a show case of our achievement. A city journel is a complete representation of a growing city, developing city which needs lots of before-hand planning and layout. And I am very proud to announce that dedgren you have managed to incorporate all these substances as a whole into your CJ.

We always aim for the achievements at the end of the journey, and we tend to miss out all the sceneries along the way. Isn't this happening again here? People just crave for achievements, and they do not care about planning... but thanks to you dedgren you made me realise the beauty and the effort of planning. A city journal is not all about a successful city but also encompases successful planning.

Personally I think that mapping is a very fresh aspect of CJ, that's why they do not get much attention. But hey dedgren, everybody do appreciate and welcome these kind of new aspects. We are open to new ideas and concepts, and I am most willing to support whatever you do (as long as they are morally justified  which is basically almost everything you do ). It is very tiring and it takes a lot a lot and a lot of effort to do maps for your CJ, and even more effort and time when you try to scale them to real life models and evaluate upon them. Now, this is what I msut admit we're lacking. Evaluation. Many CJs are a display of achievements but there is a little evaluation... like evaluating the process etc. This is exceptionally nobel of you to do so especially when you know that you're getting only a trickle of visitors. But don't give up dedgren. This CJ is as interesting as before, and I don't see why you should take 3RR down.

Take care dedgren. 3RR remains as one of my favoruite CJ and hey amigos, never give up!

[threestooges 0]

From what I have seen, there has been a decent reply that I am in agreement with. This cj... its parts... tutorials, mapping, etc. are a part of a whole. While I admit that I read over the mapping information with a passive curiosity (much similar to the way I read over cjs when I first found this site... if that's any indication), they are a great asset that wouldn't work quite as well if not connected with the rest of the work. For my part, it is of great interest to see the thought process displayed (and to know the finished product will be that much the better for it). Incidentally, I understand your fascination with maps (a Thomas Guide was a great companion on a drive around town with my parents, or to my grandparents house just half an hour north of where I grew up) and it is interesting to see the change after just a few years. I wouldn't let the fact you have visited all states suck the interest of travel out of you. Just 6 years or so was enough time for my childhood home (streets I could see so clearly on the map) become completely different (Corona del Mar, CA (now aka: mansion del mar...lost so great beach town feel)). Don't let the page views/responses get you down either; it's a busy time of year. Personally I have been quite busy (yay the LSAT is done!...now for applications) and haven't been able to find the time so that may be part of it. But to sum it up, this would suffer for the lack of development and the flashbacks/bit of information if you took it off site, and the updates are always a good read. Can't wait to see what you have coming up next (and also to see it put to use in the game).

[meldolion 1]

!!! Your mapping work is awesome!!! I like it very much! I like maps very much, but I prefer old ones; figure that once I found an old map on London on my first trip there I went around the city with that map....

I admit I've been lurking a lot in this CJ, but I check for new posts alt least twice a day

Please let me know if you move this CJ somewhere else

[PhilsCafe 8]

Hi David. Sorry for my lack of visits lately, RL is keeping me busy at the moment. I really enjoy your mapping updates, your Google styled maps look great. Your showing everything that comes with making a CJ and that's what I like about it. It would be a pity if you hosted it off-site... but I respect whatever decision you make.

Take care!

- Phil

[dedgren 830]

Wow.

A comparison here with one of my favorite movies [ linkie ]...

...Bueller...  ...Bueller....  ...Bueller...

is apt.

Here's what I said

I'm not looking for encouragement here- I'm going to continue until I'm done, but don't want to take anyone along who isn't up for the ride.  There's way too much great content in the CJ section of the forums to spend time looking for something in this particular CJ that simply won't be available for a while.quote>

Now, Silvio (Rayden - ELS PIRINEUS), John (Darmok - Anduin Valley Revisited), Owen (owenluby - Unifire), Nik-nik, Daniel (tchaos713 - Ballet Fan Club), Tarkus, Gaston, Terry (terrymunweihao - Botania), threestooges, meldolion, and Phil (PhilsCafe -  Acorn Creek, Nova Helvetia, Pakkusena)...

I am truly touched by the nice things you've all said.  I'll put on my lawyer hat, though, and be coldly dispassionate.  Guys, gals, I'm not depressed.  I'm certainly not planning to pull the plug on 3RR.  I'm not trying to make a point about some issue with ST, or viewership, or any of that kind of thing.

None of that sort of thing, absolutely not.

I'm really pretty enthusiastic, actually, about my (largely unplanned) adventures in mapping.  It's giving me an insight into the game that I know will result in me enjoying it even more.

I just don't want to be Tom Tin-Ear here, spouting off about something that is of no interest to most who visit the CJs to see great pics of SC4 cities and regions and what all the brilliant folks here are doing with the game.

To make a point- can anyone recall what page my last "game" pic was on?  Was it ten pages ago?  15?

I'll admit that it's fairly hard work to write this CJ the way I do- I'm trying to include some content that keeps it lively as opposed to just letting it become the equivalent of a very dull, dry paper delivered at an academic symposium.  I figure if I am going to bore anyone to tears, there might as well be a laugh or two along the way.  So I try to be imaginative and to include things of visual interest, even though they may not be right on point.

Adding to my sense of disquiet, though, is that my focus on mapping and the current...

...uhhhh...

...issues with 3RR's scale has really impacted my participation in the community.  I am making very few comments in the CJs where I normally visit.  I used to make a lot of general forum posts, but that's greatly dropped off.  I feel self-absorbed and like I'm not doing my bit.

So, don't worry about 3RR going anywhere.  I'm sure I'll get back to my normal...

...heh, yeah- normal.  Right!

...self once I work things through.  With the things you all have said, I'd leave it here on ST if you were the only folks who ever came by to look at it.

Let's move on, then.  But, thanks ever so much one last time.

David

[Rayden 7]

I'm glad to hear that.

 that balloon "Save Ferris", at the same time I've read that, it came to my mind "Save F3RRIS" (F  3RR  IS)