How can i increase customers??

[Idleness75 0]

So ive been trying to build this city...its on the smallest reigion tile and its surrounded on all sides with water, i put it on hard level and im trying to see how big i can get this population. I cant really figure out how to put a picture of it on here but the island has a seaport and 5 car ferries that get enormous usage...in fact i make about 300 a month just from ferry tolls. the populations education has leveled off at around 120 average, and the life expectancy is around 90. The low wealth residents and medium wealth residents are about equal populations making about 8700 but there is under 200 high wealth. I am getting power from a gas plant because wind power got way too expensive, and all garbage goes to a landfill. I eventually managed to replace all my dirty and manufacturing industry with high tech, and thats currently the only industry on the island and the demand for both dirty and high tech is very negative. my mayor rating is over 75% in every area. Im having to get extra income from a casino and a fed prison, and these really dont seem to be affecting crime or land value much at all(I put the prison next to the landfill)
Anyway, ive started having problems giving new jobs to my sims. They have huge commercial demands, and i placed a few commercial zones on the way to my high industry, especially this one odd spot where there is enormous traffic usage(and i dont really understand why) and these commercial buildings get high customers. However, whenever i try to make new commercial areas they always get low customers and eventually become abandoned, even tho there is fairly decent commuter traffic and they are between new high tech buildings, supported by many very expensive parks. Nothing on the map has nearly the traffic as that one strange area where im getting high customers but that tiny area just isnt enough to give my sims many jobs. I dont have space to place an airport at all... i had to bulldoze the graveyard for new space!(I guess my sims can just use the seaport to give viking funerals) Anyway, im really stumped and cant figure out how to get new commercial areas to prosper, and i cant really afford all the absurd amounts of parks that would be needed to grow my high tech industry more(and closer to my landfill, fed prison area) I tried placing a sphynx but its effect on commerce was pretty underwhelming and high tech didnt seem to care either....im stumped, what can i do?

[storms991 0]

traffic = more customers, place avenues

[Idleness75 0]

Yeah well i know traffic is somehow correlated, but I dont have enough space on this city to mess with avenues. I just tore down some high tech and residential places on roads with high congestion, and sometimes that worked, but sometimes it still just didnt. Theres some other factor included other than pure traffic volume, but i dont know what. like, does everything count, and does it count the same? pedestrians? freight truck? and does wealth of the commuters matter? are a lot of high wealth commuters gonna give more cusomters to a high wealth service than a lot of low wealth? i dunno, i wish i knew the algorithm

[Idleness75 0]

oddly enough i think freight truck might actually matter. Some high wealth service commers i built smack dag right next to my seaport get high customers. They dont seem to mind the pollution as long as they get those customers.

[RiverCocytus 0]

It takes some planning. But the most of your traffic will go from your residence probably to your industrial zones. According to Maxis' basic tutorial, you place commerce along the road leading to I.

Make sure the the C zones have their zots FACING the road with heavy traffic; like a regular store or business, if they are hard to get to people won't go in.

I wouldn't suggest using a small area to begin with. I did it for awhile, and it always caused me trouble. You don't have much room to spread out pollution, etc. The best small area cities I have made have relied on a neighbor connection for power and garbage and industrial jobs. Just place C on the roads leading out of town that direction =)

High density commerical pretty much creates its own customers with the number of workers flooding in. Just make sure that the zones face in such a way that the effect of workers coming in is synergetic and not just problematic. My suggestion would be that all C for a particular strip ALL faces the same road/avenue whereas R should be spread out over multiple roads/avenues. It also helps commerical workers get to work. (Spreading out R helps reduce traffic noise which irritates R$$$ sims a bit.)

Your problem with your C zones is; probably you don't have a high enough density for them to support themselves. Your lack of profits monthly is due to you having to squeeze everything into such a small area. For about 5000 to 120000 people the only affordable power I have found is coal. (Not an option in a small area.) Also make sure that your C zones have correct facing. Also, your C zones might be abandoning because the customers are too poor. Don't believe it? Look at the abandoned CO$$$ in particular; you might see when moving the cursor over the building 'wealth: low' -- isn't that trippy!? Its not in the standard list of C desirability factors. CO$$$ and CO$$ are sensitive to demand; and the C demand cycle is mostly self-fed. What you need is lots of CS$.... so try instead to NOT add parks, and try to get places where CS$ can grow.

Your's is an interesting situation; you've done quite well and seem to be sticking it out a little better than I did when I was trying small cities.

[Peorth 17]

Just some comments:

1. Parks and I-HT (or any industry for that matter) have nothing to do with each other. Recreational facilities (RFs, i.e. parks, plazas, tennis courts, etc.) only affect commercial and residential desirability. I-HT only cares about two things, namely, enough educated people as workers and low pollution. If you have a lot of parks in your I-HT zones, demolish them as they just waste your money.

2. Forget about developing a lot of commerce with a low population. Did I understand you correctly when you said you have 8700 R

[Idleness75 0]

No Peorth, u said this before also...trust me, test it yrself, u can actually put high tech in heav pollution provided u have parks, and if u have a super educated work force with zero pollution and zero parks, yr gonna have a hard time getting desirability for high tech...test it yrself...I promise u if i destroyed myparks then all my high tech would abandon within a year, then if i built them again they would come back within a year

Anyway traffic is clearly somehow related to commercial desirability, even if demand is enormous, I can say i have empirical scientific evidence that commercial buildings can go bankrupt even in high desirability zones simply because of no traffic, My problem with this city is that i planned the traffic concerns TOO WELL...all the traffic is so perfectly spread out that there arent any areas where commerce makes much money, I tried restructuring the traffic with chokepoints and even tho my citizens complain of traffic problems my commerce is booming. Whats odd is that traffic isnt always directly proportional, I dunno if different commerce buildings need diff amount of traffic or what, i dunno, i still havent figured this out.

[RiverCocytus 0]

Hmm; I would suggest that CO$$$ / CO$$ is probably what is yearning for the traffic. Might I suggest a rigorous bulldozing policy for areas that have low traffic? CO$$$ is a highly sensitive creature; but CS's are much less so. So try this; bulldoze CO$$$ or CO$$ if it tries to build in a highly desirable but low traffic area. You may be able to get it to clump together in the high traffic area, leaving the low traffic areas for CS's. Tell me if it works! I've had a lot of success using bulldozing to control zone development.

[+Guest Mayor#1]

Easy RRRRR ------> CCCCCCCCCCCc --------> IIIII At least thats how I do it. In words, I just have my sims travel through commercial areas in order to reach their industrial workplace.

[Peorth 17]

Originally posted by: Idleness75

No Peorth, u said this before also...trust me, test it yrself, u can actually put high tech in heav pollution provided u have parks.. quote>

Of course, that's because recreational facilities can absorb a fixed amount of air and water pollution, which you can look up in charts. If you use mixed zoning (I-HT plus I-M or I-D), you can get more I-HT with parks simply because of the pollution-lowering effect.

...and if u have a super educated work force with zero pollution and zero parks, yr gonna have a hard time getting desirability for high tech...test it yrself...I promise u if i destroyed myparks then all my high tech would abandon within a year, then if i built them again they would come back within a yearquote>

Idleness75, I have built enormous areas of I-HT without a single park in them and they're in pristine condition. In fact, the I-HT zones in all my cities don't have a single park in them and they're doing perfectly well, without a speck of distress or abandonment. Frankly, if you need parks to grow your I-HTs, then you're doing something wrong.

In summary:
1. Recreational facilities (parks, plazas, etc.) increase the desirability of residential and commercial areas. This effect has a specific radius and power, which is listed in charts.
2. RFs can increase industrial desirability but only if there is pollution present. This is because each RF has the ability to absorb air and water pollution.
3. I-HTs generate no pollution. Since there is no pollution to absorb, RFs have no role in increasing I-HT desirability.

[Idleness75 0]

The areas i was groing high tech were not high in polution before i placed the parks...you could tell this from the 'pollution' data map. They were, however, low in land value. Becuase of the limited space they were rather near to jail and landfill and whatever else was dropping land value. its easy to grow high tech in high land value areas, and residential areas tend to have high land vlaue because hospitals/schools/mayors mansion etc increase land value. However, if yr trying to get traffic thru yr commerce u cant stick yr industry next to yr residential.

 Anyway, ill just quote the sim city manual: 'If you wish to make an area desirable for residents, commercial business, or high tech industry, build a park in the neigborhood'(54).

Its easy as hell to make an all high tech industry city when u have a large city tile so you can grow 100k people in under 10 years (well I can, at least), but when u are using a tiny tile, and an island on top of it, and isolated from any other city, its not all that easy to grow an all high tech industry or to get your middle class to outnumber your lower class. I suggest u try it yrself.