New Design Ideas and Criterias
Simcity has always fascinated me, because it gives me the power to copy the real world and make experiments with that copy ingame. I don't mean copy be copying every house and street, but by applying real world guidelines in the areas of urban planning and infrastructure.
Therefore I will try to implement guidelines, how and where on my maps I will be allowed to build cities. For this I will take some real life examples from my home (Denmark - DK) and try to derive the guidelines from them.
Aften looking on cities from DK, I have found three mayor ways on building cities:
- City centers with stallite towns arround it.
- City centers with tentacles or fingers spreading out from it.
- Cities looking like giant round mosaics.
First example: Herning (approximately 46000 inhabitants)
The urban area of Herning consists of a city center with small satellites nearby and industrial zones in between and placed near mayor infrastructure. Furthermore there are larges satellites farther away with their own small pockets of industry. This is all connected with several motorways and highways connecting to other larges cities and the European motorway network. But there is still alot of room for nature and rural areas between the suburban areas and industrial zones.
Second example: The Triangel Area - consisting of Vejle (approx. 52000 inhab.), Fredericia + Middelfart (approx. 55000 inhab.) and Kolding (approx. 58000 inhab.)
Here are the mayor features I want to point out the large industrial zones which are placed outside the cities and along the motorways. Some of the zones are planned to grow together along the motorways.
The third and fourth example: Aarhus (approx. 250000 inhab.) and the Greater Area of Copenhagen (approx. 1.2 million inhab.)
The largest cities ind DK grow along mayor infrastructure like motorways, highways and rail (assambling fingers or tentacles spreading out of the city centers). The "Hand of Copenhagen" is a famous description, of how future development in citygrowth and urban management in DK will look like. The advantages are clear:
- Easy implementation of public transport and effective infrastructure for the commuting traffic.
- Room for nature and recreative areas deep into the heart of the suburban areas and the city itself.
Fifth example: Odense (approx. 170000 inhab.)
This is a "big" example of, how many smaller cities in DK grow. It's more like a mosaic or patchwork of different types of zones and recreative areas mixed together around the city center. Larger industrial zones are still placed near mayor infrastructure and there are recrative areas to be find in the center of the city.
Now I will try to cook all examples and more background knowledge together to one set of guidelines, I want to work with in my cities:
- Cities are linked with a global network of motorways and with a regional and intercity network of highways and rail.
- Cities have bypasses, so commuting traffic don't interfer with the residential areas and small city centers.
- Higher tier traffic types like metro, tram and hightech rail is just to be found in the biggest cities. But regular rail is also to be found in smaller cities and busses everywhere.
- Room for nature and recreative areas deep into the heart of the cities.
- Rural areas consisting mostly of agricultural areas and little forrestry.
- Industrial zones are placed outside the city centers - no heavy industry - and along / near mayor infrastructures like motorways, highways and rail.
- City centers consisting of mixed residential and commercial areas.
- Suburban areas consisting of mostly residential areas and small and local pockets of commercial areas.
- There will just be allowed a few highrise tower buildings in the largest cities or under special circumstances also in medium sized cities.
- Implementation and respect of cadastrial borders and private ownership: I Can't just destroy things, because they are in the way. Therefore longterm planning, longterm urban management and "compensation" will be huge factors in the future development of the region.
As the region already have large cities, which don't implement the listed guidelines as good as they should, the cities will be replanned and resculptured. For that purpose the last point of the list will not apply for those cities, before their resculpturing is done.
So let's see, if I can build and develop cities and an entire region in Simcity4 that way... 
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