The Jade Bight -- For Sc4

Thank You for sharing. A lot of great work and looking forward to more. Have fun with the mmp work, it's time consuming and can be annoying but the end results are usually worth it.

Ohh and I can see where you're gonna put your battleship.

The main island/peninsula of the region is really starting to take shape and look more like one cohesive city, aside from the tiles you are obviously using for testing. I think your RCI demand issue could of been better balanced had you built that port in a large tile city where you would of have plenty of room for residential. The other thing that you could do is to modify the job counts(capacity satisfied) for individual lots. But that requires some knowledge of the ilive reader. I've done it extensively in the past but I've fallen behind because admittedly it can be tedious work.

On another note it's unfortunate to hear another regular CJ is going on hiatus as this would be the 4rd or 5th such CJ in the last month. Then again speaking from personal experience once the well has run dry it's extremely difficult to publish new entries every week(while working on different aspects of the game no less) without either suffering from burnout or a degradation in the quality of content so I do understand what your going through.

I'm a big proponent of civic centers and civic monuments and I very much like your City Center Park--it does has a very beautiful column, hehe!  Actually, though you are calling it "less GRAND," I think it has greater civic grandeur as a public place, not so much because it is necessarily smaller, but because it has a better scale and alignment with its surroundings.  As a counter example, San Antonio's Alamo Plaza has about the same size as your City Center Park, but its proposed Alamo Heroes Monument in 1912 was freakishly out of scale and out of style for its surroundings.  Even better examples:  the real towering Alexander Column in St. Petersburg looks magnificent in its setting, but the garishly towering Peter the Great Statue in Moscow is about as outlandishly oversized as they come.

Andrés Duany often gave a wonderful old lecture on New Urbanism, or traditional urban planning, and one of his themes is the creation of "sense of place."  A key point was that urban places are just like outdoor rooms, and rooms are defined by walls.  A civic square also would be defined by "walls," made by lining up building façades and casting tree lines, and the height of these walls versus the breadth of the space would have a ratio within a certain ideal range that affects a person's instinctive sense of either being too cloistered or too exposed in that space.  You actually did this twice, first with the long park-column-park stretch surrounded by buildings, but also with two "walls" of taller trees immediately on either side of the column that define a smaller "room" between the column and the City Hall.  Harder to do in SimCity is to avoid too many gaps or too many shifting setbacks that break the wall, but when all the buildings are brought forward to the street edge, the "room" is better emphasized.

Monuments, or more generally landmarks, that have sightlines and relational alignments are also important in the way people perceive their places.  Obviously, there is a symbolic or ceremonial relation between the column and the City Hall that is created by having them on axis with each other and that is further emphasized by how close or how far they are to each other.  If the column was at a cattycorner, the relation would not be as strong.  You can also have multiple relations with multiple alignments and hierarchies of alignments, such as by placing the Stock Exchange not on the flank of the City Hall, but at one of the long ends of the City Center Park where it would also be in alignment with the column, albeit a more distant alignment than the one between the column and the City Hall.

Ceremonial axes and vistas terminated by landmarks also work well with this type of planning, and you actually have one with the street that is on axis with the column and the City Hall.  This is the kind of ceremonial street the Emperor might be taken down in his horse-drawn carriage on the way to the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the City Hall, with such streets, what they connect can have symbolic meaning.  Amusingly, this street goes from your City Hall and column site down to the railyard warehouse backroad near the docks, but one can perhaps imagine it once terminating instead at the façade of "the former Port Authority building," or maybe at the front of a former passenger rail station which has slowly given itself over to port rail.  It is possible to create a chain of landmarks in a meaningful sequence and connected by sightlines, and I admit I sometimes imagine Austrian Emperor Franz Josef in his horse-drawn carriage (he hated his puttering motorcar) making the ceremonial rounds of my cities:  The Imperial Carriage would never go down the back alleys, through the railyard, or underneath a highway overpass -- indeed, in my personal street hierarchy, the highway would have to go under the ceremonial street!  Yeah, my sim drivers must hate that my planning is optimized not for traffic but for symbolism and the pretense of a horse-drawn royal carriage.

Although it was only a small aspect of this wonderful city journal, there was a clear evolution in your use of monuments and civic settings, along with lots of interesting and useful criticism, and I admit to being someone who often actually first looks at how players use monuments and landmarks.  It was really good to see and can't wait to see the next journal.

A very, very nice entry -- leaving with a bang, aren't you ?:-) I like all the parks -- yes, and the column and statue too, as their style echo one another. (and I heartily concur with odainsaker's comments). I also like how custom content is sweetly creeping in:-). BTW , that hotel is definitely NOT the most ostentatious among all those we have, believe me ! And re its shape (what I call "faux diagonal" -- priceless to go anti-grid), you know of diagonal parkings, right ? We have quite a lot of those now, too... [which makes me think : we need diagonal crowd lots ! Are there any ? There should be. Hint.) Finally, about the night shots : they're are not obligatory -- but don't they look nice when custom content is thrown in ?:-) I'm looking forward to your next endeavour, now -- may it go well... and use more of Nam RealHighways ;-).

15 hours ago, philforhockey51 said:

Ohh and I can see where you're gonna put your battleship.

Yo, "Phil" --

Wilhelmshaven was the "traditional" anchorage of the Imperial Battle Fleet.  (That's the test map with the "watering hole" in the middle.) 

It will be my first attempt at a large map tile since switching over to the "realistic philosophy" that inspired the 14 cities presented in the CJ.  I very much look forward to working with the extra space of the large tile.  It will -- I hope -- be able to satisfy (somewhat) my "sense of space and scale".  I can only hope my "old" machine will be able to meet the CPU demands of a large map tile.

Thanx for the kind words -- and I look forward to my return.

7 hours ago, takemethere said:

The main island/peninsula of the region is really starting to take shape and look more like one cohesive city, aside from the tiles you are obviously using for testing. I think your RCI demand issue could of been better balanced had you built that port in a large tile city where you would of have plenty of room for residential. The other thing that you could do is to modify the job counts(capacity satisfied) for individual lots. But that requires some knowledge of the ilive reader. I've done it extensively in the past but I've fallen behind because admittedly it can be tedious work.

On another note it's unfortunate to hear another regular CJ is going on hiatus as this would be the 4rd or 5th such CJ in the last month. Then again speaking from personal experience once the well has run dry it's extremely difficult to publish new entries every week(while working on different aspects of the game no less) without either suffering from burnout or a degradation in the quality of content so I do understand what your going through.

Yo --

I anticipated the RCI problem when I built the port -- and fully expected to have to balance the RCI by building another city.  But -- for some stupid reason -- I did not consider the game's reaction to the imbalance.  This was my first full scale test of the "regional" RCI demand and balance theory and it came as something of a shock to realize certain aspects of the game did not function as planned with the RCI seriously out of balance.  (Duuhh !!)  I should have foreseen the problem -- but it got past me!

No -- !  I have considered using READER to change capacity on lots -- but refuse to go that route.  As you pointed out, that approach might start out as a small effort, but would eventually take on a life all its' own.  I will simply have to choose more carefully in future.

Exactly -- !  I came to the conclusion that trying to juggle too many balls at once was actually hurting my map work.  Making re-lots and filler lots, etc, was easy and you could do fine work fairly quickly.  Re-lotting stuff was also (more or less) easy and produced good results.  But I ran into problems trying to install a set of "Mas'71" concrete retaining walls that used "Nob's" concrete texture.  (Took me a week to get that done!)  And before I knew it -- the weekly CJ deadline was creeping up on me -- and I hadn't even done any actual "map work".  I decided trying to maintain the CJ was actually hurting the quality of my city building.  I had the feeling that my cities were getting rushed, and hurried, and I was settling for "quick fix" solutions for my maps.  I just didn't want to keep putting work on the CJ that did not have my full confidence.

Yo, Odainsaker --

I thank you for your full and insightful remarks.  I would also like to say that I enjoyed them a great deal.  Perhaps more than you know.

I can see by studying your text that you have -- at the very least -- a solid background in landscape architecture.  You also have a deep understanding of the history and symbolism of European city planning.  I admire that.  I must confess, I perceive your training far outstrips my few semesters.  I like to think I "have an eye" for landscape and layout -- but, alas, mine is still only an untrained eye.

In "America" we lack the dramatic flare for "sense of place" of which you speak.  It is no accident that it took a Frenchman to plan Washington, DC -- and it is one of a VERY few cities in this country to make use of the "visual axis".  Mostly, our cities are easy-to-navigate "grid boxes".  Wide avenues with scenic civic buildings (and the visual axis) would be considered a waste of space at best -- and a monarchical pretension at worst.  (That's why I'm partial to "Old World" architecture -- Monarchs knew how to IMPRESS!!)

Interesting you should mention Emperor Franz Joseph:

The British monuments are a "mixed bag"  -- some big, some small, no theme, no rhyme or reason.

The French are like "Monuments 'R' Us" -- a bit of everything -- but with a "classy" touch.

The Germans seem to concentrate on size and strength  with a mixture of classical art influences.

But the Austrians -- THEY had STYLE!!  They had a wonderful sense of space and proportion and everything laid out in a beautiful setting.  Vienna is an absolute delight!!

I will take your comments on "the visual axis" to heart and see what can be done with it.  My new city -- Nuenburg -- may be too far along for changes.  But Wilhelmshaven is a big map and will need BIG architectural displays!

Thank you again -- and please feel free to share your thoughts at any time. 

Emden´s city center is very nice with those landmarks and customized park lots; CJ on weekly basis is only durable if you have a steady flow of content, Fourthnght CJ got some room for refinment, Montly CJ got it all;planning working on multiple projects, choosing what ever one likes ! Seasonal influences or to busy with life Monthly CJ cycle got it all ! Rushing, development is allways a bad thing ! Ignoring the economic mechanics of the  game is mostly OK as long there are no serious consicences to be met, well done !

Yo -- Thanks for dropping by -- and thank you for your steady stream of feedback.

I'm not sure about a monthly CJ at this point.  I may just work on a city until it is finished (or I'm finished with the city) and then post it to CJ as a weekly entry until it runs out.  That way, I don't have any sort of deadline to work on.  No pressure and no need to get in a rush.  But -- plenty of time to do the best possible work I can!

If what you do for fun begins to resemble work -- then it isn't fun anymore !! 

Drop by when I come back --

A really good book to pick up is The City Shaped:  Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History by Spiro Kostof.  It is admittedly a descriptive text which sits mostly with historical reference books, but I think you will enjoy the section on "The Grand Manner," which covers much of Baroque and City Beautiful ideas in city planning.  I wish that somehow this text was included in the SimCity game manual, perhaps alongside Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City.

New Urbanism, or "traditional urbanism," is the closest we might get in the U.S. to European-style planning, and much of it is about readopting pre-war planning ideas that were largely abandoned in the 1950s-1960s.  I was lucky to catch Duany's touring lectures when he was making the prescriptive case for New Urbanism, a paradigm shift for the field in the late 1980s and early 1990s calling for a restoration of our public realms and spaces.  Of course, we now have twenty years of hindsight to see New Urbanism's failings in the way it has been implemented, but I admit I still think in its terms and can even recall and quote from the seminar in the way some can quote Star Wars movies and Star Trek episodes verbatim.  As New Urbanists were looking back to recover those aspects that made a good public square with a "sense of place"--a place where are person felt it was okay, comfortable, and normal to be--a lot of New Urbanist writings will have prescriptive design ideas and analyses.

Random thoughts on visual axes:

Previous entries had lots of obelisks, sometimes in...err...inexplicable places.  Renaissance Rome has the most ancient obelisks in the world, and under Pope Sixtus V strategically relocated these to key points and in front of key pilgrimage churches.  As Rome was flooded with illiterate pilgrims, these obelisks served as waypoint markers to efficiently guide these pilgrims through the confusing city from one pilgrimage destination to the next in planned, ceremonial sequence.  The guide to the next church was simple...from the first obelisk, follow the sightline down the street to the next obelisk, and from there to the next.  We can still follow guidebooks like that to hit all the major tourist sites today.  Before the Popes, the ancient Romans erected conquered Egyptian obelisks as victorious spoils of war in Rome's Circus Maximus, while the Egyptian's themselves had primarily erect obelisks as sacred dedications at their temples.  English landscape gardens started using obelisks as seemingly random garden follies, but, rather than being random, they were actually carefully composed to make picturesque landscape scenes.  In the U.S., obelisks often mark important sites, such as historic battlefields or graves.

Austin, Texas, has a great axial Congress Avenue that bisects the city grid and terminates at the steps to the state capitol.  Originally, this avenue was the primary route entering the city from the southern stagecoach routes from San Antonio.  However, that route has now been taken over by an interstate further east, and the importance of the southern stretch of Congress Avenue has withered.  Much of South Congress Avenue beyond downtown became lined by...modern brothels and video porn shops!  The joke was that the great ceremonial boulevard was an aptly symbolic connection between out legislators and their prostitutes.  Carl Crum's photomontage gives a great view of how the civic grandeur at one end doesn't match the more mundane reality at the other.

San Antonio, Texas, was not originally laid out with axes and grids, but was instead laid out around Spanish colonial plazas.   The plazas were open theater sets for the key institutions of Spanish colonial society--the presidio garrison, the royal governor, the town hall, and the Holy Church--and the city then clumped around these plazas, which are today our civic centers.  Spanish colonial Law-of-the-Indies planning would have given us a gridiron similar to that of a Roman colonia, but the originally meandering route of the San Antonio River forced the Spanish to align their streets and crossings around the river's many loops and bends, leaving us a downtown with a high number of unusually angled landmarks, deliberately terminated street vistas, and even accidental landmark vistas.  Part of our modern failing is that we haven't been taking advantage of these site opportunities in the way previous local planners and architects had...it's as if Ayers & Ayers had even aligned their iconic building to terminate the vista on the river!  Still, while claims that planning-wise this is the most European of U.S. cities are grossly overblown, we were looking to Vienna as a model for our (now-cancelled) streetcar project.

In comparison to his contemporary Franz Josef, Kaiser Wilhelm II created the Siegesallee, a "Victory Avenue" in Berlin's Tiergarten lined by 96 white marble sculptures of Prussian heroes.  It was lampooned even by contemporaries as being grandiosely self-indulgent as the "Avenue of the Puppets" or the "Avenue of the Dolls."

Savannah, Georgia, which you also mentioned in a previous entry, is acclaimed as one of the most beautiful cities in the U.S., if not the most beautiful city.  Of course, its plan is a colonial grid regularly interrupted with garden squares which align in various axes and avenues, and at the center of these squares are fountains, statuary, and even obelisks.  Automobile traffic around all these squares might be horribly inefficient, but who says traffic must be the overriding driver of a city's layout?  If our city planners can no longer provide us with historic Savannah, then something is terribly wrong.

Eep, I'm babbling a manifesto...hopefully, some of this will be interesting and useful.

On 4/8/2016 at 1:24 AM, Odainsaker said:

 

Random thoughts on visual axes:

Previous entries had lots of obelisks, sometimes in...err...inexplicable places. 

Austin, Texas, has a great axial Congress Avenue that bisects the city grid and terminates at the steps to the state capitol.  The joke was that the great ceremonial boulevard was an aptly symbolic connection between out legislators and their prostitutes. 

In comparison to his contemporary Franz Josef, Kaiser Wilhelm II created the Siegesallee, a "Victory Avenue" in Berlin's Tiergarten lined by 96 white marble sculptures of Prussian heroes.  It was lampooned even by contemporaries as being grandiosely self-indulgent as the "Avenue of the Puppets" or the "Avenue of the Dolls."

Savannah, Georgia, which you also mentioned in a previous entry, is acclaimed as one of the most beautiful cities in the U.S., if not the most beautiful city.  Of course, its plan is a colonial grid regularly interrupted with garden squares which align in various axes and avenues, and at the center of these squares are fountains, statuary, and even obelisks.  Automobile traffic around all these squares might be horribly inefficient, but who says traffic must be the overriding driver of a city's layout?  If our city planners can no longer provide us with historic Savannah, then something is terribly wrong.

Eep, I'm babbling a manifesto...hopefully, some of this will be interesting and useful.

Yo, Odainsaker --

Nice of you to drop by with further comment. 

I usually don't come back to my entries on a regular basis -- (no need to re-visit the scene of the crime -- right?).  But I'm glad I checked back and found your comments.

I do see your point about "random" obelisks, etc, etc.  I still hold that monuments can be found in almost any situation -- no matter how inexplicable -- and often for no more obvious reason than to display themselves.  Cleopatra's Needle does decorate the Thames Embankment -- but so would a flower garden.  So The Needle was put there specifically to be displayed.  So there is a case to be made for the randomly plopped obelisk.

It is equally true that European cities generally use a medium or large "monument" as the focal point of a space used as some sort of gathering point.  It is the huge monuments that sometimes seem to be displayed just for the sake of ostentation.  (BTW -- I had never seen a picture of the Moscow statue of Peter The Great.  It saddens me to see such a historically prominent figure embodied in such a garish monstrosity! ) 

Anyhow  -- 

Case in point -- the Siegesallee -- a large monument.  It makes a very impressive column in itself, and could have simply been used as the center point of a park.  Or possibly -- with other "heroic" statues at the ends of axis aligned within the park (i.e., a much smaller scale of the Washington Monument axis layout).  But Wilhelm NEVER understood the concept of "less is more". 

BUT -- I do understand your point there.  If I had an odd space here and there that needed filling -- I had a BAD habit of plopping an obelisk in it.  No rhyme or reason to it -- just fill the space. 

Texas has always had "basic insecurity issues".  They were, after all, once a Republic in their own right.  They were once the largest state.  And they were very reluctant to join The Union, as I recall.  The problem on Congress Avenue might be taken as a metaphor.  Texans seem to have always needed to do everything bigger and better than the Federal government.  No offense intended -- they just forgot to stick to their zoning plan and should have called in the bulldozers!

The real shame is that Wilhelm's bellicosity extended to his architecture and his taste in architects was decidedly "bourgeois".  If you wanted to be the Kaiser's architect, you designed it big, and heaped your patron with praise of HIS artistic skills.  Wilhelm had "the stuff of Greatness" all about him -- but he never seemed to grasp it.

Savannah is, indeed, one of my favorite cities.  There is a "bijou" genteel flavor to the old city and the squares are absolutely beautiful.  If Sc4 players have made good use of their subway systems, the periodic placement of roundabouts and squares will not cause traffic problems.

"Nuenburg" is coming along well -- and I think you may be pleasantly surprised.  (Though you could just as easily be alarmed and dismayed!)  I'm trying to put to use the "axis concepts" you brought to mind.  It's easy to forget these "basic" elements of street layout when you're being engulfed by the most recent "cloverleaf" or "park system".  My population is hovering at 60K -- and there is still much work to do.

Please feel free to PM me if you like -- I do enjoy the conversation -- but may not drop back by here for weeks at a time, now that I'm on "Hiatus".