Breezy Point: Preserving the character of low-wealth R$ residential neighbourhoods
Breezy Point: Preserving the character of low-wealth R$ residential neighbourhoods
One of the things I love about playing SimCity 4, is re-creating real-life regions with some mild semblance to the original. In Breezy Point, New York, one of these characteristics is the tiny 1x1 and 1x2 house plots along little suburban streets. Sadly, these tiny houseplots are at risk of being bought up en masse by richer sims, for the pleasure of R$$ large yards with swimming pools, and even small high-wealth R$$$ estates! As city mayor, I used to feel helpless to prevent this radical change to my little low-wealth neighbourhoods, but nowadays I have the techniques to stop this kind of premature gentrification in it's tracks! 
These same heritage listing, striped, checkerboard, and higgledy-piggledy zoning techniques even work in higher wealth commercial and residential areas. The techniques are super-easy to apply, too.
Here's a screenshot of my very typical low-wealth R$ neighbourhood.
I like the cute little houses, and they are reminiscent of the real-life Breezy Point, New York, as you can see in this satellite image from Google Maps.
I also had this problem when I first zoned, but back then it was readily fixed by:
- Bulldozing and re-zoning the small lots.
- Increasing pollution from nearby dirty industry (I-D).
- No parks, not even a single one! If I'm keen to provide them some local green spaces, I'll just plant some trees on unzoned land.
- No high-school or library. There is an elementary school, but factory workers don't need a secondary education ... harsh reality. I've left a 4x6 spot for eventually building a large high school at the top of that first screenshot, currently occupied by a copse of Elms and Broadleaf Trees. I've offset this lack by activating the Pro-Reading Campaign, in the City Ordinances section of the Monthly Expense Budget, to improve city-wide education (EQ).
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No hospital, not even a small medical clinic. I have activated the §50 mobile Free Clinic Program, in the City Ordinances section of the Monthly Expense Budget, so that they do have some medical care! I've also set aside a 3x4 space for a large hospital, also at the top of that first screenshot, currently occupied by the small pile of Logs.
( I've tested to verify that these two City Ordinances really do make a difference )
Despite all these steps, at simdate 29th September'07, and just 17k population for the entire city tile, the richer R$$ sims are buying up adjacent lots again. Time to put a stop to it forever.
One technique to stop this is to declare every second house a heritage site, using the Make Historical feature in the /,click query dialog. However, I'm actually quite happy for my sims to upgrade and improve their houses, I just want to keep them on small 1x1 and 1x2 lots, so this Make Historical feature is not one I want to use.
Another technique is to use higgledy-piggledy zonings, which works particularly well on diagonal and curved roads, see the red (1) in the screenshot below.
For the remaining lots in danger of being bought up by their neighbours, I've zoned every second house for medium-density. Note that rezoning for higher density doesn't destroy the existing houses. The checkerboard zoning pattern of low-density and medium-density residential zoning completely prevents larger lots from developing. Any medium density developing on a 1x1 lot will probably still be fairly small ... so that's okay. Here's a Zone Data View screenshot of the same area, with numbered points below corresponding to the red numbers on the screenshot:
- Higgledy-piggledy zoning – This will work, even if it were all low-density, no zoning change required.
- Two 1x1 lots facing opposite directions – One of these needs to be re-zoned as medium density.
- Four 1x1 lots and one 1x2 lot, facing various directions – These are in danger of being amalgamated into a spiffy R$$ 2x3 house. I'll use a checkerboard pattern of zoning on every second 1x1 lot.
- Six 1x1 lots facing various directions – Same as for point 3 above.
- Adjacent 1x1, 1x2 and 1x3 lots – Same as point 3 above.
- Two strips of adjacent 1x1 lots, one strip of medium-density, and one strip of low-density — Sims will even amalgamate adjacent lots on the same road, resulting in a wider street frontage. In this case, I want to preserve a higher density along the one way road, so I'll use a checkerboard pattern of medium and high-density on the left, with low and medium-density on the right.
And here's the finished product, showing the entire low wealth R$ residential area, all danger spots nicely checkboarded in light green and medium green. 
When choosing which 1x1 lots to make medium-density, I favour the ones near Bus Stops, and those on roads rather than streets. Use of medium-density this way may require me to upgrade some of my streets to roads, but that's okay.
There's no need to be afraid of dezoning larger lots. As long as you're not dezoning the entire neighbourhood, the overall economic impact isn't even noticeable. New houses will build quickly enough, as long as there is suitable low-wealth retail (C$), dirty industry (I-D), or manufacturing (I-M) employment, within short to medium commute distance.
Here's a very short tutorial posted by @chfzdn, explaining this same checkerboard technique using a simpler test neighbourhood.
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