We begin the Fairview story in the Southlands of the region, specifically South Ridge: a fertile valley nestled between two rolling hills. This area offers a significant starting point in the lead up to taking on the planned city center in a future post. With plenty of room to expand, the suburbs and towns are fairly lightly populated. The main benefits of the region are plenty of farmland, with easy access to nearby harbors, offering processing and storage facilities, as well as export facilities. Vast highways link towns and suburbs, with sprawling farmland throughout. As the region expands, this will offer excellent opportunity for farmland to continue to thrive and support the infrastructure and economy of the region.

The town of South Ridge is small, although plenty of space remains to the north of the highway, promising future development sites. The avenue stretching through town never gets busy, offering a quite country-town lifestyle for the locals, with everyone within easy access of all the amenities the town has to offer. A community library offers a wealth of knowledge for the area, as well as plenty of parkland and outdoor-leisure spaces. The nearby highway provides valuable connection to the region, as well as employment opportunities that are never too far away.

The town is a net-exporter, already offering a bustling harbor for the farmland to export to the Fairview region. Despite the early days, the port is already getting good use, mainly from the farms in South Ridge. Economically, it's promising for the region to have a strong harbor region on the doorstep of a planned major city.

One of the key design challenges I faced in preparing South Ridge into what it is now, is the construction of the highway. I've always previously use the Maxis highways, although these often clash with the NAM textures, and in themselves, have design limitations. Despite my love and respect to the issues the NAM does fix, I've never been a user of the the RHW's. I've promised myself that I'm going to experiment a little wit the RHW's in this region, and hopefully learn a thing or two. This vast mess of a cloverleaf is a first for me. It took me a solid few hours, and much experimenting, to come up with something I was happy with, although I have already learnt a lot of how the RHW works, as well as just how flexible it can be. Along the countryside, this almost fits in, although I'm somewhat concerned I'm going to butcher it when I take on integrating a highway into the big-city.

Thanks for taking the time to read my first journal, I look forward to your comments, and someday soon publishing the next entry.