Improve land value/pollution conditions w/ trees in SimCity 3000

Contributor/author(s): Kyle Soderholm (edited by Wren Weburg)

Here's an account by Kyle Soderholm on the effect of trees in SimCity 3000:

Everyone knows that placing a few trees can help raise land values or reduce pollution a bit. What may not be known is the startling effect placing trees can have when used en masse, especially in conjunction with hillsides.

In a city of roughly 130,000 people--a dense city, with a lot of large buildings, especially toward downtown, there were some large areas of light residential. Some were developing very poorly due to their location; they were very near some heavily polluting industrial areas. Just by looking at the buildings you could tell they were slums.

In working with parks, the effort was to raise land value in the area, hoping to drive out the "slum" look.

Nothing had any effect, until trees were placed. The residential areas in question were a single tile of elevation higher than the industrial ones, which left a single tile wide row that couldn't be used by the Sims. Trees were placed all over this row, for the entire length, and trees were also added in nearby open areas. The expectation was to see a small change--but not so. In SimCity 2000, most of the time trees didn't have much effect. Water was the way to raise land values. But shortly after placing these trees, the residential land value began to rise sharply. Pollution levels dropped in the area, and the slum area changed into a beautiful residential neighborhood. Surprisingly, it was now one of the most stable and well-developed in the city. It even supported a few high rise apartment towers among all the light zoning, and the land value was in sharp contrast to that of the industry, only a tile or two away.

See also
Increasing land value: more than just trees
Museums and land value
Raising land values with farms
Get only oak trees
Six things that boost land values
Reduce seaport pollution
Cleaning up water pollution
Land value calculation bug