Increasing land value: strategies in SimCity 3000

Contributor/author(s): Bernard Ng

There is always the aesthetic value for high land values. It is always a proud sight for the mayor to see where there were once slums and empty lots now lie apartments with astronomical values vying with the skyscrapers for their place in the sun.

Increasing land value in SimCity 3000 is not that difficult. The only difficult thing is that you have to be prepared to spend money on it and have far reaching planning decisiveness. Below are some quick tips.

• Make sure there is next to no crime - by the time your city is bringing in cash comfortably (so about 60% of your revenue is spent and 40% goes to the city's treasury) you should start aiming for about 3 on crime levels. Ideally there should be zero crime. Check whether this is so by clicking on the county courthouse. If there are no criminal cases versus the thousands of civil cases you are on track.
• Pollution hurts land values badly though not as directly as crime. Big cities will always have some pollution, it is a fact, but eliminating most of it is not impossible though a painstaking process. Most of the pollution comes from traffic; so traffic has to be eliminated. Most rich cities simply build a maze of subways and the roads become deserted, especially when public transport is subsidized. Some pollution can be eliminated by smart zoning. Move the unwanted, polluting industries and power plants as far away as possible, perhaps even across the city borders if you can afford it.
• Certain rewards attract higher end residents to your city. The most direct one is the country club, which gives a place for the rich gentry to hobnob and sip liqueurs by the lake. Others, such as the Stock Exchange, bring in financial business and indirectly brings in higher ended residents as well.
• Before converting your zoning from medium to dense commercial take into the increased pollution, traffic and crime this would bring. After all, dense zoning brings in twice the number of sims and twice the problems. Be prepared to sacrifice some very expensive land to build an extra police station or a metro station.
• The area beside Ball Parks seem to be very popular residential areas. Take advantage and build ball parks where there is space.
• Make sure there are enough schools around the area, same as hospitals.
• The area should be watered. Without water maximum densities cannot be reached and land values also suffer.
• Surface water increases land value dramatically. Though space consuming, it also adds a nice touch the centre of a leafy neighborhood. On the same note, trees have the same but a lesser effect, and also reduce pollution and act as barriers to noisy main roads and highways.
• There must be adequate transportation to the area. Land values tend to be stunted where there are poor transportation to other zones and you see a number of properties being abandoned. Try zoning small patches of industrial areas around. (young cities with urban sprawls often have the problem with residential areas cannot reach faraway industrial areas) Also try and put some bus stops as a temporary solution before putting in a subway system.
• There are many ordinances that have an indirect effect on land value by improving health, aura and education levels of sims. Enacting them will help. Not all should be enacted; some have side effects. Youth curfew would cut crime down, bring up land value, but it would also bring down aura levels. A lot of young sims will hate you for it.
• Take advantage of hills and water areas. These areas are wasted on industrial areas. The most boring, flat areas are those for industrial areas. Remember that industrial areas hate high land values (see next section).
• Save space for parks and other recreation facilities. Also save space for transport: a freeway path, bus stop at the corner, subway station. Sometimes whole neighborhoods become reinvigorated with the construction of a positive element.

A lot of mayors like to build cities of schools or hospitals so it become a mega health or education complex. This is not a problem, since SimCity only counts the number of schools or hospitals there are, and your sim residents do not complain of having to drive their children across the while city just to send them to school. However, there are strong incentives to place these civic buildings liberally around your residential areas, because they do increase the land value and aura around housing quite dramatically. When you look at land value maps you notice that these buildings always have a higher value then the residential areas around them and have the noticeable effect of bringing their value up, just like ball parks.

Note: SimCity 3000 has an unfortunate bug for land value. When your land value hits a point beyond astronomical, the simulator in fact registers it as "very low". That has happened to only very small portions of one of my city, so it is not a severe issue. However, some players that have mastered the way to having extremely high land values suddenly find themselves with a fiscal crisis. Since the mayor can only raise taxes through land value, these players find that suddenly, they can no longer manage on low tax rates (since the land values were so high) but have to dramatically increase taxes. (because the land value is now suddenly so low) For an example of this phenomenon occurring see one of the saved cities called "Antarctica City".

See also
Land value specifics
Raise land value to Astronomical
Increasing land value: more than just trees
Land value: one possible truth
Raising land values with farms
Redevelopment
Six things that boost land values
Realism tricks for buildings and general aesthetics