The invisible factor in land value determination in SimCity 3000

Contributor/author(s): Bernard Ng

Definition: There is one final factor in land value determination that you can do very little about, and thus I have termed it the "invisible factor". This factor often explains why no matter how good your facilities are you small town still has poor land value, and why sometimes a crime-ridden commercial choked with traffic has astronomical land value.

The above often left me puzzled. If you are a seasoned player of SC2K you would notice there was no such factor in-built into the game theorems so what would happen is that there would be a case of "haloing" out, where the lightly zoned fringes of your city have high value, but the city centre, with all the problems of a big city: crime, pollution in particular, have the lowest value. SC3K designers perhaps sat there and thought "this is perhaps a little unrealistic". It was, why, for example, has the Ginza district of Tokyo, or Causeway Bay of Hong Kong some of the highest land value in the world? The only answer is "because it is so". This is precisely what the designers have incorporated into the SC3K land value determination engine.

Basically, the game would, perhaps when a city is just slowly coming out of its dreary beginning, anoint an area that would in the future be destined to be the city centre. It might be a reasonable choice at the time: probably because the town hall is around there, or at that time it had the highest aura and land value in the whole of the city. No matter what, you would notice as you city begins to prosper that the areas around the anointed centre begin to rise. It is rare you have to do anything about it, the values just tend to rise along with everyone else, but since they were the highest at the start they will be the highest at the end.

This is not the end. Strangely, even as big city problems come in, usually crime and air pollution due to the doubling in density, the land value tends to hold or drop only insignificantly around the city centre. Many areas further out in the city might have much better living conditions, but because this is the city centre, sims appreciate this and almost seem to accept these problems with good grace. This is the invisible factor, the fact that your sims tolerate poorer living conditions because they justify the area is the heart of the city and that is where the rich and prosperous reside.

Tip: Sometimes the invisible factor goes against your wishes, especially when it picks an area which also includes some of your industrial heartland. Unlike other zones, industrial areas detest high land value, since it increase their tax payable and decrease profitability. You would see messages asking you to zone industrial areas further out of the city and use that land for commercial and residential purposes. Some enterprisingly and environmentally sound mayors may use this as a chance to get rid of the industrial areas altogether.

In general, your industrial population would not tolerate any higher then "high" land value. If an industrial tile shows high land value, this usually equates to very high or astronomical when zoned under residential or commercial.

The overall city land values tend to rise as the areas further and further experience the invisible factor. For small cities, it is a matter of preparing for the city centre. Always try to choose a site with plenty of space for expansion so at the end you have an enormous financial capital to boast to your neighboring cities. Also remember to leave space for some public transport to the area. Many potential financial centre sites are ruined by too much traffic.

Tip: you can coax your sims into moving their future commercial centres somewhere else. Perhaps you started too close to the edge of the map so you realize your first commercial area (which, after years of expansion, is surrounded and has no space to expand) is not where you want to dominant area to be. Sims like to think that their downtown area is also where certain high-aura structures are, for example, the university, the performing arts centre, or the town hall. Moving these to a new location (choose a pleasant, flat, spacious piece of land of course) can also give an incentive for the invisible factor to base future high values around those civic buildings. This works quite well.

See also
Raise land value to Astronomical
Land value: points for the young city
Making a commercial island w/ very high land value
How to get towers early on
How to develop high-density buildings