sim-ple

Yet another way of looking at this... All buildings, and structures for that matter, are erected for the purpose of fullfilling a need in the market and to provide a return on the invested capital for the owner(s). If we look at every building from the standpoint of whether the building's essential purpose is being served by the elements than we can either accept it as a part of the building or not. So if the buildings occupied floors serve the building's intended purpose than we count all the floors (even mechanical floors since they are an essential part of the operation of the building). If the element is for design and does not contribute in any way to the economic viability of the building than we should not count it. The CNN tower, by way of example, was built for the sole purpose of broadcasting radio, TV and communications signals. The observation deck was merely an add-on to generate some additional revenue and take advantage of the structures height. In this case we should count the height to the vary top of the antena mast since that was the intended purpose. Sears Tower was constructed as an office building and fills that role very well. The antenas were added to the top when it was feared that broadcast signals would be interrupted. I remember the shadow on my TV when the construction of Sears tower started to interfere with reception to the South of Chicago. They were added to satisfy the cities demands and not necessarily added for their intrinsic beuty. They have, over time, generated substantial revenue for the building owner and as such should qualify as a means of determining the height of the stucture. The owers wanted a return on their capital investment and the antennas help them achieve this. Spires that are added to towers, such as Petronis,Empire State, Chrysler (as mentioned above) or Taipei 101 and a miriad of others, are not constructed for any purpose other than to enhance the design. As such, they provide no direct intrinsic value to the building. It is my opinion then, that these spires should not be counted as they are not a direct part of the overall income stream generated from the building and in fact represent a significant capital expenditure and on-going maintenance cost that must be born by the occupants of the building. So spires are an artifical way of generating height. Also, one could ask the question, if the spire was removed would the building still function properly and meets its intended purpose. In most cases, if not all, you would have to answer yes, the building would still function quite well - in fact even better from an economic perspective. Would Sears Tower function just as well without the antenas, yes, but in the case of Sears, Chicagoans would suffer since the broadcasting towers do meet societies needs and consequently, become an integral part of the Tower's secondary purpose. Just my two cents worth...

Not to stir up another fire storm, but... oh well, might as well stir it up anyway... It should be noted that most of the latest aspirants to be the tallest in the world actually pale in comparison to the former World Trade Center and the Sears Tower when it comes to gross building area. Most of the Asian towers are actually quite small with very small floor plates. I was in the Petronis Tower a few years ago and was struck by the very small floor and the short distance betwee the core walls and the exterior curtainwall. Taipei !)! is another building with small floor plates. Within Asia there are very few tenants that require large floor plates, as opposed to the US where Insurance companies, stock brokerages, banks and so forth require large floors for efficiency. The actual economics of the Asian model is actually quite tenuous and don't stack up to the normal investor returns required in the West. If you built the same floor plates in Asia these toqwers would struggle to reach the 35th floor. Burj Dubai, on the otherhand, is huge in all respects. The building will total more than 450,000 square meters of floor area, larger than Sears and perhaps more comparable to WTC. I just read this interesting statistic - all 64 floors of residential condos sold out in 8-hours!!!

I just had a situation arise last night that led me here. I was toiling away on a city with a great deal of design in my farming areas, fishing viollage and small city center for about three hours. Everything was looking great and all was well in the city as a whole. It was getting late and I stopped to save and exit. Unfortunately, I hit the wrong button and exited without saving - three hours of design work shot. Now before anyone volunteers I am going to say it first, What a dope! I am sure we are all guilty of geting so absorbed in what we are doing that we forget to save our work. After all, the game is very engrossing. In any event, perhaps a simple mod could be worked in as an alert instead of a fixed save. I was thinking of a simple alert box that pops up after say 30 or 60 minutes prompting you to save. It's then your option to stop what you are doing and save the your hard work. Any thouight on this approach.

Just a point on the elevator issue and the viability of the building, it should be noted that vertical transportation issues are always the most critical to deal with when you start going over about 50 floors. There are several ways to deal with it which is well beyond the limited scope of this forum. The movement of men and materials during construction and the handling of occupants later are the first major obstacle to over come. SOM are masters at it and the big elevator companies are more than prepared to come up with solutions. As for the viability, the tower will be mixed-use with the last residential floor at 101. They have been selling residential andf office space for the past year or so and it is going quite well. There are able to get prices that are more than double the going average in surrounding projects. Tall buildings have historically proven to be uneconomical, at least in the early going. The push to go vertical has always been based more on ego than economics. We like to refer to this type of architecture as Big D*** architecture becasue its driven by mine is bigger than yours mentality. BTW... also located at the base of this enormous tower is the world's first Armani hotel as well. My friend is handling the Interior Design of the hotel and he says it's a bloody nightmere with so many different sizes to accomodate the odd floor configuration. Only time will tell if its a success. But one thing I can say for sure, they have the will and desire to make it a success and I doubt the Royals will allow a failure of any kind. As long as it breakseven, they will be happy.

Sorry, one more point, the building is currently up to level 26. I pass it every day. Soon it will begin to command the skyline. I remember when they were building the John Hancock in Chicago, I was attending the University of Illinois in Chicago. One day as I was heading to the subway after class, I saw a massive cloud pass right through the steel super structure when it was nearing its final height. I wish I had a camara with me. Slight chance of that happening here however, the sun is always shining 365 days per year.

For your information: I am an architect and real estate developer living and working in Dubai. Presently, the world's tallest building and man made structure is under construction in Dubai by Emaar and called Burj Dubai. The Burj Dubai final height is a jeaslously guarded secret but unofficially they are saying it will be 160 floors and more than 700 meters tall. There are rumors in the market that it could go as high as 900 meters. Emaar definitely wants to be the tallest for a long time to come. For more info do a Google search for Emaar (the developer) or Burj Dubai (the name of the project). You may also go here for a rendering and some statistics: http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=182168 Imagine this as the ULTIMATE reward lot.

Sad to say, Portside was corrupted the last time I saved and is unrecoverable. There does not appear any way that I can reclaim this city. Therefore, I have decided to abandon the city, the region and this CJ. There will be no further updates to this CJ. As to whether I will start another one - who knows.

Yes, I did install the support file in your read me file and since I did not have any other airport BATs installed I did not have to uninstall any of the files you mentioned. BTW... I like the looks of your seaplane base. It works well in an industrial/commercial setting.

I built the CdS Seaplane Base by ripptide (30) . you can see the base on page 2 of my CJ I did not use Sim Wings Airport Pack. After using the seaplane base, I exited and re-entered the city at least once, perhaps twice. So the seaplane base does not seem to be the problem.

Q. Did you add any plugins lately? If so, back them out and retest them one at a time. A. I did not add any plugins after the last save of that particular city. Q. Other than a heavy industrial city, does it have any other peculiarities? Does it collect garbage for other cities? A. Portside is all industrial and commercial. There are no residential zones in the city at all. The commercial is confined to the borders of the adjacent city while the balance of the city is zoned Industrial. It is a sea port by design. There are no connections with other cities other than the transportation network (roads, avenues, highways, rail and subway). Q. Does it have any downloaded lots in it, any BATs? A. Yes. The city has several ploped downloaded lots. The latest one added was the seaplane base. But the city was opened and played after the lot was added. Q. Do you have the NAM? A. Yes; I have NAM installed. I have SimCity4 Delux version, european edition. The city was heavily terriformed in God mode before I started so I could get the wharf area configured properly with squared off land forms, breakwaters and piers/wharfs. The file must have gotten corrupted during the last save. It occurs to me that I could always download the region once again, take the city square from the new install and copy it over and start over again but eh-gads, the thought of going back to square one and starting this city from scratch, including the terriforming turns me off. I am not sure if there is any way for me to get back into this city unless smarter and more creative people on this forum give me some ideas.

I have been playing a 3x3 grid region for about 10-days now. You will find my CJ called Many Firsts . I ran into a problem yesterday wherein I can no longer access my main industrial port city called Portside in the upper right square. Whenever I try to load the city it crashes to the desktop. All other cities (the remaining seem to be fine. Does anyone have any clues as to how I can get this city back? Since it the main source of industrial jobs in my region I am kind of stuck and not sure if I should continue or not. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

HELP!!! For what ever reason I can no longer access Portside, one of the cities in my region. I can access all the other cities but not Portside. Since it is my primary industrial center for the entire region, I do not know if this will effect game play and demand in the other cities. If any one has an ideas as to how I could recover Portside I would be most appreciative. Thanks. As it stands now, update 5 may have been my last unless I can figure out a way to access Portside again.

Here's update number 5. I want to give you a sneak peek at some of the other cities under development. This update will show you a little bit of Portside (the industrial hub of the region), South Port (a medium sized, mostly bedroom type community) and finally Center Point itself (the commercial hub of the region and the largest city, thus far). Up to this point I have primarily shown rural type development, farms and small towns. I think I have that concept down fairly well. But the big city and industrial is another story. Please look over some of these images and give me some input on the city and industrial developments. Still not satisfied with the images. 5.1 Industrial development in Portside align=baseline vspace=5> 5.2 Portside's version of Fisherman's Wharf align=baseline vspace=5> 5.3 Downtown South Port align=baseline vspace=5> 5.4 Another view of downtown South Port align=baseline vspace=5> 5.5 Overview of Center Point align=baseline vspace=5> 5.6 A closeup of beautiful downtown Center Point align=baseline vspace=5> I guess I need to learn how to make my own lots. There have been several occasions now when I settled for something less than what I really wanted or made due with a reasonably close alternative. So much to do and so little time. I hope you liked the update. If you did then drop a note. If you didn't, drop a note anyway and let me know why. Thanks.