digitalurbanity

My mostly underground freeway system:

New Urbanism does not necessarily mean packing houses arms length together, its still possible to get quite denser than sprawl using "traditional neighborhood development", in which housing developments are built much like they were from the 1910's to the 1940's. Being built on a gridlike pattern with the lots being around 1/4 to 1/3 of an acre. These neighborhoods had to be built in a way as to be accessible by transit (aka streetcar suburbs) and generally had commercial services within walking or a short transit ride away. 1/4th to a third of an acre is plenty enough to have a 2 car garage, a garden, and a swimming pool in the back yard, and a decent sized front yard to create a barrier from the street. An important thing to point out is that space does not privacy make. The most effective means to create privacy on any lot is though effective landscaping and smart architecture. Something most sprawl does not have. it attempts to create the sense of privacy by having large amounts of space, even though you can easily see the backyards of everyone around you from your second story window.

I build tight grids with every third or so intersection with a rotary. each neighborhood i build i think of as a "node" with its own services and transit stations, connected to other nodes around the city center. the only problem is with the pathfinding engine of course is that the sims dont follow the routes you plan in your head most of the time, funneling traffic down side streets etc. It's also hard to maintain high densities of single family homes without setting each one historical which is darn tedious.