jerry101

get rush hour for starters. then, looking at your city i notice some probs. You have a ton of mansions for such a small city. which, i'm guessing, means your city is pretty old (in terms of resident age). Old people don't work much. Bulldoze a bunch of the mansions and increase taxes on high wealth to 10.5%. It will crater your high wealth res demand, but you don't need too many of those people at this point anyway. The next problem I notice is with your mass transit. You don't have enough stops. I think I saw one or 2 bus stops. To get extensive usage, you need stops approximately every 12 tiles. Sims are pretty lazy and don't like walking more than a few yards to get anywhere. So plop lots more bus stops. And you need bus stops in residential, commercial and industrial areas. Otherwise the sims can't make a round trip. Also, your industrial zones are pretty mixed. High tech industry doesn't play well with dirty and manufacturing, as both of those generate a good deal of pollution. If your city has a strong educational system, jack up taxes to around 15 or 20% of Dirty and Manufacturing and bulldoze those buildings. Then you'll see high tech shoot up. If your education isn't htat good, jack up taxes on high tech, and bulldoze the abandoned high tech buildings. Finally, Build neighbor connections. Your industrial goods production has to go somewhere, which means roads and rails and seaports that can take the goods out of your city square. you have some, but make sure that there are connections near your industrial districts. Short freight times will help boost demand. Otherwise, not a bad first try.

search through simgoober's stuff. he has a country store pack, with general stores and feed stores and the like. should fit in with what you're trying to do.

sounds like you're on the right track. Keep HT taxes low, give them flower gardens (I tend to think that flower gardens go with HT, plazas with commercial, and parks with residential), good police and fire coverage, and plenty of water. And make sure HT is isolated from manufacturing. Even relatively small amounts of pollution kill HT.

wow...stunning. what a beautiful city. Bogota gets such a bad rap here in the United States, but those pictures are making me drool. Thank you for showing us Bogota. There should be more threads with images of cities around the world, especially cities that have undeserved "bad" reputations, or which just don't get a lot of attention. Other major South American cities like Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Havana, Mexico City, Caracas, Quito, others? Or South Asian cities of lesser note that the biggest ones. Maybe some russian and eastern european cities. African cities? Johannesburg, Cape Town, Cairo, etc? I think anyone who plays sim city has a love of cities, and threads like this build that love (for me at least).

read the arcchicago blog. Lynn Becker hasn't mentioned anything about any projects being in trouble at this point. I haven't heard anything about any projects stalling. But, with the credit markets collapsing, anything is possible, and the ramifications of credit drying up could be felt pretty much anywhere in the world. Except Dubai. http://arcchicago.blogspot.com/

you have to think about it as where are the industrial goods going. if your city exists in a vacuum, ie no connections, then the only market is local. The amount of stuff that is consumed locally is limited, so you end up with limited demand. Build road connections and rail connections early on. Later add a port if possible (and remember you can adjust funding for ports in the transportation budget menu) and, later, add avenue and highway connections. High tech does not play well with others. You really have to create either: a) a brand new industrial zone and jack up taxes on manufacturing and dirty to ensure that high tech will grow OR b) bulldoze your existing dirty/manufacturing industrial area. Make sure to plop some flower gardens, too. High tech industry is probably the most sensitive zone type. It will not grow in areas that are polluted. If a high tech factory does pop up in a polluted area, it will abandon very quickly. You are really paying far too much attention to the demand sliders. Build your city as you like it, and as it grows, then new demand will self generate. I've actually maxed out my I-M demand on my current region. The reason, I think, is that my region's population is too low to accomodate my huge manufacturing base. I need to further increase the size of my regional population, and I think the problem will self correct.

that's interesting dabadon, as I built a region with 3 million people without ever using a single mod or cheat code. heck, I didn't even know sites like this existed until a month or so ago when I happened upon it. The game is simple if you spend the time learning how it works.

boost your EQ above 160 - build a city college, libraries around the residential districts and museums, enact the pro reading ordinance to speed things along. When you do your industrial zoning for the new city, set I-D and I-M taxes to the max so that those won't build, and put a few flower gardens in around the industrial district to boost desirability. Make sure there is good access to roads and rail, a seaport if possible. Keep power plants away from I-HT zones, unless its a solar or other non-polluting power plant. You should also plant a lot of trees around the zone in order to further boost Desirability. You can also slash taxes on I-HT, say down to 2% or even 0%, and then boost them when the zones fill out. Don't worry about "satisfying" demands. On the top end, you'll have to make an effort to provide necessary infrastructure to attract such high end people and business. On the low end, demand is almost impossible to push negative outside of maxing out taxation. Low wealth doesn't much care about where it sets up or what services are provided.

doodlea - ugh! it looks like the prefab "neighborhoods" that are springing up in chicago when they tear up old train tracks or public housing high rises. it causes my eyes to burn! so generic! a -10/-10 just because you are replicating the worst possible decision in modern city planning. I'd rather see that neighborhood the way it was before, when the Robert Taylor homes were there! wwetom - -5/-10. What were you thinking?!?! Why on earth would a suburban Ikea store be in the middle of a downtown? What respectable city would allow some nasty ikea store to be built right smack in the middle? That store should be out in some ex-urb where it belongs, surrounded by miles of parking lot. Nardo -2/-10 the game is called sim city, not sim cemetary. darcy- -4/-10 I'm assuming this is supposed to be a suburb? If so, why are the houses crammed so close together? No yards? It would make a nice urban low density residential neighborhood though. If that's the case, a -1/-10 for having too many trees.

I accidently left a city running once, while I took a phone call. I came back, and the city had collapsed. Several water pumps had burned out and one power plant was on the verge of failing. The city's population had dropped significantly. I thought about exiting and reloading, but then I decided to take it on as a challenge. Yes, I would resurrect the city. First, I built new water pumps and replaced all my power plants. I still had access to solar plants, so sweet. I tore up the south side industrial district, and replaced it with high density commercial and residential, extending my downtown (which is primarily in the city square to the south. I upgraded some schools and built new ones. I started it up again, waited a few years to see if abandoned buildings would repopulate, and many of them did, all but the low wealth ones. Best of all, the new downtown extension at the south of the map exploded. Soon enough I had the Galvin Corp and some growable high rise bats sprung up. Population nearly doubled and that was before I started bulldozing the remaining abandoned buildings. The city was better after the power/water disaster than it was before. Within any disaster is an opportunity to make your city better than ever. I've thought about engineering such disasters in stagnant cities to make them grow again.

suburbs used to not be so bad, when there weren't so many of them, but with the arrival of the mega-limited access/high(free-, express)way, then we got sprawl, and megamalls, and shopping centers, and strip malls, and miles upon miles upon miles of dull, boring housing. And, the further away from the city you get, the more spread out things become. suburban sprawl is not sustainable. people can't keep up with having 2 mega SUV's and driving 20 miles to work and using insane amounts of water (to water those lawns). People will start waking up soon enough. Perhaps this summer will get the ball rolling when/if Atlanta has another water emergency.

I can't stand suburban sprawl, on either a macro- or micro- level. I welcome the looming destruction of the sprawl. Gas prices approaching $4/gallon, ghettoization of the suburbs due to the mortgage crisis, places in the south and southwest hitting massive drought levels. These are all by-products of sprawl. I can't stand when the only restaurant choices are Chain X, Y, or Z. I can't stand when the only places to shop are Chain X, Y, or Z. The suburbs even feature chain bars. In chicagoland you run into Fox and Hounds or Bar Louie. Guh. Yuck. One subdivision with the same 4 house designs after another. No continuity. Overreliance on automobiles. You have to work hard to find a community. In the city, just walk outside. People are there, they are moving about, on foot. People hang out outside their buildings and play bean bags, or they wander about the streets. Public transit is available. You can get by quite well without a freaking car. Density creates sustainable communities. Sprawl creates concrete and chain stores. Causes you to have to drive long distances to find anything. I can walk 2 blocks and be in front of the grocery store. I can walk a block and be at any number of bars and restaurants. None of which can be found anywhere else, well, except for the 2 chains (a subway and a corner bakery). Yech. Cities have so much more to do. A ten minute busride drops me outside of any number of museums. A ten minute el (subway) ride drops me in front of Sox park or Wrigley Field. I'm fortunate enough to be 5 minute walk from the lakefront, with miles of greenspace at my door step, not to mention bike trails, beaches, parks, marinas, a zoo, and more. And my street is quiet and clean. No suburb on earth offers what my little neighborhood offers. And, my cost of living is lower in the city than it was when I lived in suburbia.

i had my first riot. a whole bunch of simgoobers NIMBY buildings popped up in one place, and the area went ballistic. I had never seen one before, and I was zoomed too far out to realize what was happening. I kept seeing little fires, so I kept dispatching the fire department. Eventually, I realized what was happening, and dispatched the coppers. but for the topic on hand, my big annoyance is when the building in the corner of the city that is sitting on the 2 tiles that aren't in the existing coverage area keeps catching fire. Like every 2 months. It's really annoying. I either have to move my fire station, or dezone the tiles.

The Spire is easily better. Chicago has long pushed the boundaries of architecture, and this is no exception. What did people say when the first van der rohe building went up? They probably called it a monstrosity. The second Chicago School was launched by Van Der Rohe. Resulted in the IBM Building, Sears Tower, John Hancok Center, Federal Plaza and launched modernism in general. If anything, the Spire stands out as a sharp counterpoint to the Van Der Rohe style buildings, which are huge, perfectly symmetrical buildings utterly lacking ornamentation. The Spire is ornamentation. It's huge, but sleek. And with all the other new construction going up, it will be joined by a whole range of incredibly creative buildings before its even done. The freedom tower just looks like a standard really big office building. The Spire joins the tradition of existing and planned super talls in Chicago - The Sears, tower, the Trump Tower (under construction), the Waldorf Astoria (planned), the Aon (Standard Oil) Building, the John Hanock, the Waterview (under construction), 375 E Wacker (proposed), Aqua (!!). Heck, Aqua is so funky that it makes the Spire look ordinary, imo. Look at this page with all the supertalls in existence, under construction, or proposed. Given the huge building boom going on, the Spire is a perfect way to cap off a fundamental transformation of the best skyline in the Country. Manhattan just has to settle for second place. Again. http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?35132597

In Chicago, I would do a lot. First, no more ugly buildings. There are a number of atrocities that went up during the 80's, and some more are going up now. Except for the Calatrava Spire. I loves me the Calatrava Spire. Second, renovate/rebuild the entire subway/elevated system (will refer to as CTA from here on out - Chicago Transit Authority), or at least any parts that haven't been rebuilt within the past 15 years. Replace all cars over 10 years old. Relocate the above ground tracks in the Loop underground. Third, extend the CTA and expand service. Three lines in particular need to be extended, the yellow line should be expanded to the big shopping center in skokie, the orange line to the big southwest side shopping center, and the red line south the the city's southern border. In addition, 2 layers of circle line should be built (allowing subway passengers to move north/south while bypassing the Loop). One interior, one between the airports - Midway/Airport. Next - prohibit suburban style redevelopment of the city. Too many strip malls have been built in recent years that have displaced traditional, walkable, city architecture. It's a city. The architecture needs to reflect that. Stop building car-friendly shopping centers and build public trans/foot traffic/bicycle friendly shopping. Next - require new developments to be reflective of the neighborhood in which they are located. Chicago's kind of turning into Houston in the past 10 to 15 years. No enforcement of zoning law (Houston doesn't bother with even having zoning law - anyway...). New developments are constantly being upzoned by politicians who are in the pockets of developers over community objections. Imagine living in a small 2 story building that measures maybe 25 feet in height. You have a nice little patch of backyard. A year later, there are 3 50 foot towers in your backyard that totally block your sunlight. And those 50 foot towers are 3 stories. Three condos. 50 feet high. grrr... And the exurbs must die. Suburbs need to increase density levels. More public transit in the form of trains and circle lines, combined with shuttle buses. Fewer parking lots and ugly strip mall developments. Although, I do love me some simgoober suburban developments. :-)