jerry101

Personally, I either bite the bullet on garbage and build a waste to power plant. if you defund it (set funding at $0), it acts as a pure incinerator, and burns up 500 tons of garbage a month at no cost (but it pollutes a lot), or (if I have a low pollution residential/commercial city) I export the garbage to another city with a lot of polluting industry, and build the incinerators there. Garbage dumps cost insane amounts of simoleans to maintain, so I find that its easier on my budget. There are tutorials in the omnibus section that may help you.

for starters, don't use water towers as your water source. they're terribly inefficient. Taxes at 12% will kill demand, and prevent your zones from going full. The natural gas power plants do pollute quite a bit (though less so than coal and oil), so you need to boost your property values. Make sure you have quite a few flower gardens spread about. They will boost up your property values, causing more tax dollars to flow in.

Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Marina_City_-_Chicago,_Illinois.JPG or the Mies Van der Rohe IBM Building, which is Modern Architecture at it's finest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2004-09-02_1580x2800_chicago_IBM_building.jpg And, Burnham and Root/Holabird and Roche's Monadnock Block: http://www.cityofchicago.org/Landmarks/M/Monadnock.html

A few of my desires: 1. remove the square grid system and replace it with an octagonal grid system. It might not allow for perfectly free flowing road and rail design, but it would be a big improvement. You could at least be able to put in better diagonals. 2. A "smart" road/rail building system. If you run a road up a hill that is too steep for the road, then the game will suggest a pattern for the road that works better, by curving the road up the hillside. 3. Smarter sim commuters. Take the fastest commuting trip, not the shortest, including consideration of whether an area is heavily congested and has good public transit access. More realistic trip distance considerations as well. Distances need to be calculated more realistically, and commuting time needs to be better considered. 4. Somebody above said themes. Even if you don't take it to that far (not that they shouldn't), an ability to designate city's with certain themes (residential exurb, high density downtown area) with the buildings reflecting that designation. Furthermore, designating certain neighborhoods with themes would also be cool. Single family home oriented neighborhood, neighborhoods with 2, 3, 4 or even 5 flat walk up apartment buildings and other mid to low density apartment housing. 5. Mixed use development - housing above, commercial on the bottom. 6. The ability to zone airports, seaports, and parkland. Or a mix of zoned and plopped airports, seaports, and parks. You can choose where to drop major buildings/structures and the game will fill in the rest when you zone the area. You can add roads and the like, too. 7. Stackable transit. In Chicago, much of the El runs above streets or on highway medians. It would be nice to do something similar in SC. 8. Improved region play. Even if I can only edit one tile at a time, I should be able to see the tiles that are immediately outside of my city, in order to link up transit networks better. Also, Large airports should be able to serve muliple city tiles up to a certain population. 9. Water above sea level 10. More stuff - RCI buildings/designs (more urban and exurban style housing, rather than the small town/inner ring suburban type single family homes - wall to wall walkups and McMansions; wall to wall commercial shopping designs, big boxes, shopping malls, strip malls, suburban style townhouse/apartment complexes), more designs for Government Services buildings (multiple designs for schools, hospitals, etc), more types of government service buildings and other ploppables 11. A random regional terrain generator, or at least a lot more built in terrains for those of us who are too lazy to design our own. And a bunch of other stuff that I've cursed about in the past.

I have made ferries work very well, well over ten thousand riders across my region of about 400k. I used the stock San Francisco map for this particular region, and I have several major areas. In one tile, facing the bay, is my main downtown area. It is served by a ferry terminal, and is heavily used, both by people coming from across the bay, and north and south on the coast line. I have a major highway, but that is near the center of the SF Peninsula, so high rise commuters are inclined to take the ferry as it can be the shortest route downtown, especially for those who aren't in range of a subway station. People also come from across the bay, which could be hard to execute using the stock map, but I found a way to use a 99% water big tile, placing ferry terminals on both little slices of land on the east sides, with road access. There are also a number of major industrial areas along the coasts. I have a large high tech industrial park on the east side of the bay, which people will take the ferry to. A dirty/manufacturing industrial park is along the south end of the bay, which also gets some ferry riders. A handful of ferry riders even go to the manufacturing industrial park on the west side of the San Francisco Peninsula, mostly from a residential area just to the north. I've spent a lot of time learning to properly utilize mass transit though, it takes a lot of tweaking, and some ferry terminals just never take off. Sims take the shortest route, not the fastest route. Ferries can also work along rivers, especially in areas where bridge access is limited. The key is to have large residential populations up against a coast, and then job centers along other coastal areas, and a lack of options to drive straight there (or take a subway/train straight there). People will be forced to take the ferry to work.

The problem is obvious. Your bus system has been invaded by hobos. They board the bus and ride, ride, ride, until the bus driver's shift ends and he/she goes back to the garage (by the way, why doesn't Sim City have a central bus station/garage?). If you ever take public transit, you'll see the hobo's. They sleep on the bus or train, smell bad, sometimes beg for food or change, and sometimes talk to people who aren't there. Or, it's just the commuting bug. I think the same thing happens with cars, but its harder to detect with them.

Little of FLW's work is still standing? Perhaps you should check before making such an absurd claim. http://architecture.about.com/library/bl-wright-list.htm : "During his lifetime, Frank Lloyd Wright built 532 homes, museums, and office buildings. More than 400 of these still stand." Given that he's been dead for nearly 100 years, that's a pretty good track record. 99% of sources outside NYC say that the Home Insurance Building was the world's first skyscraper. The Flatiron did not go up until 1902. The Home Insurance Building had already been standing for almost 2 decades (built in 1884-1885). Also, the Flatiron was designed by a Chicago Architect, Daniel Burnham. Where are you getting this stuff about texas tech? Who the heck cares about what texas tech does and thinks. It's a crummy little football school in texas. Who are all these prominent texas tech architects? Please. I don't see any Texas Tech Alum listed amongst the Pritzker Prize laureates. Anyway, this isn't about Texas Tech's little architecture program. This is about which city is the best. And Chicago is better.

well dogma, new york's would look less impressive if you chopped away 60% of said skyline as well. Try getting all of it please. But New York is more than twice as big as Chicago in land area and population. Thus, New York has more buildings. But a city is more than just it's skyline anyway. More than just it's population or land area, too. By schools of architecture, I don't mean Universities. I mean styles. The First and Second Chicago Schools and Prairie School have nothing to do with any colleges. Chicago has engineering schools at its universities. UIC, IIT, DePaul, U of C etc all have schools of engineering (not to mention architecture). I was asking if New York had invented any particular architectural movements for which it is singularly known. I know that New York engaged Chicago architects and copied Chicago architectural styles, but I'm not aware of any particular architectural movements that started IN New York. You want wonders of engineering? How about creating the floating caisson foundations and steel skeleton frames, the combination of which enabled the construction of skyscrapers? Without these developments, skyscrapers wouldn't be possible. The elevator was important, but you could only go so tall before the caisson and steel skeleton frame. How about reversing the flow of a river? (One of the 7 Engineering Wonders of the United States, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers) The construction of the Deep Tunnel System to manage floodwater (aka TARP)? For bridges, well Chicago doesn't have waterways the size of the ones that surround Manhattan, but we did engineer the Scherzer Rolling Lift Bridge and the Trunnion Bascule. The Loop is surrounded by the latter, enabling access from the West and North sides, while allowing for boat traffic to pass with minimal disruption. (These are street level draw bridges that can be raised and lowered quite quickly - again, see the most recent Batman movie if you've never been to Chicago). The world's tallest Masonry Structure - the Monadnock Building Until 1960, Chicago had height restrictions that kept the city from growing vertical above the height of the Prudential Plaza 1 (which was the first post-height restriction building, IIRC. Thus, Chicago can only claim tallest skyscraper 3 times (auditorium building, Home Insurance Building, Sears Tower), but the Merchandise Mart was also (for many years) the world's largest building in square footage, though now it's only like 13th. And, now, Chicago has the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere under construction (the Spire), and 2 other supertalls under construction (The Trump building is almost done). And several more on deck. In fact, Chicago is undergoing a huge building boom

Chicago has two major airports as well. O'Hare (the country's busiest airport - last time I checked, Hartsfield might have taken that ugly title again) and Midway International Airport. Chicago has also originated 3 schools of architecture - The First Chicago School of the late 1800's which was the basis for the first skyscrapers (Home Insurance Building, The Auditorium Building, the Reliance Building) before Burnham's neo-classical 1893 World's Fair screwed up architecture for quite a while. Louis Sullivan was the greatest First Chicago School architect. But, then along came Frank Lloyd Wright and the great Prairie School. The Prairie School wasn't about skyscrapers, but the surviving FLW works are still some of the best examples of architecture around. Then there's the Second Chicago School, which was started up when Mies Van Der Rohe arrived to teach at IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) and pretty much designed the entire campus, along with the IBM Building and numerous other pieces of amazing Modern Architecture. Other Second Chicago School triumphs would be The John Hanc.ock Building, Daley Plaza, Federal Plaza, and the great Sears Tower. While it's not a pure expression of Second Chicago School, Bertrand Goldberg also designed a number of awesome Chicago skyscrapers and high rises, including Marina City and River City, and a Housing Project on the South Side (I forget the name). And, if you want Art Deco in Chicago, well, we built an entire fair around art deco. The 1933 Chicago World's Fair. Examples of art deco (yawn) around Chicago would include the Daily News Building, 333 N. Michigan, the Carbon and Carbide Building (now the Hard Rock Hotel), the Chicago Board of Trade (recently highlighted as Wayne Tower in the Batman movies), 135 S LaSalle, the McGraw Hill Building, 1 N LaSalle, the Palmolive Building, and the Pittsfield Building. Here's a link to Chicago's landmarks (from which I pulled that list, as I couldn't think of all of them): http://www.ci.chi.il.us/Landmarks/Index.html Also, Chicagoans should note that the Daily News Building (aka Riverside Plaza) is not landmarked and the EVIL Sam Zell is trying to plop a new skyscraper in the actual plaza, wedged between the building and the River. This is a travesty of the first order. Contact your alderman and tell him or her to push for landmarking this important building! What is New Yorks great contribution to Architectural thought and design?

Here's a link to the BBC's historical archive of it's April Fool's jokes: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/1/newsid_2819000/2819261.stm Apparently, since some believe this to be true, the BBC has also discovered: "...a lizard that swallows itself to deter predators and a species of rapping frog that attracts mates by rubbing its hind legs together to make music."

those were some great pictures, especially the bucktown, little village (I think), and Devon pics. The uno's chain doesn't serve real chicago pizza for starters. You can't get real deep dish chicago pizza outside of chicago. but real chicago pizza isn't that deep dish stuff anyway. That stuff is primarily for tourists, though I do occasionally indulge. Real chicago pizza is a thicker pizza than NY pizza, and smaller in circumfrence. It is cut in wedges, and is loaded with toppings. The cheese goes pretty much all the way to the edge of the slice. If you're in Chicago, and want to try the real McCoy, my favorite is Pete's Pizza on Western, near Irving Park Road. Anyway, I've been to both cities. I've had pizza in both cities, and hot dogs, and gyros, and Chicago is undoubtedly better. New York should take its sauer kraut and salad mix and ketchup covered pizza, go home, and try again. Chicago is also a cleaner, more aesthetically pleasing city. I am jealous of New Yorks far more extensive subway system though. And for the guy who's never been to Chicago - El's really are noisy and ear splitting. Far, far, far more so than any other vehicle you'll encounter on the city streets. The only thing noiser is a fire truck siren. That said, Chicago is uniquely identified these days with the elevated rails, so I'll deal with the noise and the other problems. Besides, subways can be so dank and musty and nasty.

the stex has recently had a newly updated seaport pack that's been coming out over the past week or so. Look for jeronij (sp?)'s seawalls, too. and, actually, evil weasel, I've seen a random low density BP station in the middle of a high density urban downtown. On Congress Parkway in the Loop in Chicago, there's a BP station. The only gas station around. So, that didn't actually throw me. the smokestacks and containers were flabbergasting though. But the drive-thru subway is just going too darned far.

hahayoudied: you continue to stupify me. -8/-10 evilweasel: detroit has more life than your neighborhood has. try building your neighborhoods away from the toxic waste dump. -3/-10; and that downtown area. what is a suburban drive through subway doing in the middle of a skyscraper jungle? it looks so out of place. totally ruins what would have been a great picture. -10/-10

two things could be happening. one, your sims in the first city can find enough commercial and governmental jobs that they don't need to go to the neighbor city for work. two, they haven't figured out there are jobs in the neighbor city yet. Eventually, one brave sim will try journeying there, find a job, and then a bunch of sims will follow. You can help with the process by going into one city, query the routes, jump into the other city, query the routes, then jump back again. You may need to wait a few game years as well, so that the new city can start to catch up with the old one. Basically, give it time, and they will come.

hahayoudied: one word: awful. -20/-10. I can't offer further criticism. I just get distracted by the nonsensical empty space.

with no cheats, mods, or anything else applied (my plugin folder empty, basically), but in the center of a highly developed region, I got about 165,000 residentials and about 65,000 commercial jobs on a small city tile. Very dense. But good land values and mayor rating. Strong mass transit, but still had a lot of automobile pollution and high commute times (100 to 120). I needed like 3 or 4 hospitals, but one Large Elementary and one Large HS sufficed for education. I even squeezed in one very, very crowded landing strip. \ and, since you don't like the answers you are getting, the likely answer is that no one has ever tried to find out. (thanks mrbisonm)

Since you asked for miles rather than km, the conversion is as follows: (approximately) 16m by 16m = 52.5 feet x 52.5 feet 64 tiles by 64 tiles = 1024 meters by 1024 meters = .636 miles by .636 miles = .404 sq miles 128 tiles by 128 tiles = 2048 meters by 2048 meters = 1.27 miles by 1.27 miles = 1.61 sq miles 256 tiles by 256 tiles = 4096 meters by 4096 meters = 2.54 miles by 2.54 miles = 6.45 sq miles SC4 city tiles are really small in the grand scheme of things. Chicago is 237 square miles San Francisco is 46.7 square miles (land only) "Greater" (not sure what that means) London is 609 sq miles Berlin is 344 square miles (source - wikipedia for all) conversions done with http://www.worldwidemetric.com/metcal.htm

I just use the first thing that pops into my head. The most important name/names for me are for my central cities. My current region is a twin city and its surrounding suburbs, towns and other environs. So, I put thought into the twin cities, creating some history around them. The suburbs and small towns are named for real suburbs of chicago (where I live), neighborhoods in Chicago, and for downstate towns. Or for fictional cities (ie Hill Valley), goofy stuff (Margaritaville), or for people, both real and fictional, or for natural features of a town. Or something more ironic. I struggle more with mayor names, since I don't use my name. I try to associate the mayor's name with the town and the town's background.

how's your police and fire coverage? High crime can drive sims out, not to mention business. Do you have neighbor connections? Have you built up neighbor cities? Try to get your budget into balance first. Those air and seaports...if they aren't at full utilization, go into the transportation budget menu and cut their funding. Cut funding to anything that is being underutilized. Now that your I-HT is built up, raise taxes on I-HT to somewhere just under 9%. If no one is moving into that new area anyway, defund the schools and hospitals. how's your commute time? did you build a lot of bus stops? All those roads make me wonder if you've got really bad commute times. you should still get rush hour.

for higher customer, you need to place commercial along your busiest streets. Sims stop and shop on their way to/from work. Did you place more bus stations? You need them everywhere to be effective. I've gotten my bus usage to double or triple automobile usage even on small cities by providing lots of stations. There is one weird-ish side effect of plopping a whole slew of bus stations - they each employ a few sims, so that leaves you with fewer sims for other jobs. Just keep playing with it. It can take a while to get a feel for mass transit. Make sure you bulldoze that old I-D and I-M, and plop some flower gardens to get I-HT to grow better. And make sure your city EQ is above 160 (elementary school and high school coverage should cover all residential areas, plus you need a city college. A museum and some libraries help, also).

good point, upzone your densities. you appear to be at around 17k people, so you can start going medium density on res and comm and high density on industrial.