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Downtown Manhattan is shaping up nice. Perhaps it's time to take a quick trip into the city... Driving up the BQE gives a great view of downtown and the Statue of Liberty in the distance (Real life view from the BQE) Taking a very reddish Brooklyn Bridge into the city (I guess the city's trying out some new paint!) Real life view from the Brooklyn Bridge, though angled more towards the southern tip of Manhattan 1 Broadway, right in front of Battery Park Real life view of Battery Park and 1 Broadway from State Street Aerial view of downtown Manhattan Aerial view of Downtown Manhattan A rainy night back along the Brooklyn Bridge

I haven't ever played CitiesXL. Was always intrigued by it but my last computer couldn't handle it. Got a new laptop just in time for SimCity.

Instead of having the World Trade Center site develop naturally with commercial high-rises, I decided to plop down the various trade buildings which work as a nice substitute, especially given their height. The tower used for 2 WTC looks more like Trump Tower or the Woolworth Building, but there's not really any other buildings as tall that I can use. Sadly, 1 WTC would run just north of the city limit which leaves it out of my city. View of Downtown Manhattan from Brooklyn with the World Trade Center complex up View from Liberty Island Look towards Manhattan Island from the southeast The World Trade Center complex park area, near the memorial, facing the new towers Daytime aerial shot of Lower Manhattan Looking up near the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel entrance, with Greenwich Street to the right and WTC in the distance

Pics from a different city in a different region on a different server... One of my earlier cities was based off of north Midtown and the Central Park area. It's pretty much a grid city with high density avenues and high density streets to see how close I could get to a Midtown Manhattan. The city isn't really a street for street representation of Midtown but does capture the essence of the city. The blocks aren't as long, but given how small cities are in SimCity, only a few blocks would fit if I kept it to scale. Also, unlike my Lower Manhattan city, this one was not built on sandbox mode and is dealing with the full woes of a regular game. View from Midtown looking north. Everything under 59th Street btw 5th and 8th Ave is zoned commercial. View looking down south on 5th Avenue by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (City Hall building used) Bird's-Eye View of Central Park (Midtown on top, UES to the left)

Buildings are finally starting to take shape. Technically the police precincts in New York are further up north. Precinct 1 that covers the Financial District is actually further up in Tribeca, by the Holland Tunnel exit on 16 Ericsson Place by Varick Street. The NYPD Headquarters is located north of the Brooklyn Bridge at One Police Plaza. Still, I did my best to sneak in some police, fire, and health coverage to prevent further building abandonment. More skyscrapers fill downtown First skyscrapers arrive View from Brooklyn I also placed the Statue of Liberty on the island on the southwest corner of the map. It's a bit too close to Manhattan, but it wouldn't be downtown without it. While I was able to link a ferry station, the sliver of land is too small to stick in a power plant so no power can get to the island (and I'm not about to build a random road bridge). View from Liberty Island Traffic has gotten bad on the BQE all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge. Unfortunately without the ability to place the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, this will be the only way to get into the city. Then again, the traffic situation isn't really that off from real life... Heavy traffic on the BQE getting into Manhattan Starting to feel like a real view from Brooklyn

I started using the other cities in the region to source more utilities and industrial zones to keep Lower Manhattan balanced. Just for kicks, I named the dedicated garbage/industrial city "Newark" and the hilly residential area (for more shoppers) "Forest Hills". The additional support seems to be helping my main city develop. Several more mid and high rises have begun to spring up throughout the city. Roads haven't clogged yet so the extra utility cars (garbage, police, fire, recycling) have been able to make it in without much issue, although the northbound lane of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) is starting to see some traffic (as everyone tries to connect up into the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan). More buildings are spring up downtown. Traffic is starting to build up on the northbound lanes on the BQE Close up of South Ferry with the "Brooklyn Bridge" in the distance along the East River

Unfortunately SimCity doesn't allow for mixed zoning either. Nowadays a good chunk of buildings in New York are a mix of residential and commercial. Even for smaller apartment buildings including brownstones, the ground floor can be a shop or store while the rest of the floors are dedicated for residential. Additionally, several older commercial buildings downtown have been converted into residential. For the most part, I kept the blocks closest to the East River commercial while the middle portion of map has been turned residential. Battery Park City was zoned residential as well and the area to the northwest by the World Trade Center site is commercial. After a few "days," mid-rise buildings are starting to take shape. For those hoping to see something special, there really weren't any buildings that could represent the New York Stock Exchange and Trinity Church, so there's nothing in the map to represent those areas. However, I squeezed in City Hall towards the exit of the Brooklyn Bridge at the very north edge of the map. I also kept the World Trade Center park site empty, except for the commercial zones where WTC 2, 3 and 4 are located.

Recreating real world cities is much easier in SimCity 4 in pretty much every facet. Not only are buildings, streets, and transportation extremely limited, all maps are currently preset, making it impossible to accurately recreate any city. After scouring the various regions, Mesquite (of Titan Gorge) has a form that is somewhat close to the shape of lower Manhattan, although given the small city sizes, we're still not talking about a large chunk of Manhattan. Mesquite, city 1 in Titan Gorge Mesquite Area for re-creation As it works out, the region-highway entrance/exit is located across the river in what would be the Brooklyn analogue. Since tunnels aren't available, the only connection into the city will be the "Brooklyn Bridge," positioned as far north as possible.

Since I'm limited to the preset map with no option to change the terrain, I still had to make some creative "workarounds" while trying to keep as true to form to the city. I started with laying the ferry in the southern tip of the island, mirroring South Ferry. I was planning to place more ferries to reflect the numerous piers and ferries alongside the east side (Pier 11/IKEA ferry/Water Taxi) but the ferry bulidings in the game take up too much space, especially with the included parking lot. Instead, I used a high density avenue to represent the FDR Drive. To the west of the ferry, I started laying in Battery Park. The WTC sculpture is represented by the Plumbob Park. After that, it was just a matter of trying to replicate the various streets of Lower Manhattan on the map, although some of the smaller streets had to be removed, as the space in between was too small to allow for any actual building. As I moved further north towards Maiden Lane and John Street, I had to amalgamate a few streets to allow for the Brooklyn Bridge. By the way, the Brooklyn Bridge-like bridge shown in earlier art never made the cut. Instead, we're stuck with either a flat bridge or a Golden Gate-inspired suspension bridge. I opted for the latter. Real world map for comparison Roadwork with initial zoning I used high density avenues for both the FDR Drive and West Street. I used a low density avenue for what would be the entrance to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Too bad I can't lay tunnels under water either. With the large streets down, I started putting down Water Street and William Street to the east, Broadway and Trinity Place up the middle, and Battery Place to the west.

One of my favorite things to do with the SimCity games is to try to recreate as realistically as possible the city of New York, which is where I'm from. I try to get everything from parks to buildings to bridges to streets in its relative position based on the terrain. For example, I estimated the location of 59th street based on Roosevelt Island. The map I used I got from Forkboy2's Maps - which uses a real map of the New York City Metropolitan Area. The first few cities I've really developed are Downtown (Manhattan) and Midtown (Manhattan). Here are some screenshots. I've listed a couple of landmarks to keep an eye out for, those in quotes are renamed buildings that represent New York buildings. The Statue of Liberty Union Square Washington Square Park Park Avenue (around the 50s) FDR Drive (around the 50s) Guggenheim Museum (Upper East Side) Columbus Circle New York City Region Shot of Midtown and the traffic. I have yet to put the lakes in Central Park, but I put in the major roads that go through the park. I also have to develop the eastern edge of Manhattan, as well as Randall's Island, South Bronx (or "Downtown Bronx" as they recently decided to call it), Long Island City, Astoria, and the Brooklyn Border... oh and there's Jersey too... It's cool too see heavy traffic on Park Ave. as well as Midtown as a whole. You also have some traffic on the Triborough Bridge and the 59th Street Bridge. Things are quieter on the Lincoln Tunnel, but then again, I have to develop Jersey. Midtown (Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station, "Met Life Building," "Times Square Tower," Empire State Building, "Manhattan Mall," NBC Studios, New York Public Library) Midtown East (Chrysler Building, 59th Street Bridge, Roosevelt Island Tram, Midtown Tunnel) Midtown West (Lincoln Tunnel, Jacob Javits Center, New York Post Office, "Olympic Stadium - Jets Stadium (which may be built depending on New York's bid for the 2012 Olympics) SE Corner of Central Park including the Central Park Zoo Upper East Side (UES) - Gracie Mansion and the FDR Drive Columbia University (Riverside Park, West Side Highway, Morningside Park) Downtown Manhattan (There seems to be a lot of traffic in Brooklyn) The main highways are the Westside Highway, the FDR, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE). You have three of the East River Crossings (Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williiamsburg Bridge), as well as the Holland Tunnel to the west. I have yet to work on the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. You also have a view of Union Square down to the village area, including Washington Square Park and NYU. Below is also attempt at Bobst Library. The rest of NYU is replaced by the University building even though NYU is really divided by streets. This is Lower Manhattan which has to be developed some more. You can see the Holland Tunnel at the end of Canal Street. Freedom Tower, or the new World Trade Center Building is supposed to be built from 2006-2008, as one of the first buildings up in that area. Rather than leaving the World Trade Center empty, I decided to put what would be there in the coming decade. Next to the tower are schools, museums, parks, and plazas. To the east you can also see City Hall.

Hey, to anyone who has it - are there different tilesets - I know the Japanese screenshots show the Asian tileset while the American screenies show the Original/American set. I'm wondering if the Japanese landmarks made it over to these shores too.

Has anyone gotten the game yet? I'm debating whether I should get the Japanese version or wait - it seems that the tileset for the American game is the American set - I'm wondering if you can switch between the two, or if it's just the difference between the two versions.

I bought another SimCity to get back into things - your New York BATs are amazing. Are you planning on releasing any of them? You def. got a knack for it and I def. hope you make some more and update.

Hey! After... I guess a LOONG time off... I'm tempted to come back to SimCity-ing. I'm surprised to see the Manhattan CJ I started as locked... sigh... Well anyways, for anyone interested, here's what happened... my laptop (which I used to run the game) had crashed... years ago... and I think I moreorless lost all my information. I found my Rush Hour CD but don't exactly remember where my original SimCity 4 CD is. I've been very tempted to buy City Life: World Edition (even though I never played the original), but I actually can't find it in any store in Manhattan. So now I'm tempted just to go buy the freakin' SimCity Deluxe edition and save myself the effort of rummaging boxes of stuff (I just recently moved too) and re-install the darn thing... which also means I'll have to re-dl tons of stuff from STEX. So question is... is it worth all that work and hassle? After going back to Tokyo last month, I've been so tempted to either do a Tokyo CJ or a Chinese-Japanese version of New York. Sadly to say, after going back to Asia again, I am only further convinced that New York has truly declined its status as a "world capital" and has a lot to learn from the glittering metropolises in the East. Anyways, good chance I might step back into it. I guess I'll depend on my mood after work and lifting and if anyone thinks this is still worth it, or should I stay cheap and hold out for another year or two or three before SimCity 5 comes out (or if it's worth getting CL:WE).

looks good but just a note, u have rockefeller center reversed - the two small buildings face 5th avenue while the taller structure is on 6th.

just a couple of points for ya, since the boroughs extend numerous city squares u might want to rename some of ur cities - e.g. queens as long island city/jackson heights/etc., brooklyn as brooklyn heights or flatbush, etc. haha i never heard of barette point - more popular names for taht area can be astoria, riker's island, astoria - but then again, i dun go to the bronx that much.

good luck! new york's a popular city to make, but few make it accurately - it looks like u're off to a great start and i def. look forward to ur work - i've been just trying to work on the scale model of manhattan for simcity, using real-world zoning guides, street by street. the hardest part i found was downtown manhattan, since the streets (assuming u're basing midtown on the horizontal/vertical axis) rn't even on 45 degree angles. makes the bridges and highways hard to do too. but yeah, def. keep posting, i def. wanna see how it comes out!

it's def. a nice variation on new york city. i def. look foward to seeing how it plays out. keep on building!

if you have the discovery channel or am just into large engineering structures, you mite have heard of the proposal for sky city, tokyo, which is essentially an arcology the way we see it presented in sc2k. some stats: pop: 35,000 height: 3,300 ft. location: tokyo, japan essentially the structure wud resemble a series of bowls decreasing in size from bottom to top, allowing for natural sunlight and ventiliation. for more info, check: http://media.dsc.discovery.com/convergence/engineering/skycity/interactive/interactive.html

yeah the one thing about tokyo is that it is HARD to do, esp. on simcity - the roads are in all diff. angles. in addition, there's due to a lack of an asian set - it's hard to make any city look like tokyo (given it's very distinct architecture). there's been a movement among the japanese bat-ers to create a japanese tile set, and as more japanese bats r created, it shud get much better. but yeah, esp. since it is such a huge city, to do a replication of it wud require a huge amount of work.

r u making it still more of a local smaller fair, or a larger amusement park reward? if u're making it more of a permanent fairground, you might want to take out some of the trees and grass, at least the ones in the center. if you can find sculpted bushes and shrubs, as well as flower beds, it may give it a more, amusement park feel. you might want to also add some stands/stores (usually entrances always offer some kind of main street shopping district). oh yeah, and a ticket counter in front. lol. i know that sounds a lot. but either way what you have is already GREAT and i'm excited to see what the finished product will look like. keep up the good work. it's looking awesome!

lol. i made this city a LONG time ago... before my computer crashed... unfortunately i lost that city file. i did make a new new york region - more focused on manhattan. this one is real scale with every block represented. i'm going for the most accurate replication of Manhattan, using the nyc dept. of zoning guide as well as various other sources to give you the most real model of new york city. check it out at: Manhattan Region lately though, after watching sky captain and the world of tomorrow again, i decided to have a remake of new york city based on the city in the first half of the 20th century - so with only chicago/ny tilesets, elevated train tracks in manhattan, etc. i'm allowing a little more creative licensing on this, although i'm still using many historical guides. hopefully i'll put some pics of that up soon! but yeah... to answer you, i do have the met life building.

i was also thinking, while i'm guessing the whole lot can only count as one station, do u think it's possible to have a couple of different subway stops in the lot, to represent the different lines that go thru wtc - so i mean the path, cortland, and maybe the chambers street station for the e (the entrance begins right at the border).... although like i said, within the game it'll count all as one station. i vaguely recall on the east side of the center was this... not exactly a parking lot, but did allow certain cars and maybe buses to stop as well....

the road looks awesome - question though, can it actually function as a road as well? and if it does, would it function more like what in simcity is the avenue as it is in real life? it's a shame that simcity requires lots to be rectangular, otherwise one can place the wfc to the side of the roads. but regardless of that, it's looking really really (reallly!) great rite now.and even now is beyond words. honestly, an award or recognition should be created just for your work and dedication to this project. good job man and thanks for creating/sharing this with the simcity community.