Commikaze

Typically, the centre of the 'original' city is what develops into the downtown area years later. The skycrapers are shiny because the tallest buildings only arise from a the greatest need for space where land is becoming limited (which is 'now'). These skyscrapers are built on the land of older, smaller buildings that are demolished to make the space. A lot of times the skyscrapers directly neighbour other older smaller buildings instead of making a sharply defined cluster of towers. These downtown areas often began with infrastructure for the 'original' city that, when modernized, hardly has the space capable of handling the volume now necessary. Constructing a freeway into the center of a downtown area comes at quite a cost, so cities may avoid this by flanking the downtown areas with freeways that connect to the main central roads. Roads are not planned by architects in real life. Roads are built for ulitlity. To answer your questions, based on my experience (as a traveller/resident, not an actual urban planner): 1) Downtowns in North America often have a commercial area somewhat seperate from residential. Although it is not segregated, the downtown core is primarily commercial. 2) Downtown is surrounded by medium-density buildings. 3) I personally would not put a highway through downtown. Only a planned city could accomplish this without quite an expense. Realistically, the land is cheaper in the areas surrounding downtown, and therfore more likely to be purchased by the municipality for freeway construction.

I've found that the best way to help out I-HT that grows into a predominantly I-M area is to place parks near the buildings. This can very noticeably improve the occupancy of the buildings, as well as promoting the growth of I-HT in newly zoned land. If you want to select for only I-M, you can zone the medium-density industrial into an area that is not serviced with water. I-HT will not at all grow without water, but neither will high-density factories if you later choose to change the zoning.

I recently installed NWM to revolutionize the traffic in my region, and I am finding that I am unable to make certain transitions, such as: NMAVE-4 to MAVE-4 or AVE-4 Maxis Highway to MAVE-6 or 2X OWR-3 (without needing a transition to two lanes in between) AVE-6 to 2X OWR-3 (without requiring a transition to MAVE-6 between) Will these transitions be made possible in the future? Also, since 4 lanes are possible in a single tile with the NMAVE-4, could there be a single tile OWR-4?