Potetgul

Thanks Nonny, your reply has been very helpful as usual. I'm not confused about the difference between density and wealth levels, just looking for a way to develop nice I-HT zones. After doing some closer checking, I realized my problem isn't as bad as I thought: I saw I-HT buildings turning darker and more sooty and thought they were abandoned, but they weren't fully abandoned, they were just not fully-staffed I guess. I then realized that fully-abandoned buildings look almost black. So functionally, it looks like having some I-HT interspersed with the I-M is not a problem. I'll live. But I still don't like it! Hah! That being said, since fiddling with tax rates is indeed citywide, I would probably steer clear of that. So what are high-density industrial zones like? I don't think I've ever zoned that dense with industrial. Never felt the need to, as I've always been able to satisfy demand with medium density zones. I know that with C and R, I get taller buildings housing more sims or providing more jobs, but I can't envision industrial "skyscrapers." Are there different lots that grow? Bigger factories? Or does the high density just tend to favor I-HT development over the others?

When I research SC4, one of the issues I see most frequently asked about or explained is how to get I-HT to develop in a city. Totally understandable, people want their cities to advance and to fill them with healthy, wealthy sims. I want to ask the opposite question, though: Are there any methods or ideas for limiting HT development in certain areas? More specifically, I want to keep it from mixing in with my Manufacturing. I ran into a situation where my first and main city started getting some IM demand, but there wasn't much room left to zone it, so I started a neighbor city specifically to fill that demand, with a little bit of residential and a small medium-density industrial zone. I only needed to raise the ID tax level to 12% to ensure a nice, negative demand level for that, and I got a little IM-only industrial park started, just enough to satisfy IM demand in the first city. Then I played the first city for a while, until the demand for IM went up again. In the meantime I had also managed to generate some demand for HT. I went into City #2 and zoned more industrial in a long rectangle. The sections at the end of this rectangle, farthest from the existing Manufacturing development, grew a mix of HT and M. The pollution from the M then chased out some of the HT and I had abandoned buildings in my zone. I am a control freak and did not like seeing HT develop just to be chased out by the pollution of its neighbors. I'd rather not spend my time bulldozing abandoned buildings if I can avoid it. Can it be avoided? Is a mix of M and HT something I will have to live with until demand for HT rises enough for me to be able to grow some exclusively-HT zones, or is there a way to balance desirability of a zone such that M will develop, but not HT? Maybe whoever is reading this thinks I am missing the point of the game and should just take the HT that I can get because it is a good thing for my city and region, but this is bugging me. If there's no viable option I'll let this slide and plan to bulldoze stuff. And grumble about it. Side question: I've never played a region long enough to find out for myself, but is it possible (without using mods or cheats) to develop a region so that all dirty industrial is eliminated, or is it necessary to have a place for it somewhere? All of my past attempts to get rid of it and replace it with cleaner industry just threw my whole region out of whack. It was chaos and anarchy, I tell ya...

Thanks everyone for the replies, the solution seems clear. I am playing on a pre-rendered map downloaded from the STEX and don't plan on terraforming much, so I'll leave it alone.

So I reached a point with the first city in a region at which I decided it would be nice to expand with a neighboring city. I started a new city in the city directly north of the original city and played it for a while. Then I wanted to go back to the original city to register the demand generated by the new city. When I opened City #1, I got a message letting me know the edges of the map needed to be reconciled. I expected this, since I had built some roads on the edge of the map in City #2 that altered the terrain. But I was kinda surprised when the whole western edge of my map got highlighted for reconciling, too, since I had never touched the city to the west of the original one. On reflection, I realized that the development along the western edge of City #1 must have brought the terrain out of synch with the tile to the west and that's why it needs to be reconciled now. Okay, simple enough to fix--since I haven't touched the city to the west, I can cancel the Reconcile, exit City #1 without saving, open the blank city to the west of it, reconcile its edges with the original city's edges (instead of doing it the other way around), and it won't hurt anything because I haven't developed the city to the west anyhow. Right? Evidently not, because when I opened the city to the west and clicked Reconcile Edges, suddenly I am told the edges are alread reconciled. Exit, making sure to save this time, since the edges seem to be reconciled and if that happened due to something that occurred upon opening the map, I would want that preserved--go back to City #1, and from that side, the game still considers the edges to be un-reconciled. Paradox. Pretty annoying. So I'm thinking of just ignoring the whole reconciling the edges thing, because I don't see anything going wrong if I just leave it alone. But I'm posting this here to make sure I'm right about that before I spend much more time working on any of the cities in question. Anyone else encountered this kind of thing? Do you just leave the edges alone too? I wouldn't think the kind of small terrain discrepancies that emerge as an inevitable result of routine development should make a big difference or cause any big problems--right? So just don't bother? Or...?

z1: Yes, I had been using Park & Ride, without fully understanding how it affects the simulation. Now I have read the Traffic Simulator guide and understand why Park & Ride is a very bad idea for a city with no mass transit system at all as of yet. Heh! So now I've got it turned off and things are running more smoothly. Thanks!

Okay--Tried installing NAM with various different settings, and also tried tweaking the Traffic Simulator a bunch, and it looks like the "problem" is caused by setting the traffic capacity to Ultra: The higher I set the capacity, either in the Traffic Simulator or when installing the NAM, the more I see pedestrian traffic. I guess this is one of the ways the NAM augments the traffic capacities? When I set the capacity lower, I get more car traffic. So it's nothing "wrong" per se, but I must have been playing with Ultra settings. Yeah...

Update: Uninstalled the NAM and traffic went back to normal. Actually developed some areas with congestion. Never thought I'd be glad to see that! Reinstalled the NAM afterwards, and things went back to pedestrian. One or two actual car routes appeared, but people are still mostyl walking.

I see someone else has posted a thread regarding a similar problem: All their sims cycling to work from one city to a neighboring city, but that person seemed to find a "fix" to the problem in using roundabouts. My problem is a bit different. I am working on the first city in a brand new region, after reinstalling SimCity 4 and the NAM. I've had both installed and working properly before, and this time I did not even bother running SC4 before also installing the NAM. The city is a medium-sized city, with development pretty evenly-dispersed all over the map. This morning, I poked around with the route query tool to find that pretty much all traffic in my city is pedestrian, no matter where I click. I have an industrial area right next to the edge, and clicking on one or two of those buildings reveals a tiny bit of freight traffic heading to the nearby connections--but aside from that it is all pedestrian. People are walking to work from one corner of the map to the opposite diagonal corner where the industrial zone is. Seriously? I tried running theTraffic Simulator Configuration Tool to see what might be causing this, and I noticed that when I run it, a CMD dialog box opens up that displays the following error: 'java' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. If I exit out of that window, the Traffic Simulator shuts down too, so it seems that the TSCT tries to use java but has some problem with that and crashes. If I leave that CMD window alone, the TSCT stays stable and seems to work, though. I just tried uninstalling and reinstalling Java, but that doesn't seem to have helped. I'm totally confused now, not sure what is wrong or what to do. Any help would be greatly appreciated.