Priyon

How do you mean 'smart cities' in the context of SC4? By that, I mean very efficient cities with a good road layout without any jams, availability of services everywhere, eco-friendly planning and minimum pollution, clean and efficient power and water system, recycling and minimum garbage, jobs and workplaces in the right area without polluting much, a well-built transportation system, a well balanced, educated and healthy population, a well balanced budget with enough reserves in case they are needed, all this in a very space-efficient and completely realistic manner. Also using Euro-Contemporary architecture set since that is the closest thing in the game to modern and contemporary architecture. These are basically the smart city features that can be built in SC4. Real world smart cities have much more like high connectivity, electronic and smart government system, a dedicated goal (most smart cities are built for a purpose, such as IT sector for example) and they are sustainable and eco-friendly with buildings not being constructed by traditional materials.

My playing goal changes depending on what I had in mind before starting to play. But most of the time, I am building Japanese style cities and towns, especially based on Tokyo and anime. Which means modern semi-utopian happy urban areas with excellent health, education and police coverage without much pollution, just like real Japanese cities. Also, they are sprawling, so I have to fill entire region to be close to reality, and I have HUGE regions (there is one 6400 km square region I am building on currently) which take over a year to build up. I use a dedicated plugin folder I have built over years for that. I never use non-Maxis buildings unless I am using that Japanese plugin folder. But as I said, the goals change. Sometimes I build villages and rural areas surrounded by farms, mountains (if I wanted to play a mountain scenario), rivers and so on. Sometimes I want to build small industrial towns. Sometimes I just spend a week planning out a city and then build it to see how it does. Sometimes I want to construct a huge sprawl spanning several cities in the region, sometimes I build eco-friendly cities. And when I am not building planned cities and regions, I frequently just play for fun. Growing cities naturally and then unleashing disasters on them, sometimes playing like Simcity 3000 (building a city and then 4 cities on it's border, and playing just the first one). There are times when I try out cities that look like historical ones, like 19th century style cities or cities based on ancient Roman/Indian/Chinese urban planning. And finally, I build cities just to look at them in non-gamey aesthetic perspective, i.e. just constructing and not 'playing' the game. For example my Tokyo based city is just like that. There are regions that I built up just to see how beautiful they are from the top. Currently I am trying out the concept of Smart Cities in SC4 to see if they can work as well as they do in real life, or not. But whatever I do, I ALWAYS build realistic cities. So no stupid grids unless I need them, no funky and unrealistic looking cities, no gamey city planning and abusing the system, and so on.

There is another parade of buses incoming from the left.

In my region have a 8x8 'metropolis' based on Tokyo. It's over an year and I haven't even managed to build the port area. The 64 cities function from cheat power plants since it wasn't realistic to have huge, polluting buidlings everywhere around the metropolis, especially in the middle of what were exclusively commercial and residential zones. God, it is hard to build a city that large without losing motivation after some time.

You guys should look at the Chinese cities. Apart from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, most of them are horrendously monotonous. I think having same kind of building over and over again does represent reality, only with different political orientation.

I build Japanese style cities, and when I am not building the Tokyo region I am building fictional Japanese cities. Based on anime and manga if possible. Especially Pokemon-style cities.

Region Census does have a limit to amont of regions though. I tried converting my 20x20 large city tile flat region (80km x 80km) and it crashed every time. Meanwhile I built cities on an 8x8 large city tile square on the same region, and they can be rendered without problems.

My personal strategy is to put the taxes for wealthy sims on highest, and then build the city without the villas. Once I am satisfied with the number of low and middle-wealth population, I check 'make historical' on their houses. Then I restore the taxes on the rich to normal. This prevents housing from being turned into huge, ugly villas.

My city, Bhopal, which is right in the centre of India, has some of the worst city planning you'll ever see anywhere. There are even worse cities here, but Bhopal is pretty bad too. The map of roads themselves are not so bad. The problematic thing is the extremely unplanned buildup alongside these roads, done by severely undereducated and extremely corrupt city planners, most of them being dumb fools who probably have never seen a real city in their life. Most of them are old and are only good at making attempts at copying big cities based on 20th century socialist models. Hence, almost nothing. Firstly, the city is de-facto divided in two zones. One is old Bhopal, the city that existed from 16th century onwards, and everything else that is called new Bhopal, which has some decent road planning. The old city resembles an Arab town from 12th century in the Middle East, not surprising it since it was built under Muslim governors (and later independent feudal lords) from central Asia brought during Mughal Imperial era. It has extremely narrow dirt streets where most cars cannot reach, extremely closely built houses that resemble a rich stone slum, and has little to none space for modern facilities like schools and sports facilities. What land remained was occupied by the mosques, ending any semblence of city planning it might've ever had. It is commonly referred to as Muslim quarter by the people of the city. The rest of the city (AKA new Bhopal) is different. It has wide roads up to 6 lanes, many bus lanes, two well established railway lines. We have a business district, a market zone, an industrial township constructed back in '80s unfortunately in the middle of the city, a lot of housing areas with parks and etc. No high rises, but after all Bhopal is a quiet, suburban residential city. Now that might seem like a decent place, but then the problem starts kicking in. There are absolutely NO pavements/footpaths beside the roads. What pavements are there are from '80s as well, and they are just huge ugly concrete platforms, simply pathetic attempts to make them look like a pavement. They are almost completely unwalkable, because the city planners (with their undeveloped brains) planted trees in the middle of the pavements. There are no drains besides the roads, so if it ever rains heavily the people suffer massive floods on the roads that cannot be dealt with until it naturally dries up after a few weeks. There is no parking system anywhere. There are NO zebra crossings. Well there are some, but they wear out within a week and no one uses them. There are no traffic lights at almost all the crossings either. They just built a stupid-looking roundabout at almost every single road junction. The bus lanes are completely unplanned as well. They just arbitrarily destroyed the divider of a 4-lane road, and took the inner two lanes as bus lanes and walled them up. It failed because only one bus at a time could pass through the road, so much narrow it had become. Besides, the shopkeepers have a tendency to snatch land and build upon the roads, which leaves out any possibility of correcting the damage done to the city. Parks, they are there but only in name, most have delapidated and become hubs of criminals, smokers and drinkers by the evening. What parks remain safe have nothing a park should have - benches, swings, decent lighting and such, just wild trees. There are frequent traffic jams everywhere. There are maybe two fire stations in the city, but they don't have any fire trucks (because they don't actually know what a fire truck is). The ambulances never take anything less than an hour or two to reach a small distance, so ambulances are as good as nothing. The police are divided in zones to handle, but those zones are so badly designed that the policemen are always confused as to take any action at all when called for help, or just let the men from the neighbouring zone to handle it. The worst thing that has happened over time is forceful land snatching and building of unplanned concrete jungles over it. Some real-estate managers just snatch thousands of acres of land wherever they find it, build hundreds of monotone housing units on that land and sell it out. The city officials, the same uneducated lazy men, just stand by and watch (since they get a share of the profit as well) Overall, it is a vehemently wild city. The road map was well planned, but that's about the only good thing about urban planning this city. It is in it's current state because of uneducated, lazy and corrupt men ruling over it, and the sick mentality of the population living in the city. Large metropolitan cities in India like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and others are completely different, they are usually well planned and built, like any decent city of the western world, but Bhopal is really bad in terms of urban planning.

Looks great. As I have been to the Paradox forums and seen the feature reveals there, it seems like this game has a lot of features Simcity 2013 was missing, plus a lot of good things. Besides, it is going to have a lot of modding abilities. Hopefully this game turns out good. Still, this is going to be very different from Simcity series, and SC4 in particular.

That's excellent, Oerk. I'll take that 'Little Shibuya' as a role model in my 20X20 large city tile region completely based on Tokyo...that I am building these days. BTW, what is that river mod? I searched all around for it and couldn't find it anywhere.

It seems very nice. Although I'll have to say, there is a good chance for an aeroplane to hit the highway or that building so close to it.

Very nice. I noticed some Japanese-themed buildings there. Are you also building a Japan-themed city, or just use the buildings?

Great screenshots, 47ply. A very nice blend of scycrapers, mid-rise commercial buildings and offices, highways, commuter rail and a natural forested coastline.

Great! Now how about you go fill those empty spaces with some buildings?

Now that's a great 'business park' as I'd call it, clhigh7. I'd tuck in some small 1x1 shops in the few open grass areas, although that might ruin the good look it has now. I love how you placed parks and trees so well. Thanks for the support as well.

Great oriental buildings. What bat are these? Is it a pack? Thanks mate. These are from a Japanese site (or probably two). I forgot the names, but they were linked on Japanese BAT gallery on Simcity 4 Devotion forums, and then going deep into those sites I found the buildings. Some buildings are in a pack, while some are individual.

Here is a close-up of one of the many CBD districts I am laying out in my giant Tokyo-based city region: It is still under development though.

And here I thought that Edo was actually a minor fishing town under the Kamakura (AKA Minamoto) Shogunate, and had little importance until 15th century when it was conquered by the Hojo (who ruled from Kawagoe), and it still remained a little town with a few fortifications and a small garrison. And then Tokugawa Ieyasu was made lord of Kanto region, and decided that Edo was in the best location to be the capital of the region, and he made it grow into a city rivalling Kyoto itself, with a huge castle that was heavily influenced by the giant mammoth named Azuchi castle. It grew and grew, and when Ieyasu became Shogun, he made Edo the virtual capital of Japan, and expanded the infrastructure with meticulous planning in the form of the FIve Routes of Edo, alongside the fast expanding canals for irrigation and transport. Ah, I think I need to stop playing Shogun II Total War and do some more research in peaceful in infrastructure of Tokyo and Japan in general. But still, it sounds like a painful task to a newbie like me, to begin from Gempei War beginnings of Edo and continue it all the way to today's Tokyo. It is already a pain to build those artificial islands alongside the coast, with all their high cliffed shores for using seawalls. I have not even began with the canals, and a big river based on Arakawa river of Tokyo. Doing it from the oh-so-humble Fujiwara era beginnings would require me years and years to build this city. Well, in historical sense, there were only two roads connecting Edo to Kyoto. The main traffic went from the great coastal road that connected western Japan (Chugoku region) to the far tips of eastern Japan (Tohoku region). Edo was situated along that road, which stuck close to the coastline and as a result, became very long and turned into a semi-circle if Kyoto was destination. The second road went north, from the mountains of what used to be Shinano province. As a result, it was a long, winding road and a critical supply route for the warlords once Shogunate period started. In modern sense, with Shinkansen I suppose it is not even a few hours of riding the train and you are at Kyoto already. On roads, Japanese highways are top-notch to allow fast travel, even if the two main roads to Kyoto are essentially modern highways built over the same old two roads, one on coast and one on mountain.

It all depends upon the playing style and choice. Many people prefer to start building from one point and develop their city gradually, and there are two categories of those people. First one is those who develop city-by-city. Placing a very basic network, a few housing lots and space for small shops, and farmland or small factory area...And then growing gradually as population increases, adding new factory areas, housing, shopping districts and such. Tranport networks are usually added to bend with the natural flow - most of the structure is kept without too much reorganization, for example when building light rails. Eventually the industry begins to shift outwards to other cities, as the main city's turns into a commercial center, and building density increases. Once the development in the city is satisfactory, the players build another city, connect it to previous one and wherever else they want to, and continue the development. The cities grow one by one into a full region. There are also players who play with gradual development, but carve out 3-4 cities right at the start and connected to each other with small roads, and slowly develop them all along the same pace instead of one-by-one. This one, I think, gives the most realistic experience of all. Then there are players who like to have at least basic planned infrastructure in place. Building basic road connections between cities, some prototype outer highways, probably a rail line or two, and a dedicated place for factories. There is a general idea of where the players want their farms, villages, suburbs, mid rises and the CBD and tallest buildings will be. They build the most basic of infrastructure, and improve on the lines, with modifications when needed. And there are rare utter hardcore planners like me. I never build cities one by one, and I plan everything to death. I refuse to even give power and start the cities, until all the zones (including high density) are laid out in their final stage, water pipes are placed beneath every road and street and pumps are connected, el-train and subway lines are formed AND their stations named, all districts and major roads (AKA avenues) and city blocks are named, highways are running around the center and border of the area, monuments, schools and libraries, hospitals, police and fire stations have been built, industries and landfills have been laid out, and all the budget and ordinances have been enabled. And this has to be done throughout the region, across every city. Only then do I grant power and start the development. This becomes a big headache, takes insane amount of time and motivation, and requires cheats and cheat lots. But oh well, I play to build realistic and mostly anime-style cities depicting Japanese urban culture, and worry less about money since entire SC4 was actually based on US cities. I've made a separate copy of plugins folder to play in the 'realistic Simcity' way and handling money, issues and such. __________________________________________________________________________________________ And a related question, which I was going to post in a new thread but it is relevant here: These days I am doing a new blank and completely flat region, with a custom config.bmp file (such a simple one minute job with Paint, indeed). Region is completely based on Tokyo (but is not Tokyo itself, I don't possess skills for realistic representations), and is huge, over 20x20 large city tiles. AKA 80 kilometers straight from one end of the region to another. It is going to be flat for most parts, except for the almost straight rivers (for compatibility with various seawalls) that I will dig out using hole digging lots and PEG Leveller, those numerous industrial islands of Tokyo Bay, and a few mountains at the far outer corner of the region which I will add later. The areas of Tokyo bay have their own tiles. I picked 64 regions around the southern corner, which are actually 8x8 large city tiles. I started named cities in these 64 tiles already, leaving the rest of the region blank. But I have yet to start the real development. This 32km x 32km area will form something like the 23 Wards area of Tokyo, and will be the heart and core of the region. My aim is to develop this area fully before even thinking of the suburbs and outer regions, because they won't be needed in any way, given the huge city population in these 64 regions alone, but they add a lot of realism and actually something to build on those tiles. Once the core city (which I call 64 Wards) is completely filled up and all possible development is done, I will begin the gradual development of suburbs by creating new cities lying on the rail lines, build stations and then develop them. Industry is completely on the islands, which I have not finished yet. So my question is, how should I develop this city? Till yet, I have been going through my usual strategy of building everything right in place before starting the actual game itself, but it is a big time-consuming headache. I start to build a city, but then I get lost in thoughts wondering what will be the most realistic planning. After some time I end up deleting the entire city and starting again, and then again thinking that it is not good enough and deleting it....rinse and repeat. Should I develop this cit...erm...these 64 cities gradually one by one, growing according to the needs and flow until the area is completely filled up? Or should I continue laying out all the structures and complete connections or all transit networks? Or should I lay out the basic city infrastructure, the main roads (aka avenues and NWM) circling the city, the circular highway that surrounds the city and another one at it's centre, the heavy rail line that represents Shinkansen here (and not the BTM), the el-train/subway/GLR networks (which are the biggest of all problems) and the basic neighbourhoods are laid out?

For 21st Century Tower, it is here: http://27.pro.tok2.com/~chilitomato2/ Click on the 'Bat & Lot' on the top, and then click on 'Commercial Buildings', and in the list of scyscrapers there is the building you want. For Marina Crown: EDIT: Ninjad by Schreifer...

Found it for ya : I remember a picture from somewhere, in it there were steel barriers on the sides of the highway, and not just centre. Is that mod been released here at ST? Not sure if it was RHW or Maxis highway.