zakuten

Although this reality should be present, are we sure we'd rather have the zoning be classified by wealth rather than the traditional density? I, myself, would like to see these kind of neighborhoods arise spontaneously, through autonomous processes in the new model. Perhaps a preference to live near your own class or some such built into how they choose their houses or whatever is closest to the handling model.

I know O'Hare itself has been shot down, but terminals 2 or 5 might be interesting, especially if you convert the people-mover station in 5 into a elevated or monorail transit-enabled. But, of course, we're already far ahead of ourselves.

Being a native Chicagoan, I'd love to see some more of the older buildings of the city. One gem that gets overlooked is the Board of Trade building, I think-- though it was used as Wayne Industries for those Batman movies. One of the most interesting buildings, and a great idea for a park lot, is the Garfield Park Conservatory or the "Fountain Of Time" in Jackson Park. I'd also suggest the Thompson State Of Illinois Center, as it's quite a unique look, even if not the tallest.

For wider toll booths, I tend to use the Network Widening Mod, and a tollbooth download together, to widen the lanes out and then back in. An added bonus is the lane pathing will go through all of the options, unlike (for example) Mr Snoopy's widened MaxisHW booths.

I use Maxis highways for a purposeful "older-not-up-to-standards" kind of feel, in dense neighborhoods. Some of the older roads in Chicago are practically MaxisHW, so I use it for that kind of feel.

I hit upon an idea but I'm not sure how the system handles this and also if it's part of the vanilla or not. In order to encourage a certain "class" of resident, could specific parks be modified to have a localized radius desirability effect for the specific class? I thought of a series, for example: R$- Basketball Court R$ $- Playground R$ $ $- Tennis court. I know the possibility exists that this is a very simple mod, but I'm incredibly bad with the technical things. Obviously, the effect would have to be big enough (in strength of effect) to make it be a useful way to "groom" neighborhoods to the desired wealth level, but small enough (in both strength and radius) it wouldn't cause half the tile to change over. Edit: This would also need to remove the park effect, so I'm told.

Also, please be merciful and consider a flip for those of us who drive on the right!! Although I suppose one could do inside-the-median with those...

@nathanthemayor: I think the unusual part to people is the use of manual on the inside; usually most open-road tolling has the stopping customers exit. They still look very good though!

Thanks for the info, TowerDude-- In fact, it was just this mod I had before I lost my Plugins folder, so thanks for helping me get it back!

新发展中Xin fazhan zhong In the Midst Of New Developments Welcome back to Hangzhou! Luckily for us, the town got some funding from the government, allowing it to make a spur train track into town. Now, admittedly, this is still a bit of a hike from Meijiawu, but that's OK. Zhejiang province has begun a rural highway in Meijiawu, to connect to Hangzhou proper. The new road: Uploaded with ImageShack.us A bit bigger tea village: Uploaded with ImageShack.us "New" Meijiawu has also been established, allowing the town to grow on land a bit less useful for the tea industry. After all, no reason to waste the good farmland, right? Uploaded with ImageShack.us ------------------------------ In Hangzhou, town's grown a bit, and look at that! A brand spanking new Zhongguo Tielu freight station! The farmers here and in Meijiawu send the tea through here, --but not too far... Uploaded with ImageShack.us ------------------------ Here is the junction where our spur meets the mainline. As you can see, there's a bit of tea processing done here, as well as a bit of housing for the workers. Of course, as one could guess from the unfinished town square, this little village won't be little for long. For now, though, it's just barely been named, and rather unpoetically, as Sanjiaocun, "Triangle Village". ....a bit obvious, that. --------------------------------------- Well! That's all for now, everyone! I'll be waiting for your votes on which of the three to focus on for next update, so don't forget to leave your input in the poll!

Update 2: Meijiawu Meijiawu is a neighboring tea farming village, with even more land suitable for tea. Currently, though, even the infant Hangzhou dwarfs it, as Meijiawu has only 42 inhabitants. The entirety of the village: Tea fields: The fields should be ready to harvest soon; but how to get the crops out? Well, never fear, infrastructure's here! ....well, at least next update it is.

I believe some of the simulator fixes will weight congestion at a higher or lower degree, but that's not my area of expertise. I think that purposefully congesting Chapel Flats by reducing it to a road may help; you'd just have to wait for them to get sick of it. In my experience, crash animations come far before the gridlock, so...

Also i'd point out lightning and tornadoes are ingame as disasters.

I appreciate the concern. Don't worry, you'll start seeing more and more custom content as it goes along.

Hangzhou huanying nin! -- Welcome to Hangzhou! Hangzhou is a city in Zhejiang province, China, actually the provincial capital. With a population at six million and growing, it's one of the rising stars among Chinese cities in the eyes of the world. However, Chinese have long renowned Hangzhou for it's beauty. In fact, this ancient city was the object of ebullient praise by Marco Polo himself, as it was the capital of the Southern Song dynasty at the time. Hangzhou's most famous landmark is West Lake. Built by man, the lake is considered one of the most beautiful places in all of China. My CJ, though, will be a bit different. Using NHP's Hangzhou map (link below), I'm going to build the city, from scratch. Please feel welcome to watch me develop this city from a tiny village to the metropolis it is today in reality! Map by NHP at the link below: https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=25276 Overview, with editing to add West Lake. (Note, West Lake not authentic to real form) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And now for the beginning! The city of Hangzhou begins as a small tea-farming town at the shores of West Lake. Known as Longjing tea, due to a neighboring village, the tea here is some of the best in the world to use for green tea. Currently, Hangzhou only has 182 people, with long commutes from their houses in the valley to the farms in the nearby mountains, in the tea forest areas. (For future reference, this maptile is named Gucheng-qu, or Old City District) The Village: Still without paved roads, this is the beginning of the great city. As you can see, it's rapidly, and a bit chaotically, developing, as economic reforms make the Longjing tea a valuable export. The Tea Farms: Situated in the hills, these farms hold green gold. The small bushes between the trees are Longjing (Dragonwell) tea bushes. Many small farms have sprung up here to harvest the tea. Chaqiu (Tea Hill) farms: West Valley farms: (I'd also like to add that if you know some better ways to simulate tea bushes through agricultural lots, I would be eternally grateful.)