MrFingers

Anything else is a biased choice.

NEW YORK HANDS DOWN

*does the chicken dance to goa-psy trance music*

Inappropriate comment - MM

Civ 4? I understand what you are saying. it is tough, but it's part of the challenge i guess... did you see on my tree theory thread? the penninsula below was industrial, but other than the street pattern changing, the difference isnt that bad i dont think..

well it's probably very functional, but slow. the fun is in thinking on a large region scale to be honest, and the speed with which the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc cities develop

This is my first attempt at a tutorial, infact the things I'm showing you here I only discovered myself a couple days ago. While I am still getting better at it, there really was a click-moment when I realised how to do this, so I think I'm already at a point where I can pass on what I learned to others. I apologise for the random picture formats, I used shutterfly.com and they decided to do what they please with the pictures I uploaded. The following is a tutorial in how to create realistic suburbs of low density residential. The main idea is to remain space efficient and functional, while incorporating a tree-like road network. Trees are a very good way of describing this. Avenues are trunks, roads are branches, streets are twigs, and zoning is the leaves. Highways are region scale, not city scale, so I'm not including them here. Your highway should be from where your people live, directing itself into the main downtown of your region, ie from residence to jobs. You really shouldnt worry at all about the specifics of your city layout when you build your highway, it should just trace land formations (mountians and water) and move through the middle of areas people will live as it winds away from your region's center. Avenues. These are major traffic arteries. They should come right off the highway and then start to meander through where your residential areas will be. When you place your avenue, don't try to count squares or think in too much detail about where you are going to build your road network around it, just place it right through the middle of the area you are developing. The picture below illustrates this, you can also see I have threaded an EL rail through it. I did much the same with the EL rail as I did with the avenue, only taking a different route and making it more dense, hence it splits. Now forget the Avenues and EL rail. Don't work from the avenues, that is how you get inefficient space usage. This is probably the most important point I'm making here; once you have put in the tree trunks, work backwards from the twigs and leaves. In this next picture you can see I've zoomed in all the way to the furthest corner. At this point you have to decide on your lot sizes, I have chosen 1x2. My aim now is to capture as many potential 1x2 lots with streets, you can see how I have done that below. I have highlighted the areas I'm giving road access to in red. Now I continue like this. My two definitive boundaries are the highway and the railroad, so I first make sure that I am capturing the lots along them before I move inside where I have total freedom. Next I grow my second twig. There is a lot next to the railroad I've highlighted that I needed to capture because it was in the corner and therefore inaccessable to the first twig. I could have just branched off towards the railroad with the first twig to get that one, but streets with corners that are outside of junctions look more attractive and natural. I've also highlighted the lot inside the corner of the highway that I took. I have left space there because that is where I think I want my first branch (road) to be. There was no specific reason to this, just random. The only factors to deciding where your branches should be is how many leaves are dependent on it and that's about it. In the follwing picture I have decided to hook my EL railway up into the corner where my first road is. Remember that everything you place is fluid and can be moved at your convenience. Now I have filled the corner between the EL railway and the highway, and fleshed everything out with some leaves. Usually I leave out adding the zones for a while longer, but it is easier to continue with them in because then you can see where you have gotten up to. You can see I have left open spaces in the middle, this was done because it is a nice spot to put some parks or light commericial in later as I see fit. Next I have done the second branch completely. I did not do this step by step because the principle is exactly the same. Just look at how the streets are laid and and you can see how I did it. Remember, working from the outside (constraining factors first) inwards to where you have room to do whatever you want. I have left a gap of 1 tile from the avenue. This is entirely your choice, but I do it because I don't want any lots facing the avenue and also so I can line trees along it or commercial. Trees are great because they get rid of the pollution, if you look across the rail tracks you can see I've done that over there And finally my third branch. Exactly the same method. I hope some of you found this useful. I know I would have 1 week ago, that is why I wrote this up for you. Just remember, lay the avenue arteries through the middle of where people will live, and then work from the outside in!

I'll show you guys a few pictures of an entire city based on this layout when im finished with it

I have serious issues just letting my city develop naturally in an uncontrolled, wild, and irregular way... I'm really trying to allow it to look more realistic, but it's tough for me not to over plan it and try to maximise space usage etc. I've been getting better at it for low densities, but it's inbetween the low density and the high density grid area that I cannot seem to get right... does anyone else have this problem or am I a lone freak about this? has anyone had this issue and found a technique to get around it?

Yup, no there are plenty of little tweeks and alternatives, the main idea here is the tree patterns which are hard to do when you are just a gridding nub like me

Hey guys, thanks for your comments! rushhourfreak, what did you mean by "you should connect you suburban areas with the street ending"? And I have NAM btw

so I got a message saying I had a congested street, but then when I zoomed to it, it was in the middle of a newly developed area with no buildings to make traffic yet. Odd... so I route queried it and look what came up!

ditch windows, get a mac only then will you realise the error of your ways.

They did go away, I think it happened because that whole area used to be 6x6 avenue grid before I demolished it.

Why ANYONE would buy windows vista is completely beyond me.

I have found U bends off avenues are quite good

I know it's not a highway, but the queensborough bridge across the east river in new york has been under one type of maintainance or another for as long as I can remember (that's atleast 15 years since I probably wouldn't remember under the age of 5).

*imagines how many buildings around it suffered as meteors rarely are right on target*

Just to give you an idea of what I'm asking, two solutions I've worked out myself so far are: Build the avenues flowing outwards from the downtown area with growing distances between them and in a squiggly line which traces down the middle of flat landscape to build on and then flesh them out with zoning. make turns in roads outside of just junctions, ie put bends in the road that are not simply off junctions. I guess my question is... how do you build road networks that are somewhere in between trees(low density) and grids(high density)?

smog is actually yellowish. couple centuries ago it was black/grey because it was mostly soot, but today there are alot of sulphur compounds which gives it that yellow haze look.

can someone show us a couple tricks to finishing and starting double highways created with this method?

I was about to say in my last post that it looked similar to new york because of the sim's pathfinding it is very hard to replicate a real city and make it functional.

jacobs, I really like the way you developed your road network, it looks very realistic.

nice quert try building in the middle of the region, that way you can link more cities together!

buses and trains are supreme. actually i never use subways at all because I find they get far too congested and they eliminate road usage which slows CO and CS demand.