• Welcome to SC4 Devotion Forum Archives.

~The United Nation of Sims~

Started by Opkl, July 09, 2011, 12:12:39 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Opkl

General Information
Hello everyone and welcome to my FIRST MD! ;D  Unlike other MDs', I will not be narrating in the voice of the mayor.  Instead, I will be a journalist telling you (the readers) about what is/has happen in the region.  So I guess this is a City Journal.  You- (the readers) will be the sims in my region.  Whenever there are major developments, you will be able to vote on what should happen.  My CJ will not just feature one city, but many.  Also, all city tiles in my region will be counties that make up 2-3 states.  I am starting on a mostly empy region with the exception of one county.  That county is called Douglas County.

   

History
Douglas County, Algonquin was formed in 1825 and named in honor of Kent Douglas, an explorer who first settled the County while rowing down the St. Martin River.  The climate of the county is usually hot and muggy in the summer, cool winters with little to no snow, and comfortable fall/ spring.  The first settlement was a small group of houses along the shore of the river in the far NorthWest portion of the county.  It was known as Kent's Crossing.  Many of the sims there worked as hunters, fishers, and a small amount of farmers.  They would then trade their products for supplies in return. 

All was well in the county until "The Great flood of the St.Martin".  In 1847, a strong CAT-3 hurricane hit about 250 miles south of Douglas County.  The heavy rain was too much for the low evelation and the St.Martin River overflowed its banks. The town of 45 sims was destroyed in hours as the water came to the tops of houses.  Many died or were never seen again.  With Kent's Crossing nothing but bad memories, Kent moved his family to a flat plain southeast of KC in central Douglas County away from the river starting a new village named Peoria, after his wife.  Many sims followed him and moved to Peoria.  In 1849 the settlement was voted to become the county seat and the state of Algonquin built a railroad ending at the city.  This brought many sims to the city and the population hit 5,000 by 1855.  By 1860, the city had sewer, power, a state of the art water system, three hotels, restaurants, a hospital, schools, a post office, roads, and law buildings.  Soon, the city grew eastward towards the St.Martin river and a leeve system was added. This brought on river trade again as well as rail & road trade.  New factories opened east of Peoria during the industrial revolution and added thousands of jobs to the county. The 1870 census counted 12,982.  Unfortunately, in 1872, Kent (age 72) died of a fever and his wife Peoria (age 70) died a year later in 1873.

Modern Times
The city of Peoria grew throughout the 20th century and in the 1940's-1950's, two city wide expressways were constructed.  One going east/west and one going north/south.  The industrial district also expanded in this time period.

The the 1950 census reported 145,000 sims and growing.  I will end this LONG starter post with a 1976 post card of Peoria:

Adetsaj

#1
Great start  :thumbsup: and your city is beautiful  :)



The Beautiful empire, of Gardarian
     
And call me Daniel

rooker1

Great start.  Your city looks very interesting and I can't wait to see more.

Robin  :thumbsup:
Call me Robin, please.

Opkl

#3
Replies
rooker1: Thank you.  

Adetsaj: Thank you as well.

UPDATE TIME

Modern Times Cont.

The 1960's were the last sign of growth that the city would have.  (In the meantime anyway.  ;) ) Sims during this time period had more money and better jobs than those before them.   The downtown area was full of beautiful styled office buildings that were W2W.  The interstates were now given names and numbers (I-36 north/south freeway and I-16 east/west freeway) and expanded to reach the other ends of the county and meet in the heart of dowentown.  This ended up seperating downtown in two parts.  Traffic was very congested and a city bypass (I-216) was proposed by Peoria Transportation Department. (or PTD)  I-216 was nothing but a rural 4 lane bypass route with few exits that traveled through wetlands and farm land.  The state of Algonquin approved both projects and construction began.  On I-216's northern end with I-16 in the far northeast side of the county, a northern stub was built for when I-41 was extended from the north and a simple cloverleaf was the interchange type (I will post a transportation map later on showing the routes :) ).  The industrial area reached it's peak, and the city was becoming VERY crowded.  Population peaked at 178,489 sims for the 1970 census.  In the 1970's, developers brought to Douglas County the new idea of, you guessed it- SUBURBS!  It all started in 1971 when a few tiles of land was brought by Nigel West Dickens, (a commerical developer) and a large two level, three department store, 120 inline store shopping mall was built near I-216 east of the St.Martin River.  The mall featured Sears, Montgomery Wards, and Peoria based Costington's as department stores.  Until the mall opened in 1973, sims would travel to the northern end of downtown to shop.  With the mall brought many many many many subdivisons around the mall. By 1974,  15,895 sims lived in this unincorporated land and began Peoria's first suburb: East Peoria.  This caused MAJOR decline for the city of Peoria on the other side of the river.  Sears, Montgomery Wards, Costington's, and many other stores began leaving downtown Peoria in droves to the new East Towne Mall.  North downtown was a ghost town with many empty buildings in 1975.  Sims also left Peoria for bigger houses, better schools, and more open space.  The population dropped from 178,489 to 141,025 in 1976.  East Peoria jumped from 15,895 to 30,000 by 1976.  By this time Peoria's mayor John Marston had raised taxes just to cover the loss in revenue, cut school funding and cancelled funding for many projects.  The year 1977 introduced Douglas County's first International Airport.  It opened just north of E.Peoria near the I-216, I-16, I-41 cloverleaf.  Traffic became very high on I-216 due to E.Peoria and the cloverleaf was cleared for a new design.

The bypass was upgraded to 6 lanes with lights and frontage roads.  This added more commerical to the area in 1980.  Also in 1980, apartment complexes were built along with mid-rise senior sim buildings.  E.Peoria now had 34,000 sims.

Big box stores and strip malls also called E.Peoria home. 

Along with restaurants near the mall and on state route 78 (Killabrew Dr.)


In 1981, East Towne Mall saw its first anchor change as Costington's was purchased and rebranded as Hecht's

During the 1980's, office buildings started to leave downtown Peoria due to rising taxes and moved across the river to be closer to their suburban workers in Peoria's second and newest suburb, Madison.  Madison is home to many middle class/upper class sims, suburban office parks and the airport. It is just north of I-16 from E.Peoria.


Hope you all enjoyed this update.  ;D Don't worry, we'll be up to 2011 soon.  :D

Ol.S / Benoit

Nice city and great work with the highway and interconnections, pretty impressive !
Keep up the good work.

Good luck with your MD, CJ whatever.... :)
Benoit.
MD : Click on picture

rooker1

Yup, those are some very impressive interchanges.  I sometimes wish I had enough patience to give it a try.

Robin
Call me Robin, please.

Tomas Neto

Fantastic updates, and very nice start in your MD!!!   :thumbsup:

Terring7

Very good job &apls. Just don't forget to turn off the grid and the U.D.I. icons ;D
"The wisest men follow their own direction" Euripides
The Choice is Ours
---
Simtropolis Moderator here. Can I help? Oh, and you can call me Elias (my real name) if you wish.

RickD

Wow, great job. I need to follow your MD. :)
My name is Raphael.
Visit my MD: Empire Bay (My old MD: Santa Barbara County)

Jmouse

Welcome to the wonderful world of MDing, Opkl. :) Our rules for MD authors which you may review here require that the file extensions on photos must be changed from .png to .jpeg. They take a long time to load and consume more bandwidth than .jpegs. If you don't know how to make the change, send a PM to me or rooker1 and we'll be glad to assist you.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation...
-Joan

Opkl

#10
Hello everyone.  I am so sorry for not having a chance to post an update in a while.  Crash-To-Desktop, family visiting from out of town, and a wedding kept me busy.  Anyway an update will be posted later on tonight.  I just wanted to hurry and answer these replies.
Replies
Ol.S / BenoitThank you so much.

rooker1Thank you!  I actually just went to the RHW Interchange guide to see if I could find something compact since the area around there was already in place.  I hate having to destroy buildings.  :P

Tomas NetoThanks

Terring7Will do! :) How do you turn off UDI though?

RickDThank you!  Glad you like it.

JmouseWill do!  Thanks again.

Opkl

#11
UPDATE TIME

Modern Times Cont. Part III

With the 1970's hitting the city of Peoria pretty badly, Mayor John Marston stepped down from office due to the stress of managing a declining city.  In 1980, Peoria made histroy as the first female mayor, Bonnie MacFarland was sworn into office by a VERY close election. &hlp  &hlp She is also the youngest mayor at the age of 27.  :P

During the 1980's, Peoria also became a more liberal- new world city.  Prior to 1980, Peoria was very old money, industrialist, blue collar, and mostly poor.  Mayor MacFarland lived in Peoria all of her life and felt that it was up to her to fix her struggling hometown.  Her first goal as mayor was to improve Peoria's low test scores in the public schools.  She passed several bills giving all PPS (Peoria Public Schools) a special grant which allowed for highly trained teachers, updated facilities, more classes, new books, healthier lunch options, and many other much needed improvements.  By the 1981-1982 school year, all, yes ALL of PPS passed the Algonquin State Achievement Test!  :D   

With the success of PPS, Mayor MacFarland's next goal was to improve the abandon downtown area.
 

When former Mayor Marston raised taxes, many companies moved to the suburbs leaving downtown a shell of its former glory.  Unfortunately, many of these older W2W buildings fell into disrepair and had to be demolished.  MacFarland persuaded new businesses to open branches in Peoria and offered them special deals.  By 1986, downtown was full of new shiny glass buildings.


Also during the mid 80's, Peoria raised more transportation plans.  The first being an extension of I-216 on the north and west sides of the county making it a full beltway.  The blue dots show the routh of I-16. The green dots show the route of I-36. Yellow dots show the original route of I-216, while orange dots show the proposed I-216 extension.


The other plan was to construct an underground railway from downtown to north suburban Madison with two stops in the Riverport Neighborhood of Peoria:


Here is a map showing where the city/suburbs are located facing north:

Peoria (city) is orange, East Peoria (suburb) is sea green, Arkon is yellow, RiverEdge Grove is purple, Dearburn Park is blue, and Madison is hot pink.  Anything left uncolored is unincorporated.

The I-216 project was met with a lot of opposition, mostly from sims in Dearborn Park and RiverEdge Grove because the freeway would have divided subdivisions in those towns.  At the same time, I-36 was widen to 8 lanes and a piece of the Beltway was built from I-36 around Madison to I-16.


Same colors for the interstates as before except the new portion of highway built is hot pink.  In 1987, the ANTI-FREEWAY sims won as the I-216 route was cancelled and the underground rail line was chosen instead. ::) The highway that was built around Madison was named the Airport Freeway since it allowed northwest suburban sims to reach the airport faster.  (BTW, ignore that airport sign in the center of the map as it is just an airport shuttle station.  The real airport is located on the upper right side of the photo.)  The Airport Freeway also received the number I-736 since it now was a SPUR of I-36.


UPDATE ENDING
I hope those colored dots weren't too hard for anyone to see. ()sad() I'm not that good with computers and that was the best I could do. Anyway, enjoy these highway pics and as always, come back again! ;D  Remember that underground railway for the next few updates. (hint-hint)  ;)





RickD

Great update. I liked reading about the tranportation projects.
My name is Raphael.
Visit my MD: Empire Bay (My old MD: Santa Barbara County)

Tomas Neto


art128

The road networks are sweet, I really like how the highway sneak in this suburb. ;)
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog