Urban planning, airports, embankments and pedestrian traffic

[imoutofusernameideas]

Hello everybody.

As some of you may know, I have started London City, but as of now, I've had to put that project on hold, because I had come to a point where I realised that I wasn't as prepared for it as I had thought. This is why I have decided to start a new, completely fictional region where I could train my building and planning skills and let my imagination run riot. Obviously with such an extensive amount of daily experiments, I have run into several issues, some of which I'm learning to solve by simply doing them, others have left me clueless; hence this thread was born.

One thing I would like to say before asking any questions, is that building an aesthetically pleasing, realistic looking city is nowhere near as easy as one would think. There are hours and hours of hard work in it, lots of setbacks and the danger of throwing one's computer out the window out of frustration is alarmingly high. Example: I have spent about five hours to build a simple urban embankment with houses along a road that gently goes uphill towards the city centre.
This certainly has given me a lot of respect for everyone who manages to make a beautiful city, especially those that are not on a simple, flat terrain.

And now for the questions.

Category 1: Urban Planning

In advance, I'd like to note that I usually build one very large city in a region (usually somewhere in the middle of the map) with the other "cities" being the "support" for the major city (think the green belt, suburbs, farms etc.).

1a.) I have read several tutorials on how to plan out a city and came across the inevitable 'Hoyt's Sector model'. I have to admit that I have intentionally simplified this model for my current city (Halisburg) by making a river that basically runs through the middle of the map with industry and low wealth housing in the south and the CBD and high/medium wealth housing in the north (the river is essentially representing the buffer zone between industry and the more desirable living spaces). Now for my question: Does the industry have to be directly connected to my CBD or would it be okay to have a little bit of housing between industry and CBD? Meaning that both sides of the river would be lined with housing, industry beginning land inwards on the south side and CBD land inwards on the north side.

1b.) As of now, my intention for Halisburg is to make it look like a typical East Coast American city (Chicago and New York tileset), though over time there have come some strong, visible European influences into it. While I was starting out, I've always kept in mind to not fall into the typical, boring grid-style layout. The only thing that would be straight lines would be the major avenues that run through the most important parts of the city, with the roads and streets developing in the in-between-spaces as I go along (place a building/zone where it's needed and only then build roads and streets around it that connect to the avenues) – basically a lay-out similar to Paris, the only difference being that Paris' avenues were built after it was already cluttered with chaotic, medieval streets, Halisburg is doing it the other way around.  Are there any more useful tips as to how not to fall back into grid-style?

Category 2: Airports

In all of my regions so far, I was planning to build my major city and only when demand is high enough, start out with airports. But I would like to build airports as they are in real life, where they usually occupy their own district. In SimCity 4 this would translate into the airport being built on a city tile adjacent to the major city with an extensive road/avenue/motorway/mass transit system connecting the airport to all the surrounding cities. But would this even work? I'm not sure how freight and passenger/tourist transport would work in this particular scenario.

Category 3: Embankments

I have looked at a large amount of urban embankment sets available on the internet and the one that truly takes the biscuit in my opinion, is the set created by marrast. But whenever I place it, there are no pedestrians walking on along the rivers. Are these lots only non-functional eye-candy?

Category 4: Pedestrian traffic

4a.) I understand that the pedestrian malls that come with the NAM do not directly connect to roads; they have to be adjacent to some mass transit systems (bus stop, tube). Do parking lots count as well? And do all the mass transit stations have to be adjacent to the road? This is particularly referring to the tube stations, as bus stops and parking lots obviously have to have road access.

4b.) One very small question: Whenever I place the puzzle piece of the pedestrian overpass over a road/street/avenue the pavement along that one tile of road disappears. Do I just have to live with that or is there a way to fix this?

Extra category: High Speed Rails

When reading about the NAM, one inevitably comes across the subject of High Speed Mass Transit and while there are many tutorials out there on how to build this type of network, I haven't come across a simple explanation about what HSR actually is. Could someone explain to me what defines it and what makes it better (or worse) than regular rails?

Any answers would be very welcome and I would like to thank anybody in advance who makes the effort to answer as precisely as possible. If any further explanations (or pictures) are needed, feel free to ask.

[Seaman]

Are there any more useful tips as to how not to fall back into grid-style?

It helps me to try to imagine, that every road has to start and end somewhere and usually there is some kind of intention in building the road this way. In other words: the street has to be built for a purpose. To have some historical thoughts on the situation helps a lot, too. This may sound obvious but if you think about it this leads to more organic layouts. In a usual grid, a road or street fulfills its duty by fitting to the overall system, but if you start with:
"this is the road from the southeastern region to the local train station; it was later prolonged to connect with the highway and has some curves due to slopy terrain and buildings which were there before the road was built."
or: "this is a small street built to connect local housing to the main road. It's planned in a way that it provides quick acces to the area in the main directions west and north."
it's kind of impossible to end up with a grid.

Category 2: Airports
In all of my regions so far, I was planning to build my major city and only when demand is high enough, start out with airports. But I would like to build airports as they are in real life, where they usually occupy their own district. In SimCity 4 this would translate into the airport being built on a city tile adjacent to the major city with an extensive road/avenue/motorway/mass transit system connecting the airport to all the surrounding cities. But would this even work? I'm not sure how freight and passenger/tourist transport would work in this particular scenario.

I guess we all have that problem. It migth be possible to have a small city airport in a major city, but as soon as it gets international size, it occupies to much room. Most of the nice airport lots for the custom built airports are pure eye candy, so it won't be recognized by the game as what it is: a huge freaking airport. There are nice functional airports out there (search for functional airports), but imho they don't match the visual expectations of a large city project.
This leads to two problems: the airport demand won't be affected and it's tricky to get congestion on the streets leading to the airport. Some modders tried to solve this by creating "traffic generators" (lots that ad visual traffic to streets nearby) and "airport trams" or "airport bus stations". The latter two are small lots which look like tram or bus stations but are technically fully functional airports. These should be placed in the cities to satisfy the demand and it looks like your sims are using them to actually get to the airport on the next tile (but again, no traffic between station and airport).

cheers

[Themistokles]

I like this kind of discussions, so I wrote down my thoughts on the subject.

I have spent about five hours to build a simple urban embankment with houses along a road that gently goes uphill towards the city centre. This certainly has given me a lot of respect for everyone who manages to make a beautiful city, especially those that are not on a simple, flat terrain.

I like building on rather steep terrain because it actually makes planning and staying away from the grid much easier. When there are only a few logical places to place a road or rail the choice is much less difficult. Also I live in a rather steep city, so that may play a part.

Now for my question: Does the industry have to be directly connected to my CBD or would it be okay to have a little bit of housing between industry and CBD? Meaning that both sides of the river would be lined with housing, industry beginning land inwards on the south side and CBD land inwards on the north side.

I'm not very familiar with the American version of CBD's, but in European cities I'd mainly think of new office-dominated areas built either rather isolated in office parks far from the city centre, with good mass-transit connection, or on redeveloped industrial lands in a central location (i.e. within the central underground or tram network and with high land value). Industry, on the other hand, I'd place further away, mostly only with bus coverage and preferably somewhere along the main road or heavy rail arteries. So for me, industry and modern offices seldom end up close to each other.

Are there any more useful tips as to how not to fall back into grid-style?

As seaman says, historical background to where the street goes is a good way to get a more organic look, especially in city centres. I'm actually planning on that for my next MD entry. Outside of the cities I try to follow the curves of the land. In bigger cities these would become arteries or trunks in a tree structure, with zones on the smaller branches.

Are these lots only non-functional eye-candy?

All embankment lots that I know of are eye-candy. Xannepans jenxparis Quais de Seine come with some pedestrian props to simulate pedestrians, otherwise people could probably be added as mmps (or as props if custom lot editing is your cup of tea).

And do all the mass transit stations have to be adjacent to the road? This is particularly referring to the tube stations, as bus stops and parking lots obviously have to have road access.

I believe they require connection to a tile with either pedestrian or car paths, so either a road or a ped mall. Since the last NAM I also believe ped mall piecexs can connect directly to roads, without the need of bus stops or the former connector pieces.

Could someone explain to me what defines it and what makes it better (or worse) than regular rails?

Functionally, I know of four differences between rail and HSR: HSR is quicker and has easier to attract high wealth Sims, but is more expensive (I think) and cannot carry freight. However, as I play mostly for the aesthetics I would use RRW (STR and DTR, hopefull TTR and QTR in the future) in almost every case, both because I like the look of it better and because even the "high speed" trains in Sweden also run on the regular track anyway.

These are my two cents. I hope it helps and I'd love to hear others' answers.

[Pythias900KMB]

As some of you may know, I have started London City, but as of now, I've had to put that project on hold, because I had come to a point where I realised that I wasn't as prepared for it as I had thought. This is why I have decided to start a new, completely fictional region where I could train my building and planning skills and let my imagination run riot. Obviously with such an extensive amount of daily experiments, I have run into several issues, some of which I'm learning to solve by simply doing them, others have left me clueless; hence this thread was born.

One thing I would like to say before asking any questions, is that building an aesthetically pleasing, realistic looking city is nowhere near as easy as one would think. There are hours and hours of hard work in it, lots of setbacks and the danger of throwing one's computer out the window out of frustration is alarmingly high. Example: I have spent about five hours to build a simple urban embankment with houses along a road that gently goes uphill towards the city centre.
This certainly has given me a lot of respect for everyone who manages to make a beautiful city, especially those that are not on a simple, flat terrain.

And now for the questions.

Category 1: Urban Planning

In advance, I'd like to note that I usually build one very large city in a region (usually somewhere in the middle of the map) with the other "cities" being the "support" for the major city (think the green belt, suburbs, farms etc.).

Regarding 1a.)
I have never needed any tutorials for how to build a city within SimCity 4 Deluxe ... just a master plan firmly in mind.  Generally, what I have done is to either devote the entire city to industry (particularly if it is dirty industry or manufacturing) or placed hi-tech industry on the edges of the map with placement priority to being near railways which would require freight train stations so that I do not have freight trucks interfering the commuters.  One thing that drives me batty is the insistence on people using their cars in such numbers that the avenues cannot support them.  In any case, make certain that at the very least you have buses and passenger trains as mass transit options right from the start.

Next, what I have done is to set up commercial service districts right along the highway so that they have lots of customers.  Make certain that the wealth levels match.  Thick wallet Sims ($$$) have the cash to shop in low-wealth stores but not the desire.  Scrawny wallet Sims ($) only have the cash to shop in low-wealth stores while thin wallet Sims ($$) might shop in low-wealth stores but would rather shop in medium-wealth stores.  Bear that firmly in mind when deciding what kind of residential neighborhoods your city is to have.

It is also not a bad idea to have bedroom communities in your region.  Just make sure that there are lots of amenities -- schools, hospitals, parks, emergency responder services ... and really devote yourself to the transportation both within that city and to the neighboring cities.  Start with your residential zones close to the highway and rail lines; if you go for the latter, shift your emphasis on those that are exclusively for passengers like monorail.

Regarding 1b.)
Not to fall back into grid-style ... what the quack do you have against grid-style!?!  Grid-style cities can be fun if done correctly.  When I only had the Maxis Highways as an option, I counted three tiles to either side before I built a side street.  The surface (heavy) rail which can transport both freight and passenger trains ... same thing as with the highways.  As the city grows, it is a good idea to place parks or other amenities in the area next to the railways and highways.  Now that I have the RHW as an option, what I have done is to excavate a trench that has an inverse altitude of 15 meters and is six tiles wide.  The two tiles along the edges of the trench are for the carriageways while the two tiles in the center are for the access / egress ramps from the avenue and from the highway.  If you use this set-up, build up your prowess in drawing inside A1 and D1 ramps.  The one-way road viaduct ramps have an overhanging tile at the bottom in addition to their three-tile length as does the inside A1 and D1 ramps (or should if you are properly drawing them); in order to successfully make the connection, you need to first use the RHW Disconnect tile on the last tile at the end of the branch.  When the one-way road viaduct ramps are placed, it is at that time you use the RHW2 tool to extend the MIS branch to connect with the overhanging one-way road tile.

Regarding Category 2
In all of my regions so far, I was planning to build my major city and only when demand is high enough, start out with airports. But I would like to build airports as they are in real life, where they usually occupy their own district. In SimCity 4 this would translate into the airport being built on a city tile adjacent to the major city with an extensive road/avenue/motorway/mass transit system connecting the airport to all the surrounding cities. But would this even work? I'm not sure how freight and passenger/tourist transport would work in this particular scenario.

Isolating the airport in its own city tile ... a very interesting idea that I shall have to try in the near future!!!  I would say that you are on the right track with wanting to have all of these transportation modes brought to bear; still, you need to place your emphasis on getting the most bang for the buck.  If I were you, I would focus exclusively on highways (for their road traffic capacity) and on monorails (for their speed and because of their grade separation from the roads).  I am not sure how SC4 would handle bus rapid transit; still, if you figure it out, I would also avail that instead of regular bus service.

Regarding Category 3
This reminds me of the Riverwalk here in San Antonio!!!  I often have thick wallet Sims living near water in my cities; unfortunately, I am starting to find that the beautiful view of the bay is not enough for the thick wallets even if I am on the ball with all of the amenities.

Regarding Category 4
I have not delved into the pedestrian malls and the pedestrian overpasses yet; still, what I can tell you from grappling with the RHW is that you have to be absolutely positive that you have the correct puzzle piece and that it is in the correct orientation BEFORE you click that mouse button.  If you do not follow that counsel, it can be a huge headache to clean up that error to where you can try again.  I remember a bypass highway in one of my cities where there was a 2nd lvl e-MIS and a monorail line crossing over a pair of RHW4 prosecuting a 90-degree curve from the main highway . . . I fought with that to get the monorail line and the e-MIS to cross those two RHW4s without the RHW4s overriding back to their defaults ... UGH!!!  First, the monorail line would not connect to the other side ... once I solved that, the RHW-4s would not deviate 45 degrees where I wanted them to do so.  I also had to think about how I wanted the east-west side highways to merge into the main north-south drag ... it was really a mess because I did not know what I was doing back then the way I do now.  Besides getting the Sims to really try out my handiwork, I also ran into the problem of tight finances during the MHW -> RHW renovation and afterwards when the construction is finished.

Regarding Extra category

I have not delved into high speed rails; still, from what I understand about it; it is mores serious-looking than monorail but operates the same way as monorail does.  HSR and monorail by default are grade-separated from the surface road and rail traffic which contributes to them being much faster than the other modes.  Rapid-transit trains are also at that par but can be taught to operate both above- and below-ground at an altitude of 15 meters and dextrously switch between the two at will to the tune of a declivity/acclivity of 30 meters.  Thanks to the NAM, rapid transit trains can also be taught to operate at ground and switch between that  and either above- or below-ground; still, they do not make for being good neighbors with the surface road and rail traffic.  Rapid transit trains are not that good at going into another city and I personally would really rather not use them for that.

At any rate, HSR and monorail are pretty much the same network whose only difference is the one looks more serious than the other.  I am curious to find out if HSR will stay at a constant altitude when crossing over a sunken RHW; when I do that with monorail, it tends to be a scaredy-cat when the ground drops 15 meters as is the case with sunken RHW and I have to breach the trench walls for it or it will pull up the section of RHW directly under it.  I really would like that explained in more detail; if HSR has more altitude courage than monorail does, I may need to make it a honey-do project to interchange out all my monorail lines for HSR because the whole reason I built the monorail is to zoom above it all out of everybody's way.  RHW is built in a trench for the same reason.

[mgb204]

1). Planning your city or region is really a very personal thing. There are so many ways to approach it, it really depends on what you want to create. Bear in mind, usually a city or town has a reason for it's existence. So for example it's typical for Cities to be built on or near rivers and more recently around other networks for the transportation of goods and people. Sometimes the terrain will also dictate where you build too. Although it can be quite daunting to work with very rough terrain, it does appeal to my problem-solving side. You obviously can't build on the slope of mountains or in the sea, so in some ways having such difficult terrain does help to shape a city built around it.

Re: Grids - Come to the UK, or much of Europe, you'll soon see how grids are very far from the norm here. This has more to do with historical routes, some laid down many centuries ago. When modernisation took place, a lot of it had to work within the already settled areas of towns and cities.

2). Airports don't have to be functional, for example, just what does a functional airport do in Sim City? The answer is not what you might expect, it just boosts commercial demand and provides some benefits to the city it is in. People don't actually come and go, neither does freight, the game has no simulator for handling such things. As such, if realism is your goal, just place the airport somewhere that ties into the rest of the city.

3). Embankments are usually eye candy, as previously mentioned, you can always add stuff to them in the LE or with MMPs to create more variety.

4). Pedmalls as of NAM34 no longer require a transit stop to be functional. I know a lot of people want many things to be functional and allow pedestrians to walk along them. But actually, this is quite hard to achieve. If you think more like a model railroad builder, everything you do in SC4 only needs to visually represent such activity. Sure it's nice when you can see a city alive and bustling with people. But, by the time you take a screenshot, everything will be static. What's really nice here is a bit of randomness, Maxis have a number of animated props which will be different each time they are plopped. Sometimes, lots without clutter are much better than pre-made lots which start to look repetitive when used frequently. MMP's are a valuable tool to differentiate and customise areas to look unique. They can be a lot of work to place, but the results can be very dramatic when used well.

As for the ped-bridges loosing the sidewalk... I'm looking into re-working the pedmalls so they all show your user-installed sidewalk. They are one of the oldest NAM features and until recently have not undergone any big changes. It should be possible to create textures that would appear in any place where they are not now (for example I have them). One of the huge benefits of the dragable networks over puzzle pieces is that they work just like the Maxis networks in terms of sidewalks. The puzzle pieces all need specific textures to appear correctly. There are plenty of mods to resolve such issues, not least my SWN repository, an automated solution for creating thousands of textures to match your sidewalk in a few easy steps.

5.) HSR - Whilst monorail and rail may look the same, there is a fundamental difference in how they work. Whether you use the Maxis Monorail (ugly IMO), HSR or Moonlight's Bullet Train Mod, all of these are just monorail networks. HSR is unlike BTM, in that it doesn't replace the original monorail, it's an additional network you can use at the same time. Both the Maxis and BTM monorail's only work at 15m height, with limited support for 30m high crossings to cover 15m networks. HSR has to option of both 15m and ground level networks, which can add a lot of flexibility to using it. At it's core, Monorail is faster than rail, therefore building stations close to each other will not see much usage in-game. But it's perfect for more long distance commutes, sim's love to travel between cities this way. Regular rail is better used for more local commuter trains. This is the mechanics of the game at work, these networks are really not the same.

[imoutofusernameideas]

Hey everyone, thanks for all your answers, they were very helpful.

The only disappointment are the airports. Sometimes I feel like - while having created a wonderful game - Maxis hasn't thought everything through thoroughly. I mean, think rationally for a moment: In a region which settlement will have the highest demand for an airport? The biggest one. And which settlement has the least amount of available space for such a huge building? The biggest one.

@Seaman: Thanks, that's probably the best tip out there. Always build something for a reason.

@Pythias:

'One thing that drives me batty is the insistence on people using their cars in such numbers that the avenues cannot support them.'

I know right?! As soon as my population really starts growing ~100K+ I could probably replace every street and road with an avenue and still be constantly bothered by the traffic guy who tells me that my streets are congested.

'It is also not a bad idea to have bedroom communities in your region.'

My usual way of doing this was to make my city large enough that it industry could be slowly moved to the adjoining area (making one giant industry park) and then - when said park stops growing because of a lack of workforces - start building residential only areas (picturesque suburbs) - by which point I can usually return to my major city and witness its CBD having exploded with skyscrapers because of the industry and population boom (and its C demand is usually still through the roof at this point).

'what the quack do you have against grid-style!?!'

I find it boring, simple as that. New York City? In my opinion the dullest city that may call itself an Alpha City - speaking lay-out wise.

'I often have thick wallet Sims living near water in my cities; unfortunately, I am starting to find that the beautiful view of the bay is not enough for the thick wallets even if I am on the ball with all of the amenities.'

Hm, in my game they've started moving in as if George Bush had settled south of the river. I'm not sure why, but for some reason Halisburg has a pretty much constant flow of High wealth residents and businesses coming in, to the point where Medium and especially Low wealth housing and office space has become so sparse, their demands are constantly high.

@mgb:

'Grids - Come to the UK, or much of Europe, you'll soon see how grids are very far from the norm here. This has more to do with historical routes, some laid down many centuries ago. When modernisation took place, a lot of it had to work within the already settled areas of towns and cities.'

I am from Europe, which is probably why all my cities start looking European at some point, no matter how hard I try to prevent it.

'As for the ped-bridges loosing the sidewalk... I'm looking into re-working the pedmalls so they all show your user-installed sidewalk.'

Are you planning to redo all of them or only the overpasses? Personally, I wouldn't mind an expansion for the ped malls as there are too few of them. There's only on with a lamppost for example and the same ped mall does not exist without lamppost, so it's impossible to have a beautiful pavement with a lamppost here and there. It's either nowhere or everywhere.

Another issue I have run into yesterday: For building marrast's embankment, I've had to lower the riverbed to such an extent that the shores are basically steep cliffs (in order for the embankments actually covering the ground). But now it's impossible to place water lines and tube-tunnels. Is there a way to fix this without messing with terrain tools? That would probably destroy a large part of my waterfront - which has taken hours upon hours of work to make it look good.

EDIT: Disregard that last question, I have found out how to make the water invisible which made terra forming much easier.