Realistic Cities For Dummies

[malibu_man]

Another good update. Im not too crazy about the deep hole the rail is in but hey thats me. I really think I should download some rail caterinaries though, they do look nice. Well untill next time Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 

[pepsibottle1]

Wonderful job so far. Please continue to keep up the great work! A must read for ANY SC4 player. It sure has helped me, to say the least

[Nardo69]

Well, if you don't want to argue with an civil engineer who learned traffic engineering as well as planning traffic ways of all kind, OK, up to yours.
[sarkasm]I am only interested in railways since my 5th year on this planets which are only poor and lousy 36 years of experience so, yeah, no need to discuss or argue with someone like me who doesn't know anything about railways or streets or any other aspect of any kind of traffic.  [/sarkasm]

That whole is ridiculous, even though it is not a big thing to dig these today (until / unless you have to pay its bill) it has been a big deal in th 19th century when these trenches had to be digged out with shovels and pickaxe. 

The distance of catenaries isn't the same everywhere. The higher the speed the lower the distance, and such catenary towers where put in larger distances than the simple mats. However such a big station as you used ususally had four or five fields over its length; when giving such advices you really SHOULD pay respect to the crude and almost non-existing scale of SC4!

And concerning your rule about flat railways: No, they haven't been completely flat even in the victorian era in Greatbritain.  Slopes between 5 and 15 o/oo (o/oo = 1 / 1000) weren't and still aren't anything extraordinary for main lines; steep slopes in railway lines with special requirements for machines and brakes as well as limitations for length and weight of (especially but not only) freight train begin at 25 o/oo on main lines and 60 o/oo on secondary lines.

If you don't believe you might have a look on the vitae of Robert Gerwig, maybe the best railway engineer at all of the 19th century. Beneath other lines he's the engineer who planned and build the northern ramp of the Gotthardt line.

Enough said. Tell me when you are ready to discuss this theme with someone who knows a little bit more about that particular theme than a complete noob. Until then I REALLY don't want to waste my precious time posting here.

Bernhard  :

[FrankU]

Hey Bernard, you are really angry, aren't you? There's no reason to be...
I mean, we can and may disagree and there is a lot of engineering concerned in SC4, especially if you want to be realistic, but that's not everyone's goal in this game.

Well I am just a silly architect who refuses to design, and I do know hardly anything about laying down railwaylines, but the placement of the freighyard seemed a bit inconvincing to me. A freightyard is usually placed in the vicinity of industry. And in this situation the industry can only be placed up on the hills around the yard. Not very convenient, isn't it?

Smileymk: except some criticism like the above, I think you project is really very nice and useful to a lot of visitors and members, of course. So please continue!

And my remark about the old american civilizations and the use of the wheel: it indeed has no relation to SC4, but I am sometimes a bit distracted by themes that come up and I wanted to point out that the Incas, Mayas and the like were not stupid. Sorry...

[io_bg]

Yeah, I'll have to agree these trenches are way too deep. And that rail lines shouldn't be totally flat. If I were you, I'd build a tunnel where the rail line gets 20-30 metres under the land level.

[mightygoose]

bernard has covered most of the issues, however your road slopes are unrealistic in places.... with a near 30 degree gradient between the RHW underpass and the rail bridge. plus the sharp gradient change....

and the northern ramp benard refers to is this...

[Nardo69]

Robin PM'ed me that I might have been posting a bit stronger than necessary.

Concerning the "how I posted" he's right I guess. What made me angry (still) was that answer:

(...)Nardo69: You do it your way. If it works for you, then that's great. There's little point in me arguing with you.
(...)

You did a good work and I gave you a constructive critic. That's how it should be - until the sentence above. Instead of reflecting what I said you chose to ignore it in a rather rude way. You might refuse a critic for doing it your style in a standard MD but in a tutorial like this you should at least reflect it. Otherwise you damage yourself your reputation.

I know that quite some people not only on SC4D do appreciate my critic and advices. I think I earned a good reputation over all the years by showing what I know and helping others to improve.

You can get a bad reputation by just one non polite answer and never get rid of it. Think about it.

I wanted to tidy up my post before but too much persons have read it by now so I don't touch it. If I'd hurt you by how I wrote the post I'm sorry; if I'd hurt you by what I wrote I'm not sorry.

Bernhard

[Gringamuyloca]

   
The beauty of this 'game' we call Sim City 4 (Vanilla, Deluxe, Rush Hour) is that there is no right or wrong way! (my humble opinion)
The fact that there are so many who are willing to share their real life knowledge as well as their 'artistic' side, is for me,the wonderfulness that 'we' share! 
It can be hard to 'critique' another's endeavors, and have the well meaning intention come across walks of life and language barriers.

I'm pushing 50 and maybe I could be considered naive... for me, the bottom line here is encouragement.... and some of us may be more 'passionate' than others with sharing their RL knowledge... but it's sharing...and why this 'community' is as strong as it is.

smileymk, the fact that you are taking the time to cut, copy, paste,write, edit, format, reformat, resize, upload, edit, etc... etc.. and share it with me (us) is very appreciated...     

All the best to you and yours...

Cheers

[smileymk]

Happy New Year! Sorry to keep you guys waiting... well, the lesson is here now, so let's do it.

But first...

WC_EEND: Yes, but I find the SFBT Rail Catenaries more suited to my purposes, as they give more flexibility and (in my opinion) a better appearance.

malibu_man: Railways do pass through cuttings and embankments in real life... maybe mine is a bit big but that's better than a huge slope.

pepsibottle1: Excellent. I'm sure this will stay here for a long time to come.

Nardo69: Did I upset you, by any chance? If so, I'm very, very sorry - that was certainly not my intention. What I meant by that comment was that it was perfectly fine to use your own playing style to achieve realistic results.

On the gradients, yes, that might be true, but in SC4, these gradients would be very hard to see because of the scale, so you're better off making the main lines flat in my opinion.

And Victorian engineers still managed to produce great feats of engineering even without real technology. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a very good example of this.

And finally, I object to being referred to as a "complete noob". I've played SC4 long enough for this statement to be false, and I find it upsetting and offensive. FrankU is right - there's no need for it.

FrankU: Apology accepted. And I do take criticism - when it is phrased properly and in a nice way.

As for the freightyard, a quick look back at the plan (lesson 1) will tell you that there is a large industrial area planned for the area to the northwest of the freightyard, so it does have a reason to be there. The location is where it is because we can't really bend the rail line just to run through the industrial area - that is impractical and pretty unrealistic.

io_bg: Again, you would find it hard to see gradients if they were built to scale. But I take your point about the trench - I'll probably do something to improve it.

mightygoose: I don't think it's quite 30 degrees! I agree it's far from ideal, but sometimes you have to compromise.

Gringamuyloca: I completely agree. Ultimately, I'm showing you my methods to create a realistic city, and there's always room for those who have different ideas to put them forward.

OK, now are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

Lesson 7 - Utilities

I know you natural growth fans will not approve of the idea of building large-scale utilities before you build any houses, and you're probably right. But SC4 does not work like that. Without power, water, and waste disposal, you won't get a realistic city, simply because the game's programming means that the city won't be developed enough to be realistic if you don't provide the goods.

The most important resource in SC4 is power, as nothing will develop without it. So we may as well start off with this.

We need a site with space, away from the town. And that can be found west of the roundabout interchange in our case. The first thing to do is build an access road. And because a power plant is a busy place with lots of workers, it's worth building turn lanes to improve the traffic flow at rush hour.
You should already know how to create turn lanes (see Lesson 5 if you don't), and the setup is like this:


Once you're done, drag out the access road (using street) so that it's quite far from the main road:


Now, to improve the appearance of that access road, we're going to use the SAM to give it some nice asphalt textures. We're going to use the SAM a lot in the next few lessons, so it's worth getting hold of it and learning how to use it now.
If you don't have the SAM, get it here.

You start off SAM by means of a puzzle piece, which is found in the SAM Pieces menu (under the Roads tab). Tab to the SAM-7 piece, and place it on your access road:


SAM-7 is the asphalt textures, which are common for streets and back roads. This is the one we will use in the suburbs as well as here.

Now you will have noticed that ugly white base texture on the starter piece. We need to get rid of this, which we do simply by demolishing it and dragging street in its place:


The access road is now finished, so it's time to start building the power plant.

The most common sources of power (in the UK at least) are coal and gas. We're going to use gas here, because it pollutes less, and we won't need the huge power coal provides.
You may be tempted to stick down a Maxis power plant and be done with it. But at 4x4 tiles, a single Maxis plant just won't cut it. Power plants are very big structures.

The solution? Use lots of little Maxis plants to create a big plant (with a few ancillary buildings).

The purists among you will be shaking your heads as you read this, but I find that a lot of the Maxis lots are not too bad, and it's worth learning to get the best out of them for realistic results.

Firstly, you need to prepare the ground, as any retaining walls in the middle of the complex will spoil the appearance of the whole thing. You know how to do this, so all I'll give is annotation to explain what's going where:


Notice how the complex isn't square like the Maxis lot. Power plants should really be irregular or rectangular to be realistic.

Now you can build your lots. The annotation here explains what lots you need (some of them are available on the STEX - find one you like!):


See, it's not that bad! Alright, there are too many chimneys (there should only be a few), but the rest is fine for our purposes.
By the way, if you can find a custom power plant that is big enough, and good-looking enough, then by all means use it instead.

Next job is to provide parking facilities. They need to be fairly substantial, as a lot of people will work here.
I used the Modular Parking Lots to create this (they're somewhere on the STEX), but again, find something you like and stick to it:


Then we need to provide some sort of security - power plants are an obvious target for those who do not appreciate the laws and moral values of society.
To do this, we're going to use a chainlink fence and place a security gate on the access road. Find lots that suit you, and place the gate on the access road, and surround the complex with the chainlink fence:


Last job is to place the pylons. A power plant like this one would serve a large area in real life, so we need to reflect this by having power lines running to various edges of the city tile.
We can't drag pylons over the security fence, so we'll have to place them either side, by dragging the lines out, 2 tiles at a time, so that we get this:


And we're now finished with the power plant, and can move on to the water. (And that texture glitch is my computer's fault, so don't blame me for it!)

We're going to build the water facility on the eastern edge of the city, far from the power and landfill sites.
First task is, well, guess:


Now you can build the facility. Use SAM to spruce up the access road, the Maxis water pumps (or your preferred custom version), and a good-looking treatment works (I used the Glenni Sewage Plant) to provide everything the facility realistically needs, and don't forget to provide a small car park and security fencing to complete it:


Oh, and make sure you have power lines running to the water facility. If the facility doesn't have power, it won't work.

This would be a good time to lay out your water pipes. Because they're underground, you don't need to worry about laying them out realistically. Instead, concentrate on efficiency.
Given that water spreads 6 tiles from the pipes, an efficient system is to zig-zag the pipes across the city tile. The key to this system is how you build the pipes at the tile boundary - and that's where this diagram comes in:


Stick to this system, and run the pipes straight down, with no curves or detours (unless absolutely necessary).
When you're done - and it will be a while before you are - you should have something like this:


That will serve you well, I assure you. And if you're wondering, there will be development outside of the town, so that justifies laying pipes outside of the ring road.

Last task is to build the waste disposal facilities.

Regrettable though it may be, it is a fact that the vast majority of waste ends up dumped in a landfill site. So to be realistic, you need to build one to take care of your waste. If the environmental considerations are too great to bear for you, then you can realistically build a small recycling facility - these exist in a lot of towns.

But this won't stop 60% of waste getting put in a big hole in the ground.

The good news with a landfill is that you don't have to do any ground preparation. But you do have to provide turn lanes for the garbage trucks to stop them blocking the road.
Choose a site far from the town (I'm going west of it), and lay out the access using turn lanes and SAM:


Now, this bit is really easy. Landfill in SC4 is done by zoning, so you can just press the Y key and drag it out. Make it fairly substantial, and rectangular:


You can extend the access road along the bottom if you want, to provide space for the many garbage vehicles that will visit the site.
Complete the site by adding security fencing:


And we're done! Those utilities are now ready to be used, and we're ready to move on.

Which we will - the next lesson will focus on the city centre. Which I know some of you have been eagerly anticipating.

Until then,

Chris

[Terring7]

Interesting update

Here are my 2 cents. I think it's better to also place at least one recycle center and a wast-to-energy incinerator close to the landfill. It's true that many cities, like New York and Athens, have sadly extremely huge landfills. O.K. this is realistic, but not for very long. In 2006 i studied an article about Germany, where almost all garbages recycled and in the next years landfills will be a thing of the past.
So an another solution for realistic cities is the use of Plasma Gasification Plant by Pegasus. Plasma Gasification has been used in the real world for years for the disposal of industrial & bio hazard wastes, so this plant it's both realistic and clean. No need for landfills anymore

Your ideas about the water facility it's excellent. I'm going to use them for my both Terran cities and Martian colonies. Usually i just built a water pump with a water cleaning device... and that's all . Now with your ideas, I'm going also to add some Pegasus ponds. They can make the water facility more realistic, especially if we can imagine that the water of the ponds came from drilling or raining.

As about the power plants, i would like to give some advises for us who prefer the alternative sources of power, like solar plants and wind parks

Keep going

[turtle]

Hi Chris,

Interesting MD. I suppose that with a title like that - on SC4D - you're bound to raise some arguments
I like the road layout, it does look interesting 
On the utilities side of things, I agree with Terring7 - in Denmark garbage incinerators producing power and heat are much more common  than large landfills. At least there should be both. Also, maybe you would consider this plugin from the stex: Power pack by mrtruesage. It contains the maxis powerplants re-lot'ed and modded to be bigger and have a lot more capacity. It also replaces the maxis powerplants. You wouldn't have to place so many powerplants.

anyways, great work 

[deadwoods]

Nice thread!

...I used the Modular Parking Lots to create this (they're somewhere on the STEX), but again, find something you like and stick to it...

Can you recall which modular parking lots you've used? There are quite a few on the STEX and the set you've used looks great.

[FrankU]

I think he used Hooha47's sets. He has made several parking lots. So type in Hooha47 and take your pick.

[j-dub]

I don't really like to use landfills, I made one city with the landfill, so all the other towns can ship their trash to that one. Otherwise, I use recycling centers and waste stations in the other towns for any excess waste.

[smileymk]

Hey guys. I won't keep you waiting any longer for Lesson 8. Let's dive straight in to those comments.

Terring7: Interesting observation. I think in Germany, there are laws on recycling waste, so it's no surprise that they have such high rates. I also think that adding Pegasus ponds might be a good idea - something for the Finishing Touches lesson maybe?

turtle: Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.

deadwoods: Not off the top of my head, buddy. Sorry. They're definitely called Modular Parking Lots, though.

FrankU: You're probably right.

j-dub: What you've described is a very good system for SC4, but not a good system realistically. Having one or two recycling plants in each town is good, but landfills should be kept reasonably small.

OK, now before we start the lesson, you'll be glad to know that that huge rail cutting some of you pointed out after Lesson 6 has been sorted out:


That should placate some people... now let's get on with the lesson.

Lesson 8 - City Centre

Some of you may be wondering why the centre should be built before all else. Two reasons:

1) In real life, it's the centre that comes first - the suburbs and industry sprawl around it, usually as a result of the railway coming to town.

2) The game's mechanism means that surburbs don't initially grow as we'd like them to, and industry is all hideous and dirty, which in this day and age, is unrealistic. So it's good to build the CBD first to get the population up to a level where the proper lots start to develop.

So now you know why, it's time to learn how.

First up is the inner city. This is the outer edge of the CBD, if you like, full of small, packed in to the limit houses and shops on narrow little streets. This is very easy to build, so it's a good confidence builder.

First task is to lay out the streets. They need to be in rectangular blocks about 4 tiles wide and about 10 tiles long. We want as many 2-tile long lots here as possible, so lay out your streets to allow this:


If you want these to look realistic, you now need to use the SAM to give those streets proper asphalt textures. You learnt how to use SAM in the last lesson, so if you don't know how to use the SAM, or you forgot, then go back and have a look before continuing.

SAM-7 is what you want - make sure you do all of the streets. Place however many starter pieces you need to do this - you'll probably need about 3 or 4:


You can now start zoning. You need to fill up all of your blocks with medium density zoning, even on the outside edge of the inner city - we want the suburbs to be 'hidden' by the inner city houses.

You want commercial on the main roads:


And you want residential on the streets.


Notice how we didn't leave space for any facilities - we just don't have the space to fit them in here. These inner cities were often built in the Victorian era, when amenities of any sort were a luxury.

But one thing we should include are bus stops on the main roads. Because of the lack of space, we need to use road-top bus stops, and where better to find those than the RTMT, available on the STEX?

I'm using these because they come with SAM-top bus stops, but for the inner city, we just want them on our main roads. There's no way we'll be able to get them down tiny inner city streets. You only need a few, not too far apart:


And our inner city is now done. It's that easy.

So now we move into the CBD proper. It's just like the inner city at first - lay out the streets in blocks (as best you can), and don't forget to give them decent textures with the SAM:


The difference between this and the inner city is that we have to put down a few buildings first. The first is a pedestrianised shopping street in that big central block.
We're going to use the Ped Mall pieces to do this. They're in the NAM under the Roads menu, so you should have them by now. The Open Paved textures are good for a central shopping precinct like this, so we'll use those. You need to place them down the middle of that block, with a couple of branches, keeping everything relatively straight:


We now need to activate the ped mall so that it works. To do this, we need to place a transit-enabled lot next to it, and this is where those SAM-top bus stops come into play. We're going to use the street to the left as the central terminus for bus services in Faulkner's Bridge, as often occurs in real life. You need to place bus stops 2 tiles apart on the street, have at least 5 stops, and make sure that one of them is next to the Ped Mall:


Notice how we've done some ground preparation to the left. This is so we can build a shopping centre to supplement the shopping street. I won't recommend a specific download here, because you'll all have different needs. I will tell you though, that I used Ill Tonkso's UK Shop Sets.

I will say this now - it's worth downloading a few sets of RCI buildings. Ideally they should all be of a similar style - which is why I'd recommend typing in the name of your country into the STEX, as this will give you lots of results for buildings that look like the buildings in your country. Then download as many of them as you can. You need the diversity and the 'house style' to be realistic.

The lot I'm using is ploppable, so we just stick it down on that street:


As we're on the subject, I'll just say a few words about using ploppable RCI.
I don't personally like to use it - I'd rather just zone and let the simulator do the work. But it is perfectly possible to build a whole city with just ploppable lots - if you can get enough of them to have sufficient diversity in your city. If you do this, that's fine, but be careful, because a lot of ploppable lots tend to be more suited to CBDs than suburbs and industry. It's likely to mess up the simulator as well, and there's the risk of abandonment.
I think one or two ploppables may not be a bad idea - but keep it that way. Building lots of ploppables is laborious work, and you have to decide what goes where. For large areas, it's better just to let the computer do the work - it usually does a pretty reasonable job.

I expect some people to argue with me on this, but that is just my take on the subject.

Back to our CBD, then, and the next job is to provide ample parking facilities for commuters, workers and shoppers. Multi-storey car parks will be more in keeping with the tall buildings we're going to get here, so we're going to use those.
Place a couple on the fringes of your CBD - it doesn't matter where, but you don't want more traffic on your central streets than is necessary:


And yes, they are the Maxis lots. Even the purists among you will see that they do look the part, so let's just accept that Maxis did do some decent stuff and move on to the zoning.

For this, you need high density zoning. Commerical is your priority here, and you should have it in your shopping street, and near the shopping centre, the station, and the car parks.
You can also use residential to fill in some gaps:


Our CBD is nearly now, but there are still a couple of things to do.

The first is to provide an access route over the railway, which, at the moment, is splitting our CBD into 2 parts. We're going to use the Ped Mall bridge pieces to reunite the CBD.
The secret to this is to use the Ped Mall on Slope pieces, with the arrows facing the bridge, and fill in the gaps with Rail bridge pieces and open paved textures. Oh, and don't forget to activate it with a bus stop!


This is a really ingenious and easy way to build a stepped footbridge, and I'll think you'll agree it looks the part.

Finally, we're going to add the old historic Faulkner's Bridge, which, if you remember Lesson 1, was the reason why this whole town came into being.
On the eastern edge, drag a street bridge over the river. The bridge type you want needs to be historic - and Jeronij'sRural Street Bridge is perfect for this:


As you can see, height is not an issue. No ferry is ever going to get down that narrow river.

And that's all, folks! Next lesson will focus on the industrial area.

Until then,
Chris

[sumwonyuno]

Hello, remember me?

I am certainly impressed with seeing such improvement in your work.  It is great to see that you're not just creating a better mayor diary, but also that you're creating something that helps others to improve as well!   

[j-dub]

What you've described is a very good system for SC4, but not a good system realistically. Having one or two recycling plants in each town is good, but landfills should be kept reasonably small.

What do you mean by small? Do you got dimensions? I don't mean trouble, but I have to ask what is reasonable dimensions, because you just got to see the trash heap in my neck of the woods. I mean, I drove to the next town over, went on top of the giant landfill, and found that I can see both my house and Willis tower from it, and those two things are so far apart from each other, you would not believe anyone can see the two both on foot. I should mention there is only one other landfill I know of around me I went up to the top, but both had exhaust pipes, because the smell of both places did not clear the air, thats for sure, but thats what I get for walking in on both. The problem with SC4, is they don't dig down for the landfill, unless you know how to drop the elevation in the first place.

The game landfill I mentioned, actually does not have that much trash in it, and not even wide or high enough then the real life one. However, every community in the region has at least one recylcing center. I forgot to mention, one town on the edge of the map also has a landfill, but the difference is, its not like in the center where everyone has access. My region ain't that big yet. It does seem that waste to energy next to a wide waste land, (not that much different then yours) keep it from becoming too much though. All I know is, I am not in the dumps, the trash is certainly going somewhere, just don't know where.

[smileymk]

Are we ready to create some industry? Then let's crack on with it.

sumwonyuno: How could I forget one of the regular contributors to 17 Regions of Wonder, Terror and Craziness? And thanks for those lovely words of encouragement.

j-dub: About 20-30 tiles wide and 10-20 tiles long will be fine, but do NOT make it square, either in appearance or in reality! I hope that helps.

Now, back to topic: Industry.

Lesson 9 - Industry

This is an area where you really have to put some thought into your efforts, because the game develops industry in a manner completely different to that which I would call realistic. You can't just zone a huge area and be done with it, and expect good results.

Like all our development thus far, we zone around the streets, not the other way round. So our first job is to create some streets to fill our industrial area.

We're going to do the main streets first. Any estate (and this does not just apply to industrial areas, but any estate) should have a couple of streets that directly connect to the main roads on the edge of the estate. Side streets can then be built to fill in the gaps.

As this is an industrial area, we need to think of all of the lorries that are going to thunder down these streets. They can't get around tight curves easily, so our main streets need to be as straight as possible, and we can't have any roundabouts.
This layout here is what you're aiming for:


See how HGV-friendly it is. And don't forget that SAM.

Particular attention needs to be paid to how you get your streets to end at diagonal roads:


See that little fork to the left? That's what you need to do wherever an industrial street meets a diagonal road. It saves the lorries from having to make a sharp 135-degree turn, and the inevitable crashes that result.

Now you can fill in the gaps with side streets. A good gap between them is about 6 - 10 tiles, and be sure to vary them a little - the less regular it looks, the better:


Again, straightness where possible is good.

Before we start zoning, you need to build a few small car parks to serve some of the workers in the nearby factories. They should be on or near the main streets, not too far from where they meet the main roads.

Before we can lay any tarmac, we need to level the ground first, otherwise you'll get retaining walls in the middle of the car park. You know what to do:


Notice the small size. Now you can use whatever lots you need to fill in that car park:


Right. We're ready to start zoning. You need to listen to this part, because it's the most important secret to creating realistic industry.

What you must NEVER do, under any circumstances, is simply zone out an area and let the game do the work.

All this will achieve is a random collection of small factories, most of which aren't facing a road. This is just wrong.

A realistic industrial estate consists of a number of sizeable plots, each standing on their own and not attached to any other factories.
To achieve this, you have to use a technique known as parcelised zoning.

What this means is that you hold down the CTRL key whilst you're dragging out the zone, and that will create a single plot of the size that you have dragged out. This will force the game to develop a lot of that size, meaning your factories are of an appropriate size.

For an industrial area, the size you're looking for is between 2x2 and 3x3 tiles. And make sure that there's a 1-2 tile gap in between factories, and that the arrows you get all face a street:


It might be worth you practising this in a 'play' region, so that when you come to do it for real in a 'serious' region, you've got the experience to do it properly.

The next task is simple. Using the parcelisation technique, fill in the rest of your industry:


This is great so far, but it begs the question of 'what goes in the middle?'

One solution is to use Ped Mall to create some pathways around the back of the factories. This also gives us a good excuse to place bus stops to serve the estate.

The cobblestone textures are great for this. Use SAM-top bus stops on the main streets to activate them:


(I should point out that you should not have too many bus stops! 3 or 4 will be fine.)

In the remaining gaps, placing the Open Grass Area lot is good for filling up the estate with grass:


Finally, what harm will a few trees do? Take your pick and place them randomly, but have a film of trees along the edges of the estate:


Once you're done, you should have something like this:


And that's the industrial estate finished. Next lesson will be on the facilities.

Until then,
Chris

[Battlecat]

Interesting approach to your industrial estate.  I'm not sure those pedmalls would be my first choice for fillers, the cobble texture doesn't quite fit with heavy industries.  Of course if your long term plan is to have high tech industry there, then it should work pretty nicely. 

The result is visually striking and your approach to designing your industrial area as an estate is very realistic. 

[j-dub]

@Smiley, don't know if you will agree, but depending on if and when the new NAM retexture comes out, there is a
chance you won't even have to do this.


Beacause the new cosmetic textures alter such acute corners with curves and a 90 degree straight edge, that when you drag into this very situation
those sharp angles, are no longer.