When I am playing the game after putting down my commercial zones I noticed there have been so many of lets say for example ABC Cafe in one city especially grouped together. Why does this happen? At one time counted over a dozen of the same lot and bulldozed them three to four times until something else took their place. Any thoughts on this and a way to correct the issue?
I might be wrong but IIRC it's to do with building stages, buildings will only grow if they're available. AFAIK Pumpkin Acres and Wren Insurance are the only vanilla buildings of their type and stage (could be wrong, though). Do you have any custom growables installed?
The easiest way to correct a building growing too frequently is to provide it with competition. For instance, if it is low density commercial services that are appearing too frequently, then try using some of Simgoobers or JMeyers or Madhatters many lots available. These have usually been modded to mimic the Maxis stats and provide much needed variety to your commercial areas.
However, the same is true for CO, Res I-Ag and Industrial. If something is appearing too frequently and you either can't delete it from your plugins (because its a Maxis file) or you don't want to delete a downloaded plugin that is appearing too often, then the best bet is to get it some competition.
All you need is more variety of the same. If however this happens again, just bulldoze the lot and let it grow again, usually it comes out different, then make it historical. That's what I do and it works fine. ;)
Fred
You might also rotate building styles as often as possible (yearly) to get some variety that way. Unfortunately, the "build all styles at once" option is not implemented -- checking the box has no effect.
When hunting for variety, be careful to stay within your CAM-patible or vanilla world.