Informal Poll - How do you start your cities?

[TheOtherRick]

Do you start your cities small and let them grow organically? Do you lay down all of your transport network (roads and rails) first and then fill in the zones? Tell us how you start a city and briefly discuss the pros and cons of your method.

[bap]

I see city tiles as just parts of a larger city region. I have been playing SC4 for several years, trying to build a city region from the begining, that is, it starts historically as a set of small villages in a rural environment, and grows with time. I know how the city layout is supposed to be in the XXI century, and my challenge is to see how do I get it from scratch, in the XIX century, up to the metropolis it is meant to be now. There is some fun in this process: you know where a huge traffic system will be in the future, although at the current epoch what is in there is just a few rural roads with low traffic. You can plan where you olimpic stadium & village will be in the future, while there are just farms and forests in the current epoch. 

Unfortunately, because of RL and several problems on the way (prop pox being the most relevant one), I am still around 1890's. So, I am still far from being able to let grow & plop skycrappers, subways and all of the modern, technological stuff available in the SC4 community  .

[Kitsune]

I start with a basic road plan, and then start to fill it in. For industrial - I just tend to plop zones. CBD, I do roads > parks > civic > zones > more roads where needed. For Residential, I square out the road network and fill out each square, fused grid style. I use a method where I can cram 200K sims into one low des large city tile.

[metarvo]

I build the transit networks first and the rest later.  Many real cities I've seen have grids that largely follow the major roads or railroads that are already in place.  I feel that it is easier to zone within the bounds of predetermined blocks rather than having to do a lot of bulldozing later when new roads are needed.  Sometimes, I might start out with dirt streets, but these get upgraded as the city develops.

This method is not perfect, though.  It can seem artificial if it follows a strict grid.  Let's face it, it's not always easy to predict where the development or traffic will be the highest, short of getting out the graph paper and meticulously filling in each square (I know no one here's done that but me, lol ).  That 10-lane freeway running through a field of mostly undeveloped zones can look silly.  So, everything can't always be planned out perfectly.

[themaroonday]

You have to look at every city as part of a network, not just an isolated area. First, I lay down the foundations of a region. Since the RHW is free, I create a regional Highway network. Then, I build a small, profitable city in one regional square, and another small, profitable city in another regional square. The demand between the two cities will become more stable and it will transfer more throughout the region. As I build more, I expand all cities in the region and create new cities after a while. 

[gn_leugim]

I see city tiles as just parts of a larger city region. I have been playing SC4 for several years, trying to build a city region from the begining, that is, it starts historically as a set of small villages in a rural environment, and grows with time. I know how the city layout is supposed to be in the XXI century, and my challenge is to see how do I get it from scratch, in the XIX century, up to the metropolis it is meant to be now. There is some fun in this process: you know where a huge traffic system will be in the future, although at the current epoch what is in there is just a few rural roads with low traffic. You can plan where you olimpic stadium & village will be in the future, while there are just farms and forests in the current epoch. 

Unfortunately, because of RL and several problems on the way (prop pox being the most relevant one), I am still around 1890's. So, I am still far from being able to let grow & plop skycrappers, subways and all of the modern, technological stuff available in the SC4 community  .

this is so the way I play ^^

and too bad to know you have PP :\

[Shark7]

Well, there is madness to my method...or is it method to my madness? 

My 'planning' phase consists of laying out my main road, rail, and mono-rail lines and making neighbor connections.  Then the city just starts growing from there.  I also prefer to play on all large city tiles, so sometimes the 'city' ends up being many small villages inside the city tile, and sometimes it turns into a large metropolis.

I do make a decision of what type of city I want in the tile before just building though.  I tend to make a lot more of the rural/village type cities surrounded by lots of farmland, with some larger cities spread about the map (my current map is 10 x 10 large city tiles).

Some connected tiles become multi-tile cities that have numerous connections via avenues and roads as well...again, I make my main connections and just build along the terrain, letting it develop as I go.  I don't know if that is the best method, but it does at least keep me from making similar, grid-like cities.