What is a realistic city?

kosh22 said:

This is not a comment on the game; this is more a comment on cities in general. As we still have 8 days to go why not explore wider issues?

There have been several threads where people express their desire for realistic cities. I challenge their meaning of realistic.

I live in a small town, population of about 60k. At rush hour it takes me 30 minutes to travel 2 miles. This is due to the poorly designed road network and local obsession with traffic lights. Coupled with an unwillingness, or lack of financial clout, to build dual carriage ways (two lane roads) we have an urban nightmare.

I used to live in London. Traffic congestion was endemic when I was there. Small roads, twisting and turning, lorries parking in the most ridiculous places. Ancient monuments needing to be by-passed.
In effect I am saying that all cities are often chaotic and less than efficient evolutions limited in their design by money, political will and monuments to the past. I am also saying that when gamers say they want realistic in fact they mean 'idealistic.'

A realistic city would be hard to manage without very detailed control at a software level. You just can't bulldoze a building to expand a road in real life. You cannot knock down protected structures and demolish residential areas on a whim. Realistic cities are built by a succession of city planners and politicians, each with their own vision. Realistic cities are messy.

I look forward to building my idealistic community.

Click to expand...

First of all, I love this question, and like you say, since we have time to kill...

I'm one of the ones who uses the word "realistic", sometimes without defining what I mean, so I think you've made a really good point on this. However, to be totally truthful, in my mind I am only using that in a really specific way. For example, I've made multiple posts saying I really hope that we can make the look of the cars feel more "realistic". My point there is that some images seem to indicate that a very large percentage of the cars in the game are pastel-colored, whereas in a real parking lot (I even posted an image of that on one thread), not a single car is usually colored like that. And I used the word "realistic" to say I hope we have the option of making the cars more that way.

Having said that, that's just my pet peeve issue, and I'd be a fool to think that the entirety of the the city is going to look wholly realistic. CO made this point somewhere I think... we don't really want all the drab colors of real life. We want our cities to be bright and colorful. In other words, like you say, in some ways we want idealistic, not realistic.

The challenge is that what we really want is a really tough-to-find balance. You say you live in a city of 60K (in the UK I presume) with some real traffic problems. I totally want to play that. I am hoping the simulation model creates a situation where money is scarce enough that I am confronted by those very same problems. Maybe I have enough money to address part of the problem, but it's not like I'm going to pony up £3 billion for an underground for Ipswich (one of the places I want to create). I'm keen to play that out, with all its realistic foibles, for a couple of weeks. And then, maybe I get bored, click on the unlimited money mod, and PRESTO, Ipswich gets its spanky new underground!

My point is, I think we all want a blend of reality and idealism, and our personal definitions of where the balance point lies would differ amongst us. What I love about the work of the team at CO is that I think they totally get that. The images I've seen of this game (OK, BESIDES the pink cars and the donut trucks!!) define that balance line precisely where I would have it lie. And, based on the immense interest this game is creating, I suspect a LOT of people would feel the same.

I am curious to see others' responses to this question...

As NorthStars alluded to, depends on your definition of "realistic".
Some want to recreate existing cities, mostly the one they live in. I live in a small town, 26.3 square miles (68.1km2) with a population of about 26,000. Quite doable in CSL. But I have zero ambition to do that. It's already been done- all I have to do is just look outside! However, IF I did (which even an accurate reproduction of a small town like mine would take a while), once I added any more to it it's not "realistic" anymore, it's "fictitious". (Course, that's what this game is for: to create our 'idealistic, make-believe' cities).

Besides, there's a lot more to a city or town than just traffic.

My take on realistic city is something that I build and expand slowly and plan carefully.
Usually I plan one or two streets at a time and try to make them look realistic in a way that they stand out on their own with some kind of a story behind them.
I never just build grids everywhere and try to maximize the effectiveness of the city.

Basically I try to make my cites look less like this:



And more like this:

Smokki said:

Basically I try to make my cites look less like this:

And more like this:

Click to expand...

Totally agreed, the first says "Blahh", but the second is way cool... I'm immediately straining my eyes to look more closely and see the details in that one. Especially with this game's support for all kinds of road angles, the possibility to create a city with neat little corners and unexpected places is pretty much limitless. But it will demand a LOT of careful planning, street by street, just like you're saying. That's where the fun will be.

Smokki said:

My take on realistic city is something that I build and expand slowly and plan carefully.
Usually I plan one or two streets at a time and try to make them look realistic in a way that they stand out on their own with some kind of a story behind them.
I never just build grids everywhere and try to maximize the effectiveness of the city.

Basically I try to make my cites look less like this:

And more like this:

Click to expand...

+1
I like to have a story behind my city, and a meaning to it. I don't want to just build.

Some people just want to max out on everything, but I don't.

kosh22 said:

Personally I hate the grid approach. Whilst it may be the most efficient it is far from pretty.

Going back to an earlier poster I agree that some form of limitation on either funding or planning would help contribute to the realism issue. Perhaps policies once modded could do things such as disallow more than single carriageway roads for example. In real life a city does not have easy options to upgrade all roads. In reality it tends to be a mishmash of developments, one way systems and the occasional fly-over/

I think a realistic city is only a small step away from a disastrous city.

Perhaps maps of failed cities can be shared, imposing restrictions such as slowed development, restricted development options etc?

Click to expand...

I think it's good to have a mix. The gridded areas are your more low wealth basic city blocks, and then you use the fancy curved roads to make interesting patterns where the rich people live. Grids can be beautiful in that efficiency is beautiful.

kosh22 said:

I think a realistic city is only a small step away from a disastrous city.

Click to expand...

Ain't that the truth.

Most real cities are grids and angles

Wildcat67 said:

Grids can be beautiful in that efficiency is beautiful.

Click to expand...

Why is the phrase "resistance is futile" coming to my mind?

I think most cities in city builders are to clean looking, particularly in the city centre. I think there should be more grime, dirt, graffiti, run down & abandoned building etc. in them. The 2nd city above looks lovely & have no complaints about it, but big sprawling cities seem to look like they were built last week normally.

Simcity5 said:

Most real cities are grids and angles

Click to expand...

Not in Europe.

As we have the area of nine tiles, I do plan on following my idea of realism.

Someone touched on this in a previous thread: towns and cities have a historical legacy, lots have areas that were conceived and constructed in a distant past. So I'll try to not just bulldoze my starting 'village.' The larger centre of any huge city might have to built elsewhere, but lots of times I can see the humble origin forming an untidy city centre.

I play this type of game at a snails pace btw; I can see myself downloading the first mod I see that slows down time.

zorkman said:

I think most cities in city builders are to clean looking, particularly in the city centre. I think there should be more grime, dirt, graffiti, run down & abandoned building etc. in them. The 2nd city above looks lovely & have no complaints about it, but big sprawling cities seem to look like they were built last week normally.

Click to expand...

Depends on where the city is based for example Colassal are based in Sweden so the cities are clean and my dream is for one to be clean even cleaner than Singapore and the point of a City Builder is to make your dream city

In SC4 I normally challenge myself by building some infrastructure (like railroads) in odd angles beforehand. Also add in some water, or some farming area's and some hills. This gives you stuff to 'build around', instead of just gridding it up.

Here are some pictures form my current CJ on SC4, you can find the whole thing here: http://community.simtropolis.com/topic/65749-vickys-sound-update-7-port-and-industry-wip/

Especially the railroad I build on this map gave me some planning headaches. But the result is so much more interesting

Looking forward to building towns like this in C:SL

Wow...that's really good looking region and fine example of what I think as realistic city! Had to immeadately read trough your CJ.

That's exactly the way I like to play too

Maarten, I love that city/region. A ton of character... that's how to use a city builder well!! Can't wait to see your work in C:SL.

It takes you 30 minutes to go 2 miles? Might as well just get and walk...