American historical small towns?

[Marcavitch]

Hi there - 40+ yr old noob. I'm a historic preservationist (architectural history, urban planning) with a real interest in creating historic American small towns in Cities. Sort of a variant on model railroading since I dont have the space. I've managed to get the American Commercial modifications that have created some good downtown spaces. But wondering if anyone has had a great example of building American small towns? Is using ploppable better than something through the grow method? I've seen New Windsor which is amazing, but ends up being a big city. I'm looking at some method to create small towns.

I would also ask if there is a mod that we could use to NOT use connections to highways but jump straight to trains or perhaps use a harbor (like a small town would start). I hate having to connect to a highway since it seems so modern.

Finally, I see chat that CIties 2 is coming. I'll put out in the universe that I hope they are talking to historic preservationists, urban planners, and architectural historians to look at how our communites develop over time.

 

[Beer Fiend]

I'd say ploppable is your best bet, else you'll just get tons of Vanilla assets coming through, and a lot of them are kind of futuristic/modern/pre-war continental Europe.

As for the highways thing, my suggestion would be the Outside Connections mod coupled with Cross The Line/81 Tiles (dependent on your machine). I'm not sure if this will work (not done it myself, I tend to build in some form of American/English hybrid) but you make your map and just have a superficial highway end in your start tile, then in the game, demolish the highway and build out to the edge with your choice of smaller road. I would be careful though as freight will still need to travel in and out of the city, so too small a connection will more than likely lead to a massive jam.

Steam Workshop::Unlimited Outside Connections Revisited 1.1

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Steam Workshop::Cross The Line

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