Is one giant industrial zone feasible?

[Joe Stud]

I have questions with regard to city planning. Right now I plan to play with no mods and the goal is simply try to get a city as big as I can.
Without mods, I only get 9 tiles. The limiting factor will be the traffic and space.

Contrary to popular opinion, I think I am going to put the industrial location right in the middle tile of the 9 tiles and congregate all the manufacturing there. It makes sense to put them there to minimize the overall traffic distance. It wouldn't make sense to deliver from one end of the map to another end right? Also, I am thinking about all the factory delivery of general goods and specialty goods will end up in a warehouse district first, and the delivery to commercial zone will mostly come from the warehouse. Many people said warehouses don't help traffic all that much, but I think it should theoretically. If a general factory produces some goods and there is no immediate demand from a commercial zone anywhere, it will ship out of town causing traffic and delay. If there is a demand from commercial zone, the truck will go to commercial zone if there is no warehouse. But I would like shipping to go through cargo train instead to minimize the spawning of the number of cars so a warehouse makes sense. The warehouse district will have cargo rails going from the center of the 9 tiles and radiate outward. People have mostly said a giant industry zone is a very bad idea, but I don't see it. I plan to do a giant industry zone and the commercial district will be scattered all over and connected to industry thorough rails and roads

So is my plan going to work or am I insane?

 

[Avanya]

Oooh, this sounds interesting! I have no idea how it would work out as it's been ages since I built a large industrial area instead of several spread out, but I'm curious to see how it would work. I guess it's a question of good enough connections to bring in raw materials and a well planned out layout to distribute goods into the city. If you do end up trying it, please do share with us how it works out!

 

[Beer Fiend]

Interesting layout!

I do tend to build massive industrial estates, but rather in the middle I put them near a large body of water so the cargo hub has access to the outside. The attached train line can be used to ferry goods around the map, just ensure the cargo lines and passenger lines are separated.

 

[TTJ]

I think it can work, if you route your traffic really well. Some ideas:
- Channel your road traffic with one way roads and giant roundabouts
- Use all means of transport (rail, ship, cargo airport if you have that)
- Try to make sure that traffic coming from an outside connection in the east enters your industrial area from the east - west from the west and so on
- Use public transport (but not busses) to avoid car traffic in the area

Good luck! And post the results!

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I try to avoid overly large industrial zones due to traffic issues. Even with efficient setups the main connectors (roads, railways and cargo harbors & airports, etc.) have a tendency to end up overwhelmed due to their limited throughput as cargo traffic escaltes when the city size increases. The problem with cargo traffic is not so much the amount, but that it tends to congregate in specific bottlenecks (e.g. import/export hubs or connector roads & their intersections/roundabouts). It does make sense to keep certain production chain steps close to each other, but apart from that I tend to spread out generic industry & final product factories into small industrial parks along my main highway connections.

Same goes for Commercial - I will have some high-density Commercial districts outside of the main city areas (e.g. a hotel district around the airport, leisure districts with their own highway connections) and otherwise sprinkle a bunch of low density commerical buildings all over the city. That way I reduce travel time for my CIMs and also spread out the delivery traffic. Low density Commerce doesn't create a lot of noise, so it doesn't impact residential health. A single high density building can be plopped down if there are no other sources of noise nearby or if there is a bit of buffer (e.g. a park or other empty space) between it and housing, but it's easy to end up with sickening levels of noise pollution if one is not careful.

I also make sure that everything has pedestrian access - a key factor to keep car traffic down in larger cities. Also a reason why spread out industry can be good, as CIMs are quite likely to ride a bicycle to work.

 

[JerkyJerry]

I say go fer it!
However,
With only 9 tiles and no mods....it is going to be very difficult, IMHO

I do it all the time, however I use mods and 25 tiles. I don't think I could get it to work without TMPE. TMPE allows my industrial area to accept:
The only vehicles I have on the roads of my industrial area are delivery trucks
Workers can only get to the industrial area via subways, walking & biking
Any trains within the industrial area are freight only

I also place all the necessary buildings within the zone; hospital, crematorium, fire, garbage, police. Those service vehicles never leave the industrial zone and no other service vehicles ever enter.
I only use one way roads.
I stole most of how I manage to run a profitable and traffic free industrial zone (regardless of size or specialized industry) is from
Akruas!

Good luck in your quest!
Just to let you know, I'd be betting the house on this one. Sorry
Without mods, I just don't think it can happen. And with only 9 tiles, it is going to be even more difficult. Well let me clarify. It can happen for a hamlet, a village, a town. Sure, not much traffic just a few thousand cims. However, 9 tiles, no mods, 100k cims, 200K cims, 500k cims, no traffic, no issues? Well, that is a horse of a different color now isn't it?

May the wind always be at your back and the beer always carbonated!

 

[MarkJohnson]

I have questions with regard to city planning. Right now I plan to play with no mods and the goal is simply try to get a city as big as I can.
Without mods, I only get 9 tiles. The limiting factor will be the traffic and space.

Contrary to popular opinion, I think I am going to put the industrial location right in the middle tile of the 9 tiles and congregate all the manufacturing there. It makes sense to put them there to minimize the overall traffic distance. It wouldn't make sense to deliver from one end of the map to another end right? Also, I am thinking about all the factory delivery of general goods and specialty goods will end up in a warehouse district first, and the delivery to commercial zone will mostly come from the warehouse. Many people said warehouses don't help traffic all that much, but I think it should theoretically. If a general factory produces some goods and there is no immediate demand from a commercial zone anywhere, it will ship out of town causing traffic and delay. If there is a demand from commercial zone, the truck will go to commercial zone if there is no warehouse. But I would like shipping to go through cargo train instead to minimize the spawning of the number of cars so a warehouse makes sense. The warehouse district will have cargo rails going from the center of the 9 tiles and radiate outward. People have mostly said a giant industry zone is a very bad idea, but I don't see it. I plan to do a giant industry zone and the commercial district will be scattered all over and connected to industry thorough rails and roads

So is my plan going to work or am I insane?

Yes, it can be done. I did it before in one of my first few cities. The balancing may even be more trickier now with all of the updates and rule changes. But it also might be easier with all of the DLC additions by adding more outside connection possibilities and cargo station options.

It is a very big challenge as the game has a very low vehicle limit, so it can only spawn 16k worth of vehicles at one time. Mine ended up being industry in the center (hopefully with natural resources) then surrounded by commerce (low density) then residential in the outer ring. If you own Industries DLC, it should be much more doable with the Cargo Airport that was added to the game.

If you have Green Cities DLC, there are office IT Clusters that generate goods for commerce, so Industries DLC can focus on exporting raw and processed materials, but you will need to focus on as few exports as possible, but enough to level up Industry DLC districts and still make a profit. Also Office IT Clusters don't generate traffic as they teleport goods to commerce, so this should be huge for you.

 

[Joe Stud]

So far, I ran into huge traffic problem but I fixed it by separating one interconnected cargo train system into several unrelated systems. My cargo train was too overwhelmed. Also I had to separate into several warehouse zones and each warehouse zone uses a different cargo train system. I try to limit the amount of import and export by building offices. I only produce the amount of goods my commercial zone needs, and all excessive productions will be re-zoned into offices. Also, I have nearly zero import because I use recycling center exclusively for garbage (no landfill and incinerator), and the recycle center can keep producing raw material so that I not only don't need to import material, but I actually export raw material. It seems that the recycling center can allow you to produce raw material in a ex-nihilo manner. Other than that, it is fine for now. I only have about 50k population. I can imagine things will get a lot worse from here.

 

[ASGeek2012]

The reason a lot of people criticize the "all industry in one place" is because it tends to be a beginner's mistake. They're not necessarily planning for the heavy traffic that comes along with that, they're just blindly zoning more industry in the same place because the RCI indicators tell them to. Where you're specifically planning ahead, you have a better shot at succeeding. I still tend to scatter my industrial zones not just for traffic concerns, but because I feel it's more realistic. Most cities I know tend to have pockets of industry in multiple locations rather than all in one place. But that's just my play style and not any more or less "right" than anyone else's.

 

[Joe Stud]

So after couple weeks of trying out this idea, i have some feedbacks.

First, the industry traffic do get pretty overwelming. I expanded very carefully and I do not enlarge my city until I get handle the traffic, and I try to get traffic above 85% the whole time. If it dips below that, i generally stop doing anything else and try to solve the traffic issues first.
Here are my findings.
1. I ended up separating different cargo rails into different systems, and this means that each system would end up delivering to only a specific portion of the map. However if you do this, you might as well move industry closer to the place of delivery and defeats the purpose of "one giant industry zone". If I haven't done this, I could not expand the city above a certain size. The cargo rails eventually becomes a nightmare to deal with, and I spent a lot of time trying to solve the jams.
2. The farm should be right next to local organic produce. but overall, I found that the specialized zones are not worth it due to them messing up your industry DLC economy because you couldn't control them. for example, if a building from industry DLC needs raw material, sometimes it would receive delivery from specialized zone but you don't want that.
3. One advantage of having one giant zone is to congregate all the unique goods factories with industry DLC buildings because they need different types of supplies. In my opinion, one giant industry zone idea still works for industry DLC, but generalized goods should be located elsewhere, like closer to the commercial zones.
4. For generalized goods, I am thinking that it might not be worth it to actually produce them. If you don't have them, the shops will have to receive deliveries from out of town. But if you have generalized goods industry, they still generate traffic and cause pollution. I haven't try this idea yet, but it might be better to just have lots of warehouses near the edge of a map for receiving commercial goods, and then the warehouses would make the delivery through cargo rail or highway. The advantage of using warehouses for delivery is that you can better control how things are delivered. The downside of this is the loss of revenue. (also you need lots of giant warehouses) You generate tax income if you have the generalized industry. However, if you make decent money, you don't need it. The OP money maker in this game is the unique factories. Once you get a few of those up, you pretty much print your own money.
5. Some people claim that they are able to use cargo rails exclusively for delivery of industrial zones and forego highways. This is very difficult once the city gets above a certain size. The railroad just can't handle nearly as much traffic and highways. Even if you use highways in conjunction with railroads, the railroads will still be jammed at some point.
6. To have decent traffic, it is very critical to limit the amount of imports and exports. I cannot stress this enough. The recycling center should be the sole handler of garbage since they generate raw material. To minimize export, try to zone offices for the excess demand. You do make more money from having tons of exports, so only exports like crazy when running into money problem.

 

[Bacholyte]

a lot of people criticize the "all industry in one place" is because it tends to be a beginner's mistake.

I'm a beginner, like having trouble getting past about population 6500. I've kept a spreadsheet of the game-- every few weeks of game time, recording the population, the revenue from residential, commercial, and industrial zones, and the expenses, and then calculating the gross and net revenue per capita. What happens is that income slowly increases, but more slowly than population, while expenses more than keep pace with increasing pop. The data show clearly that weekly revenue per citizen, especially net income after expenses, soon goes on a downward trend which I have never succeeded in reversing. Eventually it's back to a chronic scramble just keeping new arrivals provided with water, electric power, and fire protection. I just read a thread here speculating that about the game throwing a player curves if the treasury has over 100 million. Hah, I should be so lucky. What about first letting me install a daycare center, college, public library, or bus terminal before I've reached a population level where even more expensive buildings are introduced and called for? High-density you-name-it... wats dat, I haven't ever seen what it looks like.

There is a realistic explanation for such an effect: travel time. The more time a cim (same as a Tropican in the Tropico games, not to mention real life) spends commuting, the less time he has for productive work. You might suggest traffic congestion. Nope, not yet. I've been as careful as I can about that and various other design considerations so that in my current game, traffic flow has always shown as 93% or higher. But even traveling at the speed limit nonstop, it takes time to get from point A to point B. It is almost inevitable that the average person will live at an increasing distance from work as population grows. Putting residential areas closer to industrial areas (which of course we're not supposed to do because of pollution) does seem to palliate or postpone the problem somewhat, as does upgrading roads. But the general trend remains inexorable in my experience, and I'd sure love to know how every non-beginner breaks this sound barrier so routinely.

So, to get back to the topic, how many industrial areas should we try to build in the first tile? And how many tiles should we be building on with only 5000-6000 people, particularly when it appears that keeping things compact is the only way to survive? Perhaps someone knows whether cims will pick up stakes and move closer to work if they have a chance (as Tropicans will sometimes do, although not often enough to avoid similar phenomena) . If so, then spreading out more and decentralizing would make sense. If not, what's the point-- people will be commuting even further.

 

[TTJ]

I'm a beginner, like having trouble getting past about population 6500. I've kept a spreadsheet of the game-- every few weeks of game time, recording the population, the revenue from residential, commercial, and industrial zones, and the expenses, and then calculating the gross and net revenue per capita. What happens is that income slowly increases, but more slowly than population, while expenses more than keep pace with increasing pop. The data show clearly that weekly revenue per citizen, especially net income after expenses, soon goes on a downward trend which I have never succeeded in reversing. Eventually it's back to a chronic scramble just keeping new arrivals provided with water, electric power, and fire protection. I just read a thread here speculating that about the game throwing a player curves if the treasury has over 100 million. Hah, I should be so lucky. What about first letting me install a daycare center, college, public library, or bus terminal before I've reached a population level where even more expensive buildings are introduced and called for? High-density you-name-it... wats dat, I haven't ever seen what it looks like.

There is a realistic explanation for such an effect: travel time. The more time a cim (same as a Tropican in the Tropico games, not to mention real life) spends commuting, the less time he has for productive work. You might suggest traffic congestion. Nope, not yet. I've been as careful as I can about that and various other design considerations so that in my current game, traffic flow has always shown as 93% or higher. But even traveling at the speed limit nonstop, it takes time to get from point A to point B. It is almost inevitable that the average person will live at an increasing distance from work as population grows. Putting residential areas closer to industrial areas (which of course we're not supposed to do because of pollution) does seem to palliate or postpone the problem somewhat, as does upgrading roads. But the general trend remains inexorable in my experience, and I'd sure love to know how every non-beginner breaks this sound barrier so routinely.

So, to get back to the topic, how many industrial areas should we try to build in the first tile? And how many tiles should we be building on with only 5000-6000 people, particularly when it appears that keeping things compact is the only way to survive? Perhaps someone knows whether cims will pick up stakes and move closer to work if they have a chance (as Tropicans will sometimes do, although not often enough to avoid similar phenomena) . If so, then spreading out more and decentralizing would make sense. If not, what's the point-- people will be commuting even further.

I have never heard that ravel time actually affects the tax income from jobs. In real life you would get up earlier and still do your 8 hours. In C:S it seems even to be sufficient that cims start to travel to work and then despawn eventually because of traffic jams (not sure about that).

If you constantly run out of money at 6000 population you are either building too many/to large roads as they cost upkeep or you provide too many services! As for services: A single fire station placed in the middle of your industrial area will do for a few thousand cims, as long as they can reach other points in the city fast. Same for police. Just enough so that crime icons don't pop up everywhere. Schools only so many that you can accomodate all pupils. If you still run into problems, post some screenshots of your city in a new thread!

So back to topic: As I am a lazy person, I usually have only one industrial area in my first tile. But I plan it close to the highway and with good road connection. I also leave space for a cargo rail on the backside for later. Forestry is placed away from other industry in small groups where it fits. For farming either the same or I make a larger farming district, again with cargo rail and good road connection. Oil and ore industry definitely gets its own area with highway and cargo rail later.

I noticed that when industry starts levelling up and I build more offices, I don't need to build any new industry for a long time then. Only when reaching 50k population or so, I build a new area, usually close to some cargo harbour.

 

[Bacholyte]

Thanks for your suggestions! I've found the problem: enacting power conservation, water conservation, and smoke detector policies as soon as they were available, thinking that the ongoing cost was trivial. In fact, the expense of these policies will eat us alive, vastly exceeding their benefit. As soon as I rescinded these policies, my income after expenses more than doubled. Under normal circumstances, I now can't imagine why they would be a good idea (other than perhaps smoke detectors in industrial districts only, and maybe only the smaller, more remote ones at that, such as it wouldn't pay to install a fire station dedicated to them).

The gradual drop in per-capita revenue is still a curious fact, but it is no longer crippling to the budget.

 

[EFGCities]

I have a giant industrial farm, ore, oil and about to do a giant forestry(INDUSTRIES DLC). What I figured after depleteable resources run out(oil and ore)is to destroy extractor buildings except for some that can be left for aesthetic purposes such as the giant ore rig-thing, enact matching vanilla industries zoning within the industrial(dlc)zone and then maintain raw material processing plants, barracks and maintenance bldgs(for ALL the conversion factories to perform better). Remember, raw materials for oil and ore can be imported for processing and subsequent conversion to factory materials...lots of $$$$$. Oh and also...WAREHOUSES(set to balanced)are your best friend.

 

[MarkJohnson]

So after couple weeks of trying out this idea, i have some feedbacks.

First, the industry traffic do get pretty overwelming. I expanded very carefully and I do not enlarge my city until I get handle the traffic, and I try to get traffic above 85% the whole time. If it dips below that, i generally stop doing anything else and try to solve the traffic issues first.
Here are my findings.
1. I ended up separating different cargo rails into different systems, and this means that each system would end up delivering to only a specific portion of the map. However if you do this, you might as well move industry closer to the place of delivery and defeats the purpose of "one giant industry zone". If I haven't done this, I could not expand the city above a certain size. The cargo rails eventually becomes a nightmare to deal with, and I spent a lot of time trying to solve the jams.
2. The farm should be right next to local organic produce. but overall, I found that the specialized zones are not worth it due to them messing up your industry DLC economy because you couldn't control them. for example, if a building from industry DLC needs raw material, sometimes it would receive delivery from specialized zone but you don't want that.
3. One advantage of having one giant zone is to congregate all the unique goods factories with industry DLC buildings because they need different types of supplies. In my opinion, one giant industry zone idea still works for industry DLC, but generalized goods should be located elsewhere, like closer to the commercial zones.
4. For generalized goods, I am thinking that it might not be worth it to actually produce them. If you don't have them, the shops will have to receive deliveries from out of town. But if you have generalized goods industry, they still generate traffic and cause pollution. I haven't try this idea yet, but it might be better to just have lots of warehouses near the edge of a map for receiving commercial goods, and then the warehouses would make the delivery through cargo rail or highway. The advantage of using warehouses for delivery is that you can better control how things are delivered. The downside of this is the loss of revenue. (also you need lots of giant warehouses) You generate tax income if you have the generalized industry. However, if you make decent money, you don't need it. The OP money maker in this game is the unique factories. Once you get a few of those up, you pretty much print your own money.
5. Some people claim that they are able to use cargo rails exclusively for delivery of industrial zones and forego highways. This is very difficult once the city gets above a certain size. The railroad just can't handle nearly as much traffic and highways. Even if you use highways in conjunction with railroads, the railroads will still be jammed at some point.
6. To have decent traffic, it is very critical to limit the amount of imports and exports. I cannot stress this enough. The recycling center should be the sole handler of garbage since they generate raw material. To minimize export, try to zone offices for the excess demand. You do make more money from having tons of exports, so only exports like crazy when running into money problem.

Did you reach 9-tiles full yet?

Any screenshots?

 

[Joe Stud]

Did you reach 9-tiles full yet?

Any screenshots?

Sadly no. I stopped playing for a while after my post, and I mostly only play on my laptop during lunch break.
But anyways, I ran into a lot of weird issues I can't figure out.
For example, I have a slumping industry demand while the commercial demand is through the roof. Without a proper balance between the two, I ended up importing a lot of commercial goods. I think the commercial demand got a big boost from tourists, but industry demand is slumping I don't know for sure. I could be due to people having trouble to get to work. My industry zone has no road connection, but it has cargo trains and public transportation. But the only way to prove the hypothesis is to rearrange everything. Another weird problem I am seeing is the amount of unemployed people are very high, like over 10% while the number of jobs available is plenty. While there are plenty of jobs, people are not taking those jobs. I think educated citizens don't like to work in the industry.

 

[MarkJohnson]

If you keep following commerce demand your city will collapse on itself. Especially with Industries DLC. Those Unique Factories are the only ones that will feed commerce, and you can have only one of each. Maybe place them by the commerce area you want them to supply, then add some warehouses for each freight type you need.

Part of the issue may be segregating the industrial district. it may be prevent proper distribution of goods.

 

[TTJ]

You could try to apply the Industry 4.0 policy. It will create industry workplaces for educated and increase the output of goods per factory.

 

[Joe Stud]

You could try to apply the Industry 4.0 policy. It will create industry workplaces for educated and increase the output of goods per factory.

Sadly, it doesn't affect industry DLC though or specialized industry.

 

[Joe Stud]

If you keep following commerce demand your city will collapse on itself. Especially with Industries DLC. Those Unique Factories are the only ones that will feed commerce, and you can have only one of each. Maybe place them by the commerce area you want them to supply, then add some warehouses for each freight type you need.

Part of the issue may be segregating the industrial district. it may be prevent proper distribution of goods.

I think part of the issue might be the distance between the residential area and the industry area. If one adopts the one giant industry zone thing, it is difficult to have residential areas nearby. I heard the engine can tolerate the industry zone being a lot further away than commercial zone, but I was wondering whether the distance causes the demand to slump. Also, I don't have roads or highways that connect the industry zone and everywhere else, but I do have plenty of bike lanes, walk paths, and public transportation. I was wonder whether that is part of the cause for the slump of demand. But after reconnecting the industry area to everything else, the demand didn't go back up. So right now, my demand for industry is almost 0, while my commercial demand is super high, and I am importing goods like crazy, causing horrible traffic.