Tips for Building Downtown areas?

[Mighty_Joker]

So it turns out I suck at the actual city part of city building. I enjoy, and am quite good at, building the small towns, suburbs, and outlying regions. When it comes to the downtown areas though, I get a bit stuck for design choices.

Where do the high-rise residential areas go in relation to the big shops? Where to offices go? I suppose not growing up in a big city means that I can't really visualise their layouts.

Does anyone have any deign tips or examples for the actual zoning and road layouts of downtown and metropolitan areas?

Also, preferably something a little more creative than Manhattan.

EDIT: I should state that I'm playing the game in normal single player, so don't have access to everything right off the bat. I'm currently sitting at around 8,000 pop.

 

[muttonnoir]

Have a look at some YT "Let's Play" builds- also refer to google maps for inspiration and search for images of RL cityscapes. The internet is the ultimate resource...

 

[EthanZak]

My general rule when cramming stuff close together is for Indy closest to highway access/ports etc, then commercial so it's close to the indy, offices as buffer for noise pollution, then residential. I usually try to keep most zones completely separate these days with their own highway access etc, but then most of my builds don't end up looking much like real cities anyway

 

[jfriend]

I usually have a highway around the city with a main highway going through all with exits to the city. in the city i have the downtown with large avenues and building on each side. Around the inner part of the city i have a few big parks with residential area near there. Hope this helps

 

[MotownCountry]

I usually have a highway around the city with a main highway going through all with exits to the city. in the city i have the downtown with large avenues and building on each side. Around the inner part of the city i have a few big parks with residential area near there. Hope this helps

oooh let's see some pictures! i bet your city looks awesome!

 

[New023]

For the most part having commercial near residential shouldn't be a problem, but higher noise polluting commercials will "make citizens sick" and use up a bunch of ambulances and hearses which can clog up traffic pretty badly. Some roads clog up more with emergency vehicles for some reason. In real life, at least in the U.S., downtown areas love using one way roads, I've used that in my city and it works pretty well, and of course have a few central avenues.

I had major issues with traffic here in the past because residential high rises that were too close to high density commercial caused citizens to get sick, and also backed up traffic with ambulances and hearses and many vehicles were stuck in a "traffic loop". I solved it by removing the residentials that were very close to high noise polluting commercials. Hopefully this helps and don't forget to have a highway near it as well!