What's Wrong With these "City Simulators?"

[Metropolitan]

The problem I have is when a skyline develops incorrectly.. you get a ton of huge skyscrapers, there doesn't seem to be a central CBD, and there are way too many skyscrapers for the city's actual size. I really don't like playing games that have that kind of issue, and I hope "being rewarded with a taller skyline" instead of "getting a taller skyline for doing nothing" becomes more of a them.

Like I said before, EVERY SINGLE story increase in building height should correspond with a formula that involves:

1. Population
2. Strength of economy of the city
3. Interconnectedness
4. Education Quotent
5. Income
6. Land value
7. Environmental factors
8. Proximity to Mass Transit and transit, including ports, airports, train stations, bus stops, subway lines.
9. Cities total industrial/commercial GDP

Every single story increase should correspond to land value, and land value only.

All the other factors you've mentionned should be considered as inputs in the formula to determine land value. The rule is pretty simple: building tall should be done where it is profitable to do so at the moment you're building it.

Furthermore, it is never profitable to destroy a bigger building to build something smaller instead. Demolition/reconstruction can only work in adding more square meters (or square feet) to be built. And it's not necessarily "proximity to mass transit" which matters, but overall accessibility: no matter if it is by car, by bus or by train. That accessibility is determined by commuter time, and commuter time should take into account not only distances but also trafic density.

If obviously what you want to build is a typical US city, such as Houston, you'll notice that the motorway network is star-shaped. Downtown Houston is the most accessible place in the area:

There aren't very many cities in the world (outside Brazil) that have skylines that are a bunch of mid-sized residential towers.. most cities in the world you have to have a VERY large city before you start getting any skyscrapers, and those skyscrapers are always in a cluster, or multiple clutstered areas.

This "concept art" of Sim City 5 got it right.. a gradually increasing skyline centered around economic forces, causing land values to support taller buildings reaching an apex.. which is NOT what we find in most "city building" games to date.

I have no problem with "multiple CBD clusters" as is displayed in Metropolitan Areas such as Minneapolis/St. Paul, Duluth/Superior, Los Angeles (with a lot of smaller clustered CBDs and high rise areas surrounding the central CBD) - New York - Midtown and Uptown, London- Canary Warf and Downtown, etc. etc.. It's just that CBD "clustering" is a real thing that real cities do, and a number of factors should be incorporated.

Getting buildings of 4, 5, 6, + stories too early in a small looking city is just so goofy and fake looking.. like I said, there should be a formula that uses the above factors, and only rewards taller buildings (be they residential or commercial, different rubric could be used) only when a player's city reaches a certain size and stature.. that is a fundamental part of the fun for most city building fans, including myself.. and it is often an easily "overlooked" element of the simulation.

Your points are somehow valid but heavily oriented with US cities in mind, which means cities that have grown essentially from the 1930's to nowadays, after the advent of individual cars and motorways, with a low population density in the first place.

In many countries, not only Brazil, cities haven't grown this way. In Paris for instance, the typical 6-story Haussmann buildings have been directly built out of wheat fields, because at the time of construction (end of 19th century/early 20th century) there was just no individual car to make it affordable to build houses distant from the city centre. Same can be said in the US for older cities such as NYC. It's only once the NYC subway has been built that the city could really sprawl in the outer boroughs.

That's why the key element to shape a city urban fabric is all about your transit network. You want to build a typical US cities with a skyscraper cluster surrounded by sprawling suburbs? Then go with a star-shaped motorway network. You want to build the Silicon Valley with massive business campuses such as the Googleplex? Then go to a massive motorway grid layout serving the whole area with no central nod. You want to build Hong Kong? Then go with very limited constructible areas served by a super efficient roads + mass transit system. It is the shape of your transit network which will make you achieve the city you want.

Now you must also have in mind that there is reality and there is players fantasy. From what I've seen on SC4, most players want skyscrapers and find it tedious to build the swarm of individual houses around it, so they just don't do it. That is the main reason why most SC4 cities we could find on the Internet were Schenzhen-looking cities. SC4, like any city-builder, work with unlimited population input: you make it possible for buildings to grow, people will pop up and move in. Generally speaking in the developped world, population input is limited, thus trying to grow a metropolis out of nothing just doesn't work because there are no people to move in in the first place.

 

[CreepyBlackDude]

Every single story increase should correspond to land value, and land value only.

All the other factors you've mentionned should be considered as inputs in the formula to determine land value. The rule is pretty simple: building tall should be done where it is profitable to do so at the moment you're building it.

Furthermore, it is never profitable to destroy a bigger building to build something smaller instead. Demolition/reconstruction can only work in adding more square meters (or square feet) to be built. And it's not necessarily "proximity to mass transit" which matters, but overall accessibility: no matter if it is by car, by bus or by train. That accessibility is determined by commuter time, and commuter time should take into account not only distances but also trafic density.

If obviously what you want to build is a typical US city, such as Houston, you'll notice that the motorway network is star-shaped. Downtown Houston is the most accessible place in the area:

I'm going off-topic here, but I found it amusing that of all the cities in America to choose, you chose the one without any formal zoning laws. In Houston, in fact, there is a second "central" business district (Uptown, a.k.a. The Galleria district, which rivals Denver's downtown in terms of office space, and contains the tallest tower in America outside of a true CBD), and there are heated legal battles over things like building a 20-something story high-rise in the middle of a suburban residential neighborhood. Just an observation.

You do make a valid point, though. While there aren't any formal zoning laws in Houston, regulation still exists naturally through building codes and common business practices. For example, if I own a huge plot of land, and I want to build a suburban housing community on it, then I'm going to do all I can to make sure that people want to actually LIVE in the houses I build, which means I'm not going to build a factory on my land, and I'll probably petition against anyone who wanted to, say, build a power plant down the road...and what I want to build on my land is usually determined by who I think I can attract to the area. If it's a patch of downtown land, I'd build the biggest building I could; if it's waaaay on the outskirts, I'd probably have a nice detatched housing community. This is why Houston is still pretty average as far as urban development goes.

But I disagree with your statement that "Demolition/reconstruction can only work in adding more square meters (or square feet) to be built." The key missing component to that statement is "adding more square meters (or square feet) of what is in demand." As an example, the vast swaths of unused houses and offices just outside of central Detroit could be demolished to make room for agriculture, if one man has his way. Another perosn suggested putting in houses with swaths of grass and parkland. Less usable sq. footage, but probably more profit and higher land value.

 

[charlesnew]

Wow, I guess Detroit is finally having the makeover it needs...

but that's off topic..

 

[Metropolitan]

But I disagree with your statement that "Demolition/reconstruction can only work in adding more square meters (or square feet) to be built." The key missing component to that statement is "adding more square meters (or square feet) of what is in demand." As an example, the vast swaths of unused houses and offices just outside of central Detroit could be demolished to make room for agriculture, if one man has his way. Another perosn suggested putting in houses with swaths of grass and parkland. Less usable sq. footage, but probably more profit and higher land value.

Thanks to pointing that out, I wasn't aware and it's quite interesting, but this is a political decision, it's not purely market driven. My fear was more to see this being done automatically in the game. I had actually in mind the first release of CIM2, in which we could see the AI replacing whole skyscrapers and stadiums with individual houses. That's probably not something we would like to see in C:S.

Generally speaking, a real estate developper will find profitable to actually buy a whole building and tear it down only if it is to be able to sell more square meters at the end, thus in building bigger instead. Without a government interference, such as in converting an industrial wasteland to a park or anything, the market just won't destroy square meters on its own to build less instead. It will just build elsewhere. So yes, the player should be able to destroy stuff and not replace them if he wants to, but it shouldn't be done automatically by the A.I. That was actually what I had in mind. Once a 6 story building is built, the AI shouldn't be able to automatically replace it with an individual house.