Where's the middle class? Where's the 99%?

[dakdak99]

So, my first city, aptly called Trialtown, is doing pretty dang well for itself. Ten hours in, I have 21k citizens, almost all of whom are apparently living in luxury. Even in my low residential areas, almost all buildings are luxury villas or quickly upgrading to become luxury villas.

I'm also rolling in money (2.5 million and growing) and the biggest challenge for me so far is to actually get - and keep - the middle class and poorer classes! Don't get me wrong, I like seeing some nice villas, but my whole city?

I've said this before in other threads, but I'd like this issue to have it's own now: I'd very much like to ask for a more reasonable division in classes (poor, middle class, rich)! I want to be able to create certain areas that do NOT level up all the way and I want to be able to have areas where citizens don't keep getting more and more educated. In other words: I'd like to ask for it to be possible to have a more balanced city, without having to starve my citizens from the basic services.

Please?


Everyone's rich and educated, no one works for the farms

 

[maddogmark25]

In the same breadth of tax policies per district for low and high density buildings, we should have tax policies modded/patched in that will allow us to give breaks for different wealth levels of buildings. Right now I don't see any way to influence whether you have poor, middle class, or rich in a certain district beyond the services you provide.

 

[Baleur]

To be fair, if you DO provide schooling to everyone, of course they will all become educated.
And if you line all roads with trees as you have in the screenshot, it will raise land value (which inherently "causes" the citizens to become rich as their house upgrades).
If you want to provide all services for all citizens, you kind of have to accept that everyone will become well off, since you provide it all.

But i do agree that there is almost no middle class buildings. Its shitty shacks with weird rust colored roofs, then suddenly BAM private pool and solar panel roofs

 

[Alfa55]

Well, in reality people not all become university graduates even if a university is available. It would be more realistic that 50% of the people remain 'uneducated' or 'educated' instead of levelling up all the way. It's a matter of statistics. It would add more complexity to the game and more fun. Because many people complain that they want both industry and a university.

There are some nice statistics available: http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/eurydice/documents/key_data_series/134en.pdf. Level 1 : not graduated secundary education, level 2: graduated secundary education, level 3: bachelor, level 4: master and beyond.

Like 90% first level education, 75% second level education, 40% level 3 education and 15% level 4 education would seem realistic. That's the maximum potential if all schools are available. If you don't build a university than those numbers would be lower of course.

 

[Ingtar]

Cims seem to have a better work ethic than humans. I suppose they need to be corrupted.

 

[jcitron]

Have you tried creating residential areas without schools and services, other than power and water, close to industrial zones? This will keep the people uneducated, or mostly so if they don't travel to school. They will also not move up the economic scale because all their property is lower value.

John

 

[Garensterz]

This is one of my concerns too. Nothing separates the low/mid/high wealth classes for residential/offices/industries which is highly missing in this game.

 

[jumpstart]

This is because the game is easy. It's not realistic in terms of challenges of actually building and growing a city in real life.

I specifically mentioned this a month ago and no one seemed to give a hoot. I guess the majority of people are fine the way the game is.

 

[jumpstart]

Poor areas have schools, hospitals, and police station. This game doesn't simulate real social problems. It's probably to complex of a thing to implement.

 

[citysimplayer]

One thing I have noticed is if the unemployment % gets to around 3-4%, the farms will be starved of employees. As long as that percent remains above 4%, they get people working there. How do you impact the %? Zone more residential and don't expand commercial or industrial until the unemployment gets closer to 10%.

I've also noticed the mix of education is evenly spread. Not everyone will get educated. The 4 buckets of education appear to stay equally divided (assuming you have all 3 levels of education).

 

[dakdak99]

Maddogmark: +1. I was also looking for that option: I would love to tax only the rich people in a district, for example. That would make them move out and make for a better distribution.

Baleur: I added those upgraded streets after the fact; the villas were already there. (I added them because one house complained of noise pollution...)

Also, I agree with Alfa55 that access to schooling doesn't need to mean that everyone goes to all levels of schooling. I don't know how the simulation handles this right now, though. My main point is that I would like to have some kind of influence over which social neighborhoods (lower class, middle class, upper class) appear where, for a more varied city. In the same vain, it should probably be possible to stop a building from upgrading beyond a certain level, either by taxation or some kind of district policy.

jcitron: in another thread, Karoliina said that Cims go to school no matter what. It seems that a school's radius has no effect on whether people can actually reach it - if it's too far, they just teleport there. In other words, you can build far-off towns with no schools and people will still be educated.

Jumpstart: I mentioned this a time or two before release and got no traction either. Hence this thread. I'm hoping the devs will take note and put this on their to do list. No hurry - I realize there are a million people making requests, but I do want them to at least be aware of this.

citysimplayer: hmm, my city is at 4% now. It also says I have 12,000+ people available who can work and 10,000+ people who have found a job. There is some kind of discrepancy here, but I don't understand where it comes from.

 

[Garensterz]

Poor areas have schools, hospitals, and police station. This game doesn't simulate real social problems. It's probably to complex of a thing to implement.

Simcity 4 did this right though. So complexity isn't the problem but the lack of manpower or work time maybe, we can just all hope for a patch (hate to say this but, or DLC?). Great game but yet some lacking in mechanics for a City Builder.

I find Cities Skylines like Cities XL on steroids, but close to Simcity 4's level.

 

[citysimplayer]

citysimplayer: hmm, my city is at 4% now. It also says I have 12,000+ people available who can work and 10,000+ people who have found a job. There is some kind of discrepancy here, but I don't understand where it comes from.

Ignore the numbers and just follow the % (I would like to know how that % is calculated to but we'll tackle that latter). Increase your residential zoning area and nothing else. Even if the green bar is low. Let people move in. See what happens to the farms. The 4% I threw out is really a range. Low single digit unemployment will create unfilled jobs as cims try to fill what matches their education (they can be choosy at low unemployment). The higher the unemployment % goes the more they are willing to take what they can get.

 

[dakdak99]

Ignore the numbers and just follow the % (I would like to know how that % is calculated to but we'll tackle that latter). Increase your residential zoning area and nothing else. Even if the green bar is low. Let people move in. See what happens to the farms. The 4% I threw out is really a range. Low single digit unemployment will create unfilled jobs as cims try to fill what matches their education (they can be choosy at low unemployment). The higher the unemployment % goes the more they are willing to take what they can get.

I'll give it a shot, thanks!

 

[dakdak99]

Ok so I zoned residential till my nose bled and added several thousand highrise residents to my city (from 21k to about 24k). I did this relatively quickly, even though the green bar in the RCI bar section was low at all times. I didn't manage to get my unemployment below 4% at any time, likely because there were too many job openings and not enough citizens to fill them. Here's what I learned:

1. The RCI bar is not very accurate at showing what your city needs. My R bar was low at most times, however I could easily add large blocks of residential highrises without issue.

2. I needed to get my education levels deeply in the red (in other words, have too few schools for way too much demand) to get an acceptable number of low-educated citizens for my farms.

3. Even with thousands of citizens not being able to get an education, buildings in my new neighborhoods STILL very quickly leveled up to at least level 2 or 3. There was no way to keep them at level 1 because at least some of my citizens would still get an education, and that is the only requirement for buildings to level up to 2 or 3.

In conclusion: it's very counterintuitive, but to keep an acceptable level of workers that are uneducated or low educated, you need to conciously keep the availability of elementary schools and high schools low THROUGHOUT YOUR ENTIRE CITY. Citizens will get an education even if you don't place schools in their neighborhoods, as long as there is enough school capacity elsewhere in your city (which could be all the way on the other side of the map). Even then, there is no way for you to prevent your buildings from leveling up and no way to conciously create low-income neighborhoods. I'd go so far as to say that most us of will never notice level 1 buildings in our cities because they upgrade way too quickly.

 

[Jokurr]

Simcity 4 did this right though. So complexity isn't the problem but the lack of manpower or work time maybe, we can just all hope for a patch (hate to say this but, or DLC?). Great game but yet some lacking in mechanics for a City Builder.

I find Cities Skylines like Cities XL on steroids, but close to Simcity 4's level.

I seem to be remembering SC4 differently. I seem to recall not having any poor areas at all once all services are in place and land value is high enough. Basically exactly like this game is, although maybe slightly more difficult to achieve (though definitely still possible)

 

[dakdak99]

I seem to be remembering SC4 differently. I seem to recall not having any poor areas at all once all services are in place and land value is high enough. Basically exactly like this game is, although maybe slightly more difficult to achieve (though definitely still possible)

That's because you had a region and you could put all the poor people and dirty industry in another city.

 

[AmpsterMan]

Naw SC4 was the exact same way. The only SC game where you NEED low and medium wealth sims is SC13. And even in that one the benefits of having a dirtier city are not very high (though much higher than SC4 and C:SL)

 

[citysimplayer]

There is an indicator that shows jobs. It shows two numbers and they are filled Jobs/Total Jobs. If your total jobs was big compared to filled, yes then it will take you a lot of laying down residential before the unemployment number starts to creep up (you want your unemployment higher than where you are at).

Once the filled jobs number gets closer to the total jobs, the unemployment number starts to go higher. Once that happens your higher educated will take the lower end jobs.

The key of course is to keep everything balanced although technically the only thing you really need is more workers than you have jobs. From what I can tell you will always have unemployment (like in real life) and all the available jobs seemed to get filled closer to 10% unemployment. If the mix of uneducated vs educated people vs jobs is off then you have to run high unemployment to keep industry/farms running. It kind of makes sense that you will only work at McDonalds as a college grad if thats the only one you can get. If they are balanced then you can run at lower unemployment rates. I think this simulation is very close to how it works in the real world (as close as a game can get).

I also understand that if you have jobs that require higher education, lower education cims cant fill those jobs.

PS You dont need to get rid of your schools. Go ahead and educate. You just will need to be sure to provide higher educated jobs (like Offices) or run at a high unemployment rate so the low end establishments keep running.

 

[endorken]

I suspect this one will be the easiest to fix -- CO can just add a district policy that limits leveling. Kind of a dirty fix, if you ask me -- ideally you want that service radius to actually mean something, but at least we're likely to get some sort of a fix if CO sees the thread.