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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Sim City: City Slums

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Like we mentioned a few weeks ago, Spacington has developed a bit of a slum. As displayed above, this once thriving neighborhood has become an area of little growth, dirty abandoned buildings, and a limited amount of available work. We get it, this slum isn’t nearly as “slummy” as it could be- there is still a strong mix of wealths, mixed use, and utilized transit- but the neighborhood has lost it’s drive.

Usually in the game, a no job logo hovering above a building represents the lack of jobs in a commutable distance. Basically, it takes too long for a Sim to get to work, or they can’t find work.

The neighborhood shown above is thriving. The area consistently reinventing itself, changing it’s buildings, and doubling it’s density. The neighborhood shares the same amount of transit and zoning (high density for the most part) as the previous neighborhood but has a healthy growth thriving workforce.

So give us your thoughts, taken from examples or not: How do we reinvent and begin growth in our semi-slum?

Spacington: Want to see previous posts about Spacington? Click on the “Sim City: Spacington” link in the “RELATED” box just below.

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3 comments

  1. SimCity residents tend to be willing to tolerate only very short (unrealistically short) commutes, i.e. work must be very close to their homes or they will complain about long commutes. There are three income levels, $, $$ and $$$ and residents of each income level must have jobs of their income level nearby or you will get the annoying unemployment icons.

  2. You have a mix of ‘$’ levels that can’t really mix. Your slum has to much $-Industry and the mix of $$ and $$$ residents have peaked and have let low income residents move in. Low income residents can tolerate somewhat living next to polluting industry but the density of those industries do not provide sufficient employment.

    Also there is a bug in the game which does not let zones “down grade” and I mean lets say a larger plant developed near by a high-end mid rise will not turn into a low-wealth high-rise to meet near by employment demands.

    The quickest way to fix slums is to mess around with destroying some buildings and hoping that they re-grow to a more dense level that makes sense for the area.

    As I noted in a earlier Sim-City post the games engine makes true “mixed use” extremely difficult, the game promotes zone segregation and you have to be really slick in making mixed use areas work without running into walls later down the road.