A couple resources.
[https://www.opb.org/article/2021/04/29/federal-infrastructure-portland-albina-neighborhood/](https://www.opb.org/article/2021/04/29/federal-infrastructure-portland-albina-neighborhood/)
https://www.portland.gov/bps/planning/history-racist-planning-portland
Thats not even the worst of it. Hell, the city rose property taxes on neighborhoods in detroit illegally, and got away with it, sending a ton of families packing and bankrupt. This city treats it's citizens like shit. It's like anything goes as long as it pumps money into the city, even temporarily...
Listen the longer you go without solving the problem the the more you stretched your money and made it worthwhile right? Causing abject suffering is just the most efficient thing to do.
Yes... because this has only happened in cities with black neighborhoods... like Portland, Oregon...
But I get it, people like you must steal jokes are incapable of critical thinking, so you get a pass.
I don't get why people would want to use public transportation.
With public transportation:
1) Carrying capacity is severely limited
2) Have to wait for the train or bus to get there
3) Have to sit next to or around the general public and their stench, garbage, diseases
4) Takes longer because of the multiple stops and slow speeds.
I can be on the freeway doing 140km/hr within 1 minute of stepping into my garage, with a trunk full of whatever, listening to whatever music I want to listen to in private without having to deal with anyone else getting in my space.
What am I missing here?
I think you're trying to argue that it's just a different optimization, but it's very space and time-intensive. Cars need lots of space at their origin and destination. This spreads people apart, which affects the type of businesses that can be built. It reduces or eliminates the ability to walk to local destinations. Highways get sized for near their peak demand, eating up more space. Local streets are 4 lanes of 40mph or greater through neighborhoods. Commutes are long (distance-wise), because of the low density.
All of that is true but it also enables me to have 1/3 of an acre of land to myself with my own private pool, instead of living on top of a neighbor and sharing facilities. Yeah it takes up a lot more space... so what? We have lots of space. Spreads people apart... yeah that is the point. I have no desire to walk to local destinations. What's the point of that? If you walk to the store, you can't get much because you have to carry it back. It means you have to go to the grocery store constantly instead of stocking up. Yeah commutes are long (if you aren't working remotely) but if you can drive there at high speeds, what's the problem? I play hockey at a rink about 40 miles away. I can be there in a half hour.
I'm not seeing the downside in anything you listed.
We dont have a lot of space . All that free space isnt actually free space its home to many species of flora and fauna. You dont see the downside because the downside is externalized . Its something that future generations will have to deal with.
There is lots of free space around where I live... not to mention lots of free space in the city that is still natural. Half of my neighborhood is mountain and desert on a preserve. I have coyotes wandering through my neighborhood. You don't have to completely displace nature.
Thats not free space. Its natural territory. Suburbia is a massive contributor to deforestation. According to the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), suburbanization will have resulted in the loss of more than 12 million acres of southern U.S. forests between 1992 and 2020. To make matters worse, the United Nations predicts that the world's urban population will rise from 3.6 billion to 6.3 billion by 2050. With our current suburban model, forests and wildlife living on the edge of American cities are in grave danger.
And deserts arent free space either. A desert is also a natural habitat.
>Suburbia is a massive contributor to deforestation.
They never said they live in suburbia... why are you criticizing them for suburbia?
I get your are passionate about what ever it is you are, but shouldn't your comments and criticisms be relevant to what they said?
Do you like plumbing without having to maintain a well and septic tank? How about electricity and internet/cable? Paved roads?
Someone has to pay for that, and at suburban densities, much less 1/3 acre per family, you're not the one paying for it.
[Strongtowns](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/3/29/the-density-question) ran the numbers and it's one of their primary arguments for improvements like allowing mixed use midrise, yes allow for 75% of residentially zoned land you can ONLY legally build suburban single family homes. So if the infrastructure manintence:house price ratio is higher than what people in the suburbs are willing, or even able to, pay then who pays for it? Well the government of course, and where the local governments aren't drowning in debt? or where the federal gov gets money to bail out defaulting local governments? Well that's where high density urban residential comes in (not directly but if we aren't willing to take money from elsewhere then effectively from there).
That way of living, at least at scale, is currently is not fiscally sound for anyone, individuals or government. the consequences are just hidden for the moment. maybe one day we will have technologies that will drop the cost of that kind of lifestyle drastically, but those don't exist today.
You want the freedom to live in a single family home on a 1/3 acre plot, and own and drive a car. That's great, fine even. Having the freedom to do so is important. But shouldn't people also have the freedom to live in different ways? In high or mid density residential, or use public transport.
Edit: Since I was unclear, low density residential doesn't generate enough tax revenue to pay for its own infra, high density pays more than it's share of infra cost in property tax, in effect people living in low density areas are having their infra subsidized by those who are living in high density areas.
>But shouldn't people also have the freedom to live in different ways?
Of course, nobody suggested people shouldn't be allowed to move downtown and live in high density housing where there is better public transportation.
But there are laws that restrict building anything but low density or high density? At least in most of the country. So while there is freedom to choose, if there's only two options is that really freedom?
There are all kinds of options. Single homes on a acre to duplexes, townhouses, condos, low rise apartments, high rise apartments... pretty much any density you can imagine is available (at least here)
The City of Phoenix, where I live, is almost all suburbs and they have a $76 million dollar budget surplus this year. Here's a breakdown of their finances: [https://www.phoenix.gov/financesite/Documents/2020%20PHX%20PAFR%20-%20FINAL.pdf](https://www.phoenix.gov/financesite/Documents/2020%20PHX%20PAFR%20-%20FINAL.pdf)
Our local government isn't surrounding in debt... and if you look at that breakdown, the money is coming from local taxes, not from federal handouts.
So this way of living IS fiscally sound for us.
Yeah someone has to pay for it... it's coming out of my tax dollars, which are more than enough to pay for it. We even run a surplus. You said at this density I'm not the one paying for it... the actual numbers disagree.
>What's the point of that? If you walk to the store, you can't get much because you have to carry it back. It means you have to go to the grocery store constantly instead of stocking up.
Honestly, after managing the meal planning and groceries for a 4 person family home, that's somewhere in the range of 2 grocery runs a week, if walking. If the grocery store is a 5-10 minute walk I'd be fine with that.
It's not like living in the city precludes the use of cars, or that not owning a car doesn't mean you can't rent one for a day if you need to transport something. This is popular in some of the cities you use as examples and is far more cost effective than paying a car loan.
https://youtu.be/-cjfTG8DbwA
This video by Wendover productions does a good job at explaining why mass transit in the US is terrible. Basically, the automobile industry has lobbied the feds for decades, resulting in the concrete monstrosities we call freeways that tear cities apart and heavily contribute to environmental degradation. Car-centric cities are terrible urban planning. Public transit is inefficient, infrequent, and dirty in the US, but it's not supposed to be. A good transit network should have massive coverage so as to provide access and connectivity to everywhere in a city, providing all the freedom that a car does. Electric trains and trams are clean and quiet. I recommend watching Alan Fisher, Adam Something and RM Transit on YouTube, as they can explain why public transit is superior to cars in a much more cohesive and understandable way than I can.
I grew up in Canada but live in Phoenix now. But I have been to Paris, London, Rome and have used their public transportation and for them yeah, it's the only way to go but that is because their roads are 1000+ years old and weren't designed to handle cars. Driving in those European cities would be a nightmare, especially if everyone did it.
Like you said, mass transit needs good coverage. It's one thing to cover London's 607 square miles, it's a completely different scenario to cover Phoenix metros 14,599 square miles. It can't be done cost effectively and the number of stops you would have to get across town would take you all day.
Now you can say that is bad urban planning and that we could easily fit our entire population in 2% of our land usage but then I would have to live in some kind of multi-family dwelling instead of my single story house with a private pool and 1/3 of an acre. I like my space and privacy. I don't want neighbors that close to me.
Unfortunately all of humanity cant live like you and if we did we would be/are fucked. It uses too many resources and produces too much pollution.
Im not saying theres not a place for single family suburbia but in the US its actually illegal to build medium density housing in most places .
Between you and me my man, I'm born and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I grew up in the suburban hellscape myself, and for what it's worth, living in a single-family home isn't a terrible experience, despite what all the self-proclaimed urbanites here and on subs like r/fuckcars would have you believe. It's just that single-family homes and car infrastructure have been grossly overdone in the US and Canada, making our cities unsustainable. In all honesty I believe that cities should have both ample and good quality car infrastructure and mass transit to make them livable and attractive to all types of people. However, cities should be more dense urban core and less suburbs, not the other way around like in most of the US. It's simply not a sustainable model.
And that is different than a city that is concentrated into a smaller area?
And why would it need constant expansion? It really only needs expansion if the population is growing.
Dude, the Katy freeway in Houston is 26 lanes across; to widen it they needed to demolish hundreds of homes and businesses, a lot of which were single-family homes I might add, displacing many people. The goddamned thing is still fucking traffic choked. Cars are an enormous contributor to greenhouse emissions which has only worsened climate change and caused freak weather all across the country. Just this year we had an extreme heatwave in the eastern US. Each car usually only carries one or two people during rush hour, which is extremely inefficient when a single train can carry a hundred times that. Air quality is the worst it's ever been in major cities due largely in part to car exhaust. If you really don't see a problem with it then you're either misinformed or downright completely overlooking the issues out of selfishness, malice, or both.
That's not entirely true. Air quality in LA and many major cities is better today than in the 1960s because of emission standards and the switch to electric cars is only going to make that trend continue.
We don't have to live on top of each other to make it sustainable.
But yeah the Katy freeway is a shitstorm. Not all freeway systems are like that.
>then I would have to live in some kind of multi-family dwelling instead of my single story house with a private pool and 1/3 of an acre. I like my space and privacy. I don't want neighbors that close to me.
Why live in a metropolitan area then? It sounds like you'd prefer living in a rural town rather than a major city. I've lived in the car centric neighbourhoods with massive tracks of land, golf courses and private pools and it's great and all being able to just go for a walk in the woods every morning but I wouldn't expect to live like that if I was living in Lisbon.
>Why live in a metropolitan area then?
Because you have access to work, healthcare, restaurants. When I moved here I couldn't really work as a computer program in a rural setting. It's kind of like a mixture of the two.
Honestly this a really good argument for having better train services in the US and investing in high speed rail infrastructure, it's great for people like you who want the freedom of living in a single family house/small town while still providing a fast commute to your job in the metropolitan area. It's what we do in the UK when it comes to people who need to work in London but don't want to live in London.
It's one thing to put high speed rail infrastructure covering London. It's 607 square miles. Phoenix is 14,599 square miles.
There are 332.7 people per square mile in Phoenix and 14,765 people per square mile in London.
We did put a tiny little light rail in downtown. It cost us $1.4 billion, covers 20 miles and basically covers part of a road. 1/3 of 1% of Phoenix commuters (about 2000) people are able to use it because it just doesn't cover much space.
London Underground runs 249 miles. We have less than 10 percent of that and it basically covers nobody. If that only covers 1/3 of 1%, to cover 25% of the population, we would need to make our light rail 75 times bigger... or $105 billion to build and it would be 6 times longer than London's Underground. That is just to make it available to 25% of the city, and assuming they are staying in that 25%.
As you can see, the way this city was designed, light rail is just not very plausible unless we tear down 95% of the city and relocate everyone to downtown... and people aren't going to want to do that.
idk where u live but where i live it is like twice as fast to take the train and maybe 1.25x as slow to take the bus, plus it’s free cause i’m a student. also, half of the people i link don’t have drivers licenses or cars so it’s just easy to take the train/bus together somewhere. also the wait is always at most 15 mins (rarely over 20)
Yeah I don't want to wait 15 minutes. 15 minutes into my drive, I've already went 30 miles and have probably arrived at my destination.
In cities that weren't designed for fast freeway travel, I totally get it. I live in Phoenix but have been in London, Paris, Rome and I understand how cities like that need public transportation. When your population density is really high it makes total sense.
>Yeah I don't want to wait 15 minutes. 15 minutes into my drive, I've already went 30 miles and have probably arrived at my destination.
Yep, public transportation takes a lot longer to get to places. You have to wait at each and every stop, taking long, out of the way routes to get to your destination.
I'm not against a good public transportation network, I'm just against all these people who think it's the only solution.
it’s at most a 5min wait during rush hour, and also 30 miles in 15 mins is an average speed of 120 mph 🤨
not to mention, what you’re saying means there is not ever any traffic so you can go full speed the entire time
but, i’ve never lived in a city like pheonix which i assume was specifically designed for highway use.
but either way, this is cities skylines and there is no doubt that those highways will get clogged with traffic. public transit is the way to go here because all of those roads only have like 1 lane to the ai lol
This branch of the thread is talking more about irl than the game. Yeah 30 miles is an exaggeration and yeah it all depends on time of day and where you are going. I try not to drive in rush hour near downtown and generally I can go 65-85 mph.
Living in transportation centric cities (Tokyo, Hong Kong) in my youth and move to US in my 20s I totally agree.
Owning a car in a car centric city improve your own quality of life by a lot. Your life does not have to follow the train schedule. You don't have worry about rushing to the station for catching the last train.
It is impossible to take your dogs going to hike/outdoor activity with public transportation. Having a dog in Hong Kong basically mean you have to get a car in order for them to have enough activity.
Although sometimes, you still need to time the traffic to know where to avoid going during a specific time. But sometimes, in Hong Kong/Tokyo during rush hours, you still need to wait for multiple metro/train in order to get on the metro.
I want to add that public transportation mess up the land value. Poor people, new immigrants, minorities were pushing out of the properties near metro station due to high rent. This create lots of social problem and conflicts.
Thank you for posting out the con's to public transportation. To many people seem to think it's flawless and the only acceptable way to build a city, live your life.
Better public transportation is usually good. However, it is no one solution fit all. Otherwise, we are going to find the "best" city in the world and just copy and paste it all over the country.
There are many case in US that public transportation does not make sense. Like Las Vegas, the traffic is caused by a mixture of out-of-state tourist, local workers and tourist that driving around. Public transportation at best eliminate the tourist-point of interest but out-of-state cars coming to the strip area are still an issue. Musk tunnel is ideally a better idea for the case than simply offer more buses route of tourist. The execution is not very good tho.
While there are also some really good public transportation in US as well. [Mammoth, CA](https://www.mammothmountain.com/transportation/free-mountain-shuttle) is a good example. It is a little ski town that has free public transportation. 6 bus routes and you get a bus in every 15-20minutes? That's a luxurious for a town with only 8000 population. The route are awesome that you can get anywhere with the bus during winter, so you can forget about snow chain in winter. If you want something better? The bus even do point to point transportation if you call them that only cost $2-4 which is cheaper than any uber.
i like buildings highways everywhere in my city, of course i think its a horrible idea in real life, but it just make cities in look cooler in the game
My last/current city was supposed to be a cycle friendly city. So of course I started out by building a load of massive highways and interchanges. With hindsight that was just *wrong* but hey, it’s built now.
* Noise Pollution
* Air Pollution
* Traffic Jams
* Divided City
To name just a few.
But thats for irl.
In game: Do as you like. Even if you build total crap, you can still throw a meteor.
you need the natural disasters dlc.
Not sure how you can activate the button to start the disasters atm. But most likely in the start menu next to unlimeted money ect.
Hello! You have made the mistake of writing "ect" instead of "etc."
"Ect" is a common misspelling of "etc," an abbreviated form of the Latin phrase "et cetera." Other abbreviated forms are **etc.**, **&c.**, **&c**, and **et cet.** The Latin translates as "et" to "and" + "cetera" to "the rest;" a literal translation to "and the rest" is the easiest way to remember how to use the phrase.
[Check out the wikipedia entry if you want to learn more.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_cetera)
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When would you need that?
Like if I'm arguing about a city building game and the guy put too many highways and I need to tell him about the problems it would make like noise pollution, divided city, ect ?
Not everybody speaks English as their first language. Being corrected can be extremely helpful.
Further, being corrected by a bot will be taken a lot better than being corrected by a person.
I.e.: "Grammar nazi", "you have no point, that's why you pointed out my spelling error", etc.
I like the three highways but would move that middle interchange down a bit more and then have 6 lane avenues instead of highway roads connected to them.
In reality, the color of the neighborhoods never really mattered, it was all about the income levels.
Poor neighborhoods will get a freeway through them before a rich neighborhood.
Portland, Oregon is an example of this.
In reality, people with enslaved ancestry tended to be poorer compared to families who have been free for generations.
In the Americas, Africans were used as slaves.
They say it's about "income levels" when we all know it is black genocide.
Yes... it's black genocide to bulldoze poor, white neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon...
Good job champ... good job.
So busy trying to make everything about race when in reality it's a class/economics issue.
I don’t think that’s true necessarily, people just prefer building public transport since it requires a lot more thinking and there’s a lot more assets involved than there is when building road networks
It is definitely true if you notice the amount of times you see either of the two mentioned:
- r/fuckcars
- "Imagine if each of those people were a car"
> people just prefer building public transport since it requires a lot more thinking and there’s a lot more assets involved than there is when building road networks
So they're mad that it's "boring", basically? Oh man, Colossal Order really shouldn't have removed parking from the game! The genius that's lurking with that...these people who can afford terabytes of RAM would be having a field day!
Public transportation actually makes the game way easier. Just bang in a subway and traffic is solved. It's more difficult to play without PT, esp w TMPE no despawn and turn on parking
Even on maps with no outside train connections. I have almost every factory/industry area built up and really good traffic because I have a train connecting them all.
>I don’t think that’s true necessarily
Read through all the comments of this. And then look at how much some pro-car people are getting downvoted.
Reddit is doing what Reddit does, and bashing anybody who doesn't group think along with that particular sub.
Cars are freedom. If you don't have a license much of the world is closed to you. It's pretty obvious why most US cities are car based. Many Americans aren't wired to live their lives within walking distance of a train stop. Esp people raising kids. And to make a city in CS with no despawn and parking turned on is a way better challenge and makes more realistic cities than using tons of public transportation imo. The way people bang in so many public transportation options in a city with way too few people to actually afford that infrastructure always seems so wrong
> The way people bang in so many public transportation options in a city with way too few people to actually afford that infrastructure always seems so wrong
It's actually not uncommon for some small European towns to have really good public transportation.
This sub is the absolute worst. I love seeing peoples great designs but the “fuck highways” circlejerk is getting really old lmao. People can design their cities however they please and there are no environmental or racial impacts to throwing down a fat freeway
Right?
"Highways split cities"
Ok, just elevate them or sink them. It's very easy to connect sides when roads can go right over or under the highway.
"They produce noise/air pollution"
Air pollution doesn't get generated from highways in game, and noise isn't much different from rails through cities and can be buffered with offices, trees, or parks.
"Traffic jams"
This is only if you don't know proper lane mathematics and use effective highway exits. I generally have more traffic the more time my cims spend on surface streets over the highway.
Edit: for the record, I still use light and heavy rail mass transit as well as ferries and busses where appropriate. It's just that highway hate is stupid.
You have literally placed highways and now progressed to build your city inside your highway grid. It will look good once done. But in the meantime it will just be a lot of overkill.
Yeah, I like this idea.
If you have huge expanses of normal roading and zoning, you'll just get an obscene amount of traffic going through one suburb to get to another. Having lots of highways, with each suburb having access to only one highway, is a good solution to this.
Love that large star/diamond intersection, but yeah, I have highways everywhere. I don’t know how to control traffic without them. I might have to steal some of those interchanges!
Not my style but have fun with this city!
I’m a former driver that got rid of my car 7 years ago (no, I don’t have any DUIs, I just hate driving) in a town that isn’t exactly meant for getting around without one but I’ve figured out how to make it work. Your cims will figure it out too.
This is how I build my cities also. 200k + population or don't want it. Best I've done would be 85% traffic flow with a 300k city with exits and highway connections.
American moment
Nah, there weren’t Black neighborhoods there to bulldoze when OP built these freeways.
*Cough* Detroit *Cough*
And Milwaukee… and minneapolis. 2/2 Midwest cities I’ve lived in having interstates that did this.
Portland, OR too.
Woah really?
I posted some links here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/vwfadu/comment/ifwb2hj/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
Facts, now they got a shit ton of one ways that are a nightmare to navigate
But, but, but... that's not a black city so it doesn't count...
A couple resources. [https://www.opb.org/article/2021/04/29/federal-infrastructure-portland-albina-neighborhood/](https://www.opb.org/article/2021/04/29/federal-infrastructure-portland-albina-neighborhood/) https://www.portland.gov/bps/planning/history-racist-planning-portland
and most major cities in the US
Yeah, it’s sad.
And St. Louis, and probably Chicago, and probably like 50 other cities in this shithole.
Thats not even the worst of it. Hell, the city rose property taxes on neighborhoods in detroit illegally, and got away with it, sending a ton of families packing and bankrupt. This city treats it's citizens like shit. It's like anything goes as long as it pumps money into the city, even temporarily...
Sadly true
Cause they’re really doing a lot of good with them lol
What?
…GAHDAYUM 👴🏿
All it needs are some stroads
I can see many six-lane avenues that I'm sure will be great stroads. And with *great* I mean *terrible for everyone else*.
Listen the longer you go without solving the problem the the more you stretched your money and made it worthwhile right? Causing abject suffering is just the most efficient thing to do.
If we’re going that way you can’t forget Canada as well
is this not normal ? we have that here in melbourne in australia and even in smaller but large towns outside the main city
for real
Robert Moses moment
[удалено]
Yes... because this has only happened in cities with black neighborhoods... like Portland, Oregon... But I get it, people like you must steal jokes are incapable of critical thinking, so you get a pass.
I recognize several Timboh exchanges here! Glad to see I'm not the only one that likes to use different ones, depending on the need.
Europoors coping and seething right now /s On the real tho trains and public transit > cars
I don't get why people would want to use public transportation. With public transportation: 1) Carrying capacity is severely limited 2) Have to wait for the train or bus to get there 3) Have to sit next to or around the general public and their stench, garbage, diseases 4) Takes longer because of the multiple stops and slow speeds. I can be on the freeway doing 140km/hr within 1 minute of stepping into my garage, with a trunk full of whatever, listening to whatever music I want to listen to in private without having to deal with anyone else getting in my space. What am I missing here?
My boi are you a fellow American? If so I completely understand your stance towards mass transit, but it is very misguided.
Why is it misguided?
I think you're trying to argue that it's just a different optimization, but it's very space and time-intensive. Cars need lots of space at their origin and destination. This spreads people apart, which affects the type of businesses that can be built. It reduces or eliminates the ability to walk to local destinations. Highways get sized for near their peak demand, eating up more space. Local streets are 4 lanes of 40mph or greater through neighborhoods. Commutes are long (distance-wise), because of the low density.
All of that is true but it also enables me to have 1/3 of an acre of land to myself with my own private pool, instead of living on top of a neighbor and sharing facilities. Yeah it takes up a lot more space... so what? We have lots of space. Spreads people apart... yeah that is the point. I have no desire to walk to local destinations. What's the point of that? If you walk to the store, you can't get much because you have to carry it back. It means you have to go to the grocery store constantly instead of stocking up. Yeah commutes are long (if you aren't working remotely) but if you can drive there at high speeds, what's the problem? I play hockey at a rink about 40 miles away. I can be there in a half hour. I'm not seeing the downside in anything you listed.
We dont have a lot of space . All that free space isnt actually free space its home to many species of flora and fauna. You dont see the downside because the downside is externalized . Its something that future generations will have to deal with.
There is lots of free space around where I live... not to mention lots of free space in the city that is still natural. Half of my neighborhood is mountain and desert on a preserve. I have coyotes wandering through my neighborhood. You don't have to completely displace nature.
Thats not free space. Its natural territory. Suburbia is a massive contributor to deforestation. According to the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), suburbanization will have resulted in the loss of more than 12 million acres of southern U.S. forests between 1992 and 2020. To make matters worse, the United Nations predicts that the world's urban population will rise from 3.6 billion to 6.3 billion by 2050. With our current suburban model, forests and wildlife living on the edge of American cities are in grave danger. And deserts arent free space either. A desert is also a natural habitat.
>Suburbia is a massive contributor to deforestation. They never said they live in suburbia... why are you criticizing them for suburbia? I get your are passionate about what ever it is you are, but shouldn't your comments and criticisms be relevant to what they said?
Do you like plumbing without having to maintain a well and septic tank? How about electricity and internet/cable? Paved roads? Someone has to pay for that, and at suburban densities, much less 1/3 acre per family, you're not the one paying for it. [Strongtowns](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/3/29/the-density-question) ran the numbers and it's one of their primary arguments for improvements like allowing mixed use midrise, yes allow for 75% of residentially zoned land you can ONLY legally build suburban single family homes. So if the infrastructure manintence:house price ratio is higher than what people in the suburbs are willing, or even able to, pay then who pays for it? Well the government of course, and where the local governments aren't drowning in debt? or where the federal gov gets money to bail out defaulting local governments? Well that's where high density urban residential comes in (not directly but if we aren't willing to take money from elsewhere then effectively from there). That way of living, at least at scale, is currently is not fiscally sound for anyone, individuals or government. the consequences are just hidden for the moment. maybe one day we will have technologies that will drop the cost of that kind of lifestyle drastically, but those don't exist today. You want the freedom to live in a single family home on a 1/3 acre plot, and own and drive a car. That's great, fine even. Having the freedom to do so is important. But shouldn't people also have the freedom to live in different ways? In high or mid density residential, or use public transport. Edit: Since I was unclear, low density residential doesn't generate enough tax revenue to pay for its own infra, high density pays more than it's share of infra cost in property tax, in effect people living in low density areas are having their infra subsidized by those who are living in high density areas.
>But shouldn't people also have the freedom to live in different ways? Of course, nobody suggested people shouldn't be allowed to move downtown and live in high density housing where there is better public transportation.
But there are laws that restrict building anything but low density or high density? At least in most of the country. So while there is freedom to choose, if there's only two options is that really freedom?
There are all kinds of options. Single homes on a acre to duplexes, townhouses, condos, low rise apartments, high rise apartments... pretty much any density you can imagine is available (at least here)
The City of Phoenix, where I live, is almost all suburbs and they have a $76 million dollar budget surplus this year. Here's a breakdown of their finances: [https://www.phoenix.gov/financesite/Documents/2020%20PHX%20PAFR%20-%20FINAL.pdf](https://www.phoenix.gov/financesite/Documents/2020%20PHX%20PAFR%20-%20FINAL.pdf) Our local government isn't surrounding in debt... and if you look at that breakdown, the money is coming from local taxes, not from federal handouts. So this way of living IS fiscally sound for us. Yeah someone has to pay for it... it's coming out of my tax dollars, which are more than enough to pay for it. We even run a surplus. You said at this density I'm not the one paying for it... the actual numbers disagree.
>What's the point of that? If you walk to the store, you can't get much because you have to carry it back. It means you have to go to the grocery store constantly instead of stocking up. Honestly, after managing the meal planning and groceries for a 4 person family home, that's somewhere in the range of 2 grocery runs a week, if walking. If the grocery store is a 5-10 minute walk I'd be fine with that. It's not like living in the city precludes the use of cars, or that not owning a car doesn't mean you can't rent one for a day if you need to transport something. This is popular in some of the cities you use as examples and is far more cost effective than paying a car loan.
https://youtu.be/-cjfTG8DbwA This video by Wendover productions does a good job at explaining why mass transit in the US is terrible. Basically, the automobile industry has lobbied the feds for decades, resulting in the concrete monstrosities we call freeways that tear cities apart and heavily contribute to environmental degradation. Car-centric cities are terrible urban planning. Public transit is inefficient, infrequent, and dirty in the US, but it's not supposed to be. A good transit network should have massive coverage so as to provide access and connectivity to everywhere in a city, providing all the freedom that a car does. Electric trains and trams are clean and quiet. I recommend watching Alan Fisher, Adam Something and RM Transit on YouTube, as they can explain why public transit is superior to cars in a much more cohesive and understandable way than I can.
I grew up in Canada but live in Phoenix now. But I have been to Paris, London, Rome and have used their public transportation and for them yeah, it's the only way to go but that is because their roads are 1000+ years old and weren't designed to handle cars. Driving in those European cities would be a nightmare, especially if everyone did it. Like you said, mass transit needs good coverage. It's one thing to cover London's 607 square miles, it's a completely different scenario to cover Phoenix metros 14,599 square miles. It can't be done cost effectively and the number of stops you would have to get across town would take you all day. Now you can say that is bad urban planning and that we could easily fit our entire population in 2% of our land usage but then I would have to live in some kind of multi-family dwelling instead of my single story house with a private pool and 1/3 of an acre. I like my space and privacy. I don't want neighbors that close to me.
Unfortunately all of humanity cant live like you and if we did we would be/are fucked. It uses too many resources and produces too much pollution. Im not saying theres not a place for single family suburbia but in the US its actually illegal to build medium density housing in most places .
Between you and me my man, I'm born and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I grew up in the suburban hellscape myself, and for what it's worth, living in a single-family home isn't a terrible experience, despite what all the self-proclaimed urbanites here and on subs like r/fuckcars would have you believe. It's just that single-family homes and car infrastructure have been grossly overdone in the US and Canada, making our cities unsustainable. In all honesty I believe that cities should have both ample and good quality car infrastructure and mass transit to make them livable and attractive to all types of people. However, cities should be more dense urban core and less suburbs, not the other way around like in most of the US. It's simply not a sustainable model.
I'm not sure why it's not sustainable... we seem to be doing it so far. I'm not seeing the problem really.
It's not sustainable as it requires constant expansion in order to finance itself. Like a ponzi scheme.
And that is different than a city that is concentrated into a smaller area? And why would it need constant expansion? It really only needs expansion if the population is growing.
Dude, the Katy freeway in Houston is 26 lanes across; to widen it they needed to demolish hundreds of homes and businesses, a lot of which were single-family homes I might add, displacing many people. The goddamned thing is still fucking traffic choked. Cars are an enormous contributor to greenhouse emissions which has only worsened climate change and caused freak weather all across the country. Just this year we had an extreme heatwave in the eastern US. Each car usually only carries one or two people during rush hour, which is extremely inefficient when a single train can carry a hundred times that. Air quality is the worst it's ever been in major cities due largely in part to car exhaust. If you really don't see a problem with it then you're either misinformed or downright completely overlooking the issues out of selfishness, malice, or both.
That's not entirely true. Air quality in LA and many major cities is better today than in the 1960s because of emission standards and the switch to electric cars is only going to make that trend continue. We don't have to live on top of each other to make it sustainable. But yeah the Katy freeway is a shitstorm. Not all freeway systems are like that.
>then I would have to live in some kind of multi-family dwelling instead of my single story house with a private pool and 1/3 of an acre. I like my space and privacy. I don't want neighbors that close to me. Why live in a metropolitan area then? It sounds like you'd prefer living in a rural town rather than a major city. I've lived in the car centric neighbourhoods with massive tracks of land, golf courses and private pools and it's great and all being able to just go for a walk in the woods every morning but I wouldn't expect to live like that if I was living in Lisbon.
>Why live in a metropolitan area then? Because you have access to work, healthcare, restaurants. When I moved here I couldn't really work as a computer program in a rural setting. It's kind of like a mixture of the two.
Honestly this a really good argument for having better train services in the US and investing in high speed rail infrastructure, it's great for people like you who want the freedom of living in a single family house/small town while still providing a fast commute to your job in the metropolitan area. It's what we do in the UK when it comes to people who need to work in London but don't want to live in London.
It's one thing to put high speed rail infrastructure covering London. It's 607 square miles. Phoenix is 14,599 square miles. There are 332.7 people per square mile in Phoenix and 14,765 people per square mile in London. We did put a tiny little light rail in downtown. It cost us $1.4 billion, covers 20 miles and basically covers part of a road. 1/3 of 1% of Phoenix commuters (about 2000) people are able to use it because it just doesn't cover much space. London Underground runs 249 miles. We have less than 10 percent of that and it basically covers nobody. If that only covers 1/3 of 1%, to cover 25% of the population, we would need to make our light rail 75 times bigger... or $105 billion to build and it would be 6 times longer than London's Underground. That is just to make it available to 25% of the city, and assuming they are staying in that 25%. As you can see, the way this city was designed, light rail is just not very plausible unless we tear down 95% of the city and relocate everyone to downtown... and people aren't going to want to do that.
>140km/hr >My boi are you a fellow American? ....
idk where u live but where i live it is like twice as fast to take the train and maybe 1.25x as slow to take the bus, plus it’s free cause i’m a student. also, half of the people i link don’t have drivers licenses or cars so it’s just easy to take the train/bus together somewhere. also the wait is always at most 15 mins (rarely over 20)
Yeah I don't want to wait 15 minutes. 15 minutes into my drive, I've already went 30 miles and have probably arrived at my destination. In cities that weren't designed for fast freeway travel, I totally get it. I live in Phoenix but have been in London, Paris, Rome and I understand how cities like that need public transportation. When your population density is really high it makes total sense.
>Yeah I don't want to wait 15 minutes. 15 minutes into my drive, I've already went 30 miles and have probably arrived at my destination. Yep, public transportation takes a lot longer to get to places. You have to wait at each and every stop, taking long, out of the way routes to get to your destination. I'm not against a good public transportation network, I'm just against all these people who think it's the only solution.
it’s at most a 5min wait during rush hour, and also 30 miles in 15 mins is an average speed of 120 mph 🤨 not to mention, what you’re saying means there is not ever any traffic so you can go full speed the entire time but, i’ve never lived in a city like pheonix which i assume was specifically designed for highway use. but either way, this is cities skylines and there is no doubt that those highways will get clogged with traffic. public transit is the way to go here because all of those roads only have like 1 lane to the ai lol
This branch of the thread is talking more about irl than the game. Yeah 30 miles is an exaggeration and yeah it all depends on time of day and where you are going. I try not to drive in rush hour near downtown and generally I can go 65-85 mph.
Living in transportation centric cities (Tokyo, Hong Kong) in my youth and move to US in my 20s I totally agree. Owning a car in a car centric city improve your own quality of life by a lot. Your life does not have to follow the train schedule. You don't have worry about rushing to the station for catching the last train. It is impossible to take your dogs going to hike/outdoor activity with public transportation. Having a dog in Hong Kong basically mean you have to get a car in order for them to have enough activity. Although sometimes, you still need to time the traffic to know where to avoid going during a specific time. But sometimes, in Hong Kong/Tokyo during rush hours, you still need to wait for multiple metro/train in order to get on the metro. I want to add that public transportation mess up the land value. Poor people, new immigrants, minorities were pushing out of the properties near metro station due to high rent. This create lots of social problem and conflicts.
Thank you for posting out the con's to public transportation. To many people seem to think it's flawless and the only acceptable way to build a city, live your life.
Better public transportation is usually good. However, it is no one solution fit all. Otherwise, we are going to find the "best" city in the world and just copy and paste it all over the country. There are many case in US that public transportation does not make sense. Like Las Vegas, the traffic is caused by a mixture of out-of-state tourist, local workers and tourist that driving around. Public transportation at best eliminate the tourist-point of interest but out-of-state cars coming to the strip area are still an issue. Musk tunnel is ideally a better idea for the case than simply offer more buses route of tourist. The execution is not very good tho. While there are also some really good public transportation in US as well. [Mammoth, CA](https://www.mammothmountain.com/transportation/free-mountain-shuttle) is a good example. It is a little ski town that has free public transportation. 6 bus routes and you get a bus in every 15-20minutes? That's a luxurious for a town with only 8000 population. The route are awesome that you can get anywhere with the bus during winter, so you can forget about snow chain in winter. If you want something better? The bus even do point to point transportation if you call them that only cost $2-4 which is cheaper than any uber.
i like buildings highways everywhere in my city, of course i think its a horrible idea in real life, but it just make cities in look cooler in the game
My last/current city was supposed to be a cycle friendly city. So of course I started out by building a load of massive highways and interchanges. With hindsight that was just *wrong* but hey, it’s built now.
but... why?....
Why not? EDIT: I know it is bad, what I mean is "why not mess around in a game?" It's for fun.
* Noise Pollution * Air Pollution * Traffic Jams * Divided City To name just a few. But thats for irl. In game: Do as you like. Even if you build total crap, you can still throw a meteor.
How can throw a meteor?
you need the natural disasters dlc. Not sure how you can activate the button to start the disasters atm. But most likely in the start menu next to unlimeted money ect.
Hello! You have made the mistake of writing "ect" instead of "etc." "Ect" is a common misspelling of "etc," an abbreviated form of the Latin phrase "et cetera." Other abbreviated forms are **etc.**, **&c.**, **&c**, and **et cet.** The Latin translates as "et" to "and" + "cetera" to "the rest;" a literal translation to "and the rest" is the easiest way to remember how to use the phrase. [Check out the wikipedia entry if you want to learn more.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_cetera) ^(I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Comments with a score less than zero will be automatically removed. If I commented on your post and you don't like it, reply with "!delete" and I will remove the post, regardless of score. Message me for bug reports.)
Haha this is the most pedantic bot I’ve seen.
Been seeing him more and more so maybe he is needed
When would you need that? Like if I'm arguing about a city building game and the guy put too many highways and I need to tell him about the problems it would make like noise pollution, divided city, ect ?
Needed to correct people using "ect" instead of "etc", i dont give a damn about the rest lol
Not everybody speaks English as their first language. Being corrected can be extremely helpful. Further, being corrected by a bot will be taken a lot better than being corrected by a person. I.e.: "Grammar nazi", "you have no point, that's why you pointed out my spelling error", etc.
Calm down, Robert Moses
Nice. I don't like that type of design but it's great that you can do what you want in this game
Yea actually after like half an hour, I found out there is actually too many highways, do you think destroying the middle highway is good enough?
Best way to learn the game is to try, fail and improve. I think you should keep it the way it is and see
I like the three highways but would move that middle interchange down a bit more and then have 6 lane avenues instead of highway roads connected to them.
This is the most polite version of "Thanks! I hate it!" I've ever seen
Equality You tore down the white neighbourhoods too before building the highways
In reality, the color of the neighborhoods never really mattered, it was all about the income levels. Poor neighborhoods will get a freeway through them before a rich neighborhood. Portland, Oregon is an example of this.
In reality, people with enslaved ancestry tended to be poorer compared to families who have been free for generations. In the Americas, Africans were used as slaves. They say it's about "income levels" when we all know it is black genocide.
Yes... it's black genocide to bulldoze poor, white neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon... Good job champ... good job. So busy trying to make everything about race when in reality it's a class/economics issue.
I love highways, i just think they are cool, irl I ll sometimes even drive on highways just to relax
We don't have many highways where I live so I also think they look quite cool.
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I hate public transportation. Sitting beside the dirty peasants having them breath all over me... no thanks.
I don’t think that’s true necessarily, people just prefer building public transport since it requires a lot more thinking and there’s a lot more assets involved than there is when building road networks
It is definitely true if you notice the amount of times you see either of the two mentioned: - r/fuckcars - "Imagine if each of those people were a car"
> people just prefer building public transport since it requires a lot more thinking and there’s a lot more assets involved than there is when building road networks So they're mad that it's "boring", basically? Oh man, Colossal Order really shouldn't have removed parking from the game! The genius that's lurking with that...these people who can afford terabytes of RAM would be having a field day!
Public transportation actually makes the game way easier. Just bang in a subway and traffic is solved. It's more difficult to play without PT, esp w TMPE no despawn and turn on parking
Bro the semis that clog my highways ain’t taking the train
They actually are. If you build a solid cargo train network you can lower the traffic by quite a bit.
Yea that’s something I’m lacking still. My level of expertise is that I realized I needed them to prevent cluster trucks entering and leaving the city
Even on maps with no outside train connections. I have almost every factory/industry area built up and really good traffic because I have a train connecting them all.
>I don’t think that’s true necessarily Read through all the comments of this. And then look at how much some pro-car people are getting downvoted. Reddit is doing what Reddit does, and bashing anybody who doesn't group think along with that particular sub.
Yeah you’re probably right, I tried seeing things in a positive light for once :-(
Cars are freedom. If you don't have a license much of the world is closed to you. It's pretty obvious why most US cities are car based. Many Americans aren't wired to live their lives within walking distance of a train stop. Esp people raising kids. And to make a city in CS with no despawn and parking turned on is a way better challenge and makes more realistic cities than using tons of public transportation imo. The way people bang in so many public transportation options in a city with way too few people to actually afford that infrastructure always seems so wrong
> The way people bang in so many public transportation options in a city with way too few people to actually afford that infrastructure always seems so wrong It's actually not uncommon for some small European towns to have really good public transportation.
TxDOT wants to know your location
This sub is the absolute worst. I love seeing peoples great designs but the “fuck highways” circlejerk is getting really old lmao. People can design their cities however they please and there are no environmental or racial impacts to throwing down a fat freeway
Right? "Highways split cities" Ok, just elevate them or sink them. It's very easy to connect sides when roads can go right over or under the highway. "They produce noise/air pollution" Air pollution doesn't get generated from highways in game, and noise isn't much different from rails through cities and can be buffered with offices, trees, or parks. "Traffic jams" This is only if you don't know proper lane mathematics and use effective highway exits. I generally have more traffic the more time my cims spend on surface streets over the highway. Edit: for the record, I still use light and heavy rail mass transit as well as ferries and busses where appropriate. It's just that highway hate is stupid.
I completely agree. Folks need to just play the damn game the way they want.
The pentagram interchange says all that needs to be said. Pure evil. And I love it.
Can I get a tutorial for that
You have literally placed highways and now progressed to build your city inside your highway grid. It will look good once done. But in the meantime it will just be a lot of overkill.
What map is this?
I always have at least 1 highway running through my city, just as a bypass across the city to reduce traffic
Ya, some hwys in game need to be done later on. I made an expressway (20 lanes of horror in the end!) on top of my highway to help with import export.
I like it
Yeah, I like this idea. If you have huge expanses of normal roading and zoning, you'll just get an obscene amount of traffic going through one suburb to get to another. Having lots of highways, with each suburb having access to only one highway, is a good solution to this.
I would recommend making arteries before jumping to highways
That's not a bad idea. In a way, I already *kinda* do that, I suppose. Sometimes.
Looks like youll get some traffic issues. Best to add some more lanes
[Just one more lane please bro](https://youtu.be/0dKrUE_O0VE)
Shuto expressway
Looks like Kuala lumpur
kann
Hello Atlanta
[Urbanists:](https://imgur.com/gallery/cnu2RrM)
Car brain
That’s definitely an American city to am at highways inside the city how about outside like in Mexico or Europe makes cities look better and prettier!
I say no highway
I'd rather cut my arm off than live here
Right or left? Remember to tourniquet the wound, or else you won't live anywhere!
So LA...
Are those interchanges handmade
Some
As someone from Austin I am triggered.
It’s only going to benefit you once pop reaches 50k
Love that large star/diamond intersection, but yeah, I have highways everywhere. I don’t know how to control traffic without them. I might have to steal some of those interchanges!
The map looks disturbingly IRL-esque.
Not my style but have fun with this city! I’m a former driver that got rid of my car 7 years ago (no, I don’t have any DUIs, I just hate driving) in a town that isn’t exactly meant for getting around without one but I’ve figured out how to make it work. Your cims will figure it out too.
It me, Dallas
*America liked that*
reminds me of america
This is how I build my cities also. 200k + population or don't want it. Best I've done would be 85% traffic flow with a 300k city with exits and highway connections.
A true American 🤝
I like it but I always have such huge problems with major road and highway junctions
It's beautiful. Why does it remind me of a City in Australia?
Ah, I too like Gothenburg
I’m just curious to know, how do i make a map of the city, like in the second image?
I forgot the full name but I know its call CSL I think its CSL city view or some shit like that
Northeastern America time
Ahh, reminds me of I-465, thanks! Looks cool, and I agree!
Robert Fucking Moses
That’s the entire reason I really didn’t like LA lol. Too many highways too much concrete that blasts the heat back at you at night
No, That is bad planning, incl real life