This is the size of Larna:

Lately I have been working in transportation in my cities, You shold know that by now Larna has gone up to 23 million, yet it is very orthogonal, no diagonal streets. Any way, I have found that the most modest way of transportation in the simcity menu, the Train, has become the best way for transportation inside my cities, I have found it interestiong that I can use a semy-subway train by digging a web of rails.

San Bernavé

San Buenaventura

Santa Helena

San Isidro

Larna images

Larna, same logic as Nova but in bigger scale

The same logic learned in Nova, consisting in Residential areas mixed with Commercial areas in a uniform way and surrounded by large Industrial areas all around the city, was used in Larna only that in this case Larna makes industrial areas to be placed outside its territory in surrounding cities, leaving by that way all territory only for residential and commercial purposes.

Unlike Nova, where we had 9 residential and 16 commecial areas, in Larna the fracmentation of residential and commercial was higher, we have 64 residential areas and 111 commercial areas, spread in a web surounding residential. this was made to help with short commute distances and thus commute times.

Nova the experimental city

Nova is a city that has this web of roads and subway, it is more than 800,000 sims and has a budget of 11'000,000 SS, look its budget.

Subway Web

The web of streets is also the web of Subway, that will have a station in each block, so sims wouldn’t have to use car to achieve station. This kind o web is very, very expensive that is why we have to allow all factories to grow freely in the beginning so dirty factories, though very pollutant, will give lots of money, near 6’000,000 with a 13.5% tax..

The web of subway lines looks like the next picture:

This is a 80 subway line web, very expensive but very attractive to sims and commerce.

It was necessary to put those subway stations before zoning to avoid dealing with expensive demolitions. It is necessary to notice that some lots will be blocked to street by subway stations, but, those lots are necessary to put gardens all around to improve land value and to clean air in streats.

New Web of Roads

After learning that increasing infrastructure of freeway, avenues and roads can improve commute time but also increases air pollution that make Sims and commercial offices to go away, I decided to reduce streets to minimum and make public transportation based on subway the main way to move in the city.

I also wanted independent cells, I mean not depending on neighbour's jobs. So the city must have areas for industry, commerce and homes.

The result was a area with a industrial area large enough to provide jobs, and increase commerce demand. In this case the Industry area is in the borders of map a ring in yellow with a whit equivalent to 1/8 of side length. That area will hold Airports, Energy Plants, Garbage Burners, and Heavy Industry.


A ring of trees limits the industrial area and the areas of commerce (blue) and habitation (light green). the hole area is uniformly divided in blocks of 4X4, 4X6, 6X6, 3X4 and 3X6 with only roads, no avenues, no freeways, no railroads. In the picture, we can see that habitation areas are arranged in 8 side groups of blocks, at the center of which hospitals, schools, firefighter stations, police stations, libraries, museums, high schools, colleges, and all public buildings able to fit, will be located. in the center of commerce areas, blue ones, police stations, cemmentaries, large public buildings like central library, and opera etc.

Conmute Time, Headache for SC4 builders

I have been thinking how to increase the population of my regions, I wanted to discover how to increase large-size-city population. At Truna's project, the idea was to provide a web of freeways, avenues and roads, and public transportation of metro and buses, but car remained as the first way of transportation. Conmute time was reduced but air pollution increased dramatically.

Then I realized that Truna's population was very low for the size of region used. with the equivalent of 46 squirt kilometers Truna had a bit more than 1'550,000 sims. it means a bit more of 33,600 sims per/squirt km. I wanted this population to be increased.

Street distribution in some of my Simcities

Something that was very usual in cities of Renaissance is the use of square block distribution oriented east-west and north-south. This kind of distribution is quite clear in Guadalajara’s México downtown, founded in 1542, the years of Charles 5th of Germany and 1st of Spain.

Though Spanish people also had arbitrary twisted streets in many of their medieval cities, they found that in Atemajac’s valley, where Guadalajara was founded, there was no need of saving space or avoiding cliffs or big hills, there was no big river that challenged the trajectory of streets. So most of streets of down town where quite straight and parallel between them.

Many urbanism specialists have seen this special characteristic of Guadalajara very interesting if we realize that it was founded in times when no car motor was already invented with all the needs it carried with for cities infrastructure.

So, even these days after more than 450 years same streets keep giving good service to city needs.

That is why I have decided to make square blocks with long straight streets.

In SimCity 4 game we can see that there are 3 different sizes of squares, the smallest one has a dimension of 64 units of construction by side, the medium one has 128 units by side, and the biggest one is 256 units by side.

I struggled to find an arrangement that could fit accurately in all 3 sizes and that could give me the opportunity to have all kind of avenues and elevated freeways. Next picture shows the model of arrangement for a 64X64 area:

This image contain an Excel worksheet where small cells contain a letter and color that calls for a use, for example, gray cells with a letter “a” mean “Avenue”, “f” mean Freeway, “r” mean Road, “h” mean residential, “c” mean commercial.

So if you can see I have provided this small portion of land of many ways. It is easy to see that this kind of distribution will be very expensive in the big regions, that is way it is necessary to have a plan of the hole map in order to avoid improvisation and patches everywhere, because you can start in small portions of the hole region with a plan for the hole area that will be set as resources get higher with time.

Some cities that I have done with simcity 4

Hi, my name is Jorge Carrillo, I am from Guadalajara México.

Today May 2nd 2008 I am starting this space to share with you all my own experience with Simcity 4.

I will be publishing images of my cities and explaining what decisions have I taken to place buildings, zones, streets, avenues and services.

To me, the most ordered city I have met is Toronto, I see that people form that city took very seriously the need of good services and good trace of streets and avenues,

They also have taken advantage of the place and its flatness making a very orthogonal mesh of middle size avenues that spreads for miles and miles.

In the left picture I am in the sky-pod of CN Tower, this picture was taken when Burj Dubay was achieving CN tower record as the highest structure built by human race.