Clean industry

[PanicButton]

Do I need heavy industry in my city? It's ugly as hell. Farming and forestry seem like good alternatives. How about offices?
(vanilla game)

[Raichuu]

You don't need the dirty industrial zones.
Your city will then just import the required goods. That will require a good traffic infrastructure to not have future problems when your city reaches sizes above 100k population.
Offices don't demand goods, people just go there to work at the morning. And go back at the evening. They don't create any pollution, neither noise. They are good to put between an upcoming residential zone and an upcoming commercial/industrial zone.

[PanicButton]

Originally posted by ★Raichuu★:

You don't need the dirty industrial zones.
Your city will then just import the required goods. That will require a good traffic infrastructure to not have future problems when your city reaches sizes above 100k population.
Offices don't demand goods, people just go there to work at the morning. And go back at the evening. They don't create any pollution, neither noise. They are good to put between an upcoming residential zone and an upcoming commercial/industrial zone.

So imported products will be transported straight to commercial buildings....right? I assume this can be done by both road anr rail....maybe even by docks?

[Pops]

Goods can be imported into your city. Firstly it's done by road, travel times are greatly increased by road as trucks are slower than rail. This will cause shops to give the "not enough goods to sell" message as your city grows, when you rely on road only. As soon as you get rail, be sure to place at least 1 cargo station to receive goods. Now that will mean you will need good highway connections from rail to all shops, and I mean very good as when a train does arrive and it will be full, many goods vans will spawn and head for their respective shops.

My thoughts are that a city has to have a messy industrial district/s wouldn't be natural if it didn't so my gaming includes the messy district/s. Another thought is the use of cleaner industries such as farming and forestry. They won't make "goods" but they do make raw materials and prices for raw materials can offset your costs for "goods".

It's your choice and I hope this has shed some light on your question.

PS ships will also import your needs when you reach them.

[PanicButton]

Thanks to both of you! I don't have a train connection yet (and not gonna reach it in the near future) Will try the docks though...

Gonna keep a minimal ammount of diry industry around. gotta have landfills/incinerators anyway....no way around those...

[Pops]

Landfills, bahhhh use a recycling plant

[MarkJohnson]

Actually you don't need commerce or industry at all. All you need is residential and offices. Just sprinkle in commerce here and there and try to have industry nearby to handle the goods so they don't have to be imported.

Just don't build commerce because the demand bar says you can. It's not required and just an indicator that you can build commerce if you want.

[PanicButton]

Originally posted by Pops:

Landfills, bahhhh use a recycling plant

That's either DLC or mod, so I don't have those.

Originally posted by rmjohnson144:

Actually you don't need commerce or industry at all. All you need is residential and offices. Just sprinkle in commerce here and there and try to have industry nearby to handle the goods so they don't have to be imported.

Just don't build commerce because the demand bar says you can. It's not required and just an indicator that you can build commerce if you want.

That's another usefull info, thanks. I'm used to Sim City 2-3000, where the RCI bars were gods :D

[teravisor]

Train station, docks station and such have one huge drawback: they have very limited throughput. So on large cities (50000+?) you would need several where case of stupid A.I. happens: trains/ships unload at non-optimal locations. So you can see truck going from one city side to another just because train unloaded goods there while it could've unloaded much closer...

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by PanicButton:

That's another usefull info, thanks. I'm used to Sim City 2-3000, where the RCI bars were gods :D

Yeah, CO decided to make this game much simpler so people had more creative control over the city. By adding offices you could eliminate the RCI balancing act almost completely.

Originally posted by teravisor:

Train station, docks station and such have one huge drawback: they have very limited throughput. So on large cities (50000+?) you would need several where case of stupid A.I. happens: trains/ships unload at non-optimal locations. So you can see truck going from one city side to another just because train unloaded goods there while it could've unloaded much closer...

Since they eliminated the RCI balancing act, CO makes use of the traffic control instead. The stupid AI is intentional to be a guide in telling you your city has become out of balance and you need to fix it. It's the only real gaming mechanic left in the game. It's pretty simple once you learn how the AI behaves. You are best off playing vanilla for a few games to figure them out, then you can build any city any way you want as you'll know what the game limits you to do.

Once you learn the rules of the road (pun intended) you should have no issues making 500,000+ cities without mods. 1,000,000+ cities with mods with no sweat. i.e 50,000+ cities are very small.