Why did my city stop growing?

[Marley Cyrus]

I have roughly 75k population, it rises to 80k then slowly falls back to 75k.

I have positive income. I have enough garbage collection/water/electricity/healthcare/education, etc. Taxes are around 12%. I tried dropping to 3% for a brief period of time but no increase in population.

There are some dead person icons waiting for pickup, but not tons of them. There are some indicators that there are not enough customers for products, but not tons. There are a few indicators for not enough workers, but not tons. There are some traffic chokepoints, but not too bad, i've fixed most of them.

I have plenty of roads with zoned areas waiting to be developed, just nobody is moving in? Some industrial buildings/office are still being put up, but very slowly, not many.

Why won't anyone move to my town???

[Gengar]

what about leisure, they have enough parks? Have you most of your residential buildings at max level? Have your cims public transport to move through the city (between residential, comercial and industrial/offices area)? These are some ideas that came to my mind

[Marley Cyrus]

I feel like there is an arbitrary cap on population on where im at until i do something that i havent done yet. Like set up districts, transit, policies, etc.

Just seems odd. All I had to do before was make sure i had roads set up and zoned, and the people would come. Then just manage the fallout to make sure have enough services. Not any more ...

No i dont have any public transport set up. Lots of roads and high ways.

[Marley Cyrus]

people are happy, i put lots of parks, including in the newly zoned area to encourage growth.

Will having any unpicked up dead people prevent growth? I have several icons blinking. Seems like only significant issue blinking at me.

[Gengar]

Originally posted by Somali Salami:

I feel like there is an arbitrary cap on population on where im at until i do something that i havent done yet. Like set up districts, transit, policies, etc.

Just seems odd. All I had to do before was make sure i had roads set up and zoned, and the people would come. Then just manage the fallout to make sure have enough services. Not any more ...

No i dont have any public transport set up. Lots of roads and high ways.

There isn't an arbitrary cap of population but at your population level you should have at least all your downtown with max level buildings, and you'll have these through services including public transport, parks (leisure), education, etc. IMO you should have all of these and your residential demand should grow.

I grew up a city to 100000+pop without districts and policies so check your leisure level and check why your downtown buildings don't go to max level and you'll find the reason for your city stop growing.

[Gengar]

Originally posted by Somali Salami:

people are happy, i put lots of parks, including in the newly zoned area to encourage growth.

Will having any unpicked up dead people prevent growth? I have several icons blinking. Seems like only significant issue blinking at me.

Not prevent growth but actually the neighbours will leave their houses/city as noone likes to live next to a dead. So indirectly yes, prevent growth by "kicking" your actual residents from some areas.

[Marley Cyrus]

hmm i will look into what levels my buildings are at and how to get them to increase, maybe this holds the answer, but first, back to work :P

[Marley Cyrus]

I managed to get my city to continue growing, it is up to 105k now.

How did I do it? Not sure what exactly, but, I think it was related to adding more services than appeared to be required.

For example, water, electricty, garbage and such I had just over enough to fulfill capacity. I boosted most of the services to be closer to the top of the green bar.

Also added more large sections of roads and zoning, and continued to improve traffic flow.

But I think it was the services that did it.

[Gengar]

Originally posted by Somali Salami:

I managed to get my city to continue growing, it is up to 105k now.

How did I do it? Not sure what exactly, but, I think it was related to adding more services than appeared to be required.

For example, water, electricty, garbage and such I had just over enough to fulfill capacity. I boosted most of the services to be closer to the top of the green bar.

Also added more large sections of roads and zoning, and continued to improve traffic flow.

But I think it was the services that did it.

Glad to see that, hope i helped you

[Marley Cyrus]

also added an airport and a few subway and bus lines somewhat randomly throughout the city, dont know if that mattered to get it going again

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by Somali Salami:

There are some dead person icons waiting for pickup, but not tons of them.

Not yet anyway. Add a few more crematoriums. Make sure they are spread out evenly across the map for better pickup.

There are some indicators that there are not enough customers for products, but not tons.

Not enough customers usually means more shoppers needed. Either build more shoppers (i.e. residential) or more mass transit to get shoppers from residential to commerce. Probably a little of both.

There are a few indicators for not enough workers, but not tons.

Not enough workers is again, not enough residential to create workers or better mass transit to get workers to jobs.

There are some traffic chokepoints, but not too bad, i've fixed most of them.

It helps to have better road layouts with alternate routes to places, so they can take shortcuts when needed. Mass-transit helps get vehicles off the road to clear things up as well.

I have plenty of roads with zoned areas waiting to be developed, just nobody is moving in?
Some industrial buildings/office are still being put up, but very slowly, not many.
Why won't anyone move to my town?

This is probably from building too fast at slow speed. At a certain point your buildings level up creating/providing demands. Soon, they are filling demand so well that your new zones won't grow anymore until buildings catch up on their leveling up.

I cure this problem by playing on x3 speeds at all times. It also stresses traffic at x3 so it will show traffic problems sooner so you can fix them more quickly.

Edit:
I see you got it going again. The things you did helped out a lot, plus taking the time to fix everything slowed you down from building new zones, so buildings had time to finish maturing by leveling up.

But I find playing at x3 speed all of the time to cure a lot of issues related to building somewhat fast.

[Marley Cyrus]

Great tips thanks, will try sticking to x3 speed more often until a big problem shows up at least, Sounds like a good way to make my city grow faster too (3x faster?).

Also i think more transit will help. The odd thing is i think the no customers notifications are on industrial buildings... I will have to double check that when i get a chance to play.

[AKscene]

Wow!! How do u manage traffic if you have no public transport? Buses alone take huge volumes of cars off the streets. My city would come to a standstill without public transport.

[Marley Cyrus]

i have a terrible spiderweb of highways and ramps

[ThornyLittleFlower]

Mark you are a patient man. I hope you are surrounded by people who need guidance and assurance because you do it so gracefully. You have inspired me to reply to you grace. Instead of screaming the obvious we should all look to how to help instead.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by ThornyLittleFlower:

Mark you are a patient man. I hope you are surrounded by people who need guidance and assurance because you do it so gracefully. You have inspired me to reply to you grace. Instead of screaming the obvious we should all look to how to help instead.

Thanks for your kind words.

Originally posted by not a pirate:

Great tips thanks, will try sticking to x3 speed more often until a big problem shows up at least, Sounds like a good way to make my city grow faster too (3x faster?)

Well, x3 faster may work at the start, but by the time you get a couple tiles full, the x3 actually is more x2 speed. It is usually caused from the traffic AI managing a lot of vehciles and cims (up to 80k (81,920)

Also i think more transit will help. The odd thing is i think the no customers notifications are on industrial buildings... I will have to double check that when i get a chance to play.

Sorry, I meant industry was complaining of commerce not bujying their goods. So either provide more commerce on clear roads, or add cargo term inals so industry can export excess freight.

Commerce is optional, so shopping is optional, so commerce will never complain of not enough customers.

Originally posted by AKscene:

Wow!! How do u manage traffic if you have no public transport? Buses alone take huge volumes of cars off the streets. My city would come to a standstill without public transport.

I have built a 9-tile, 300k city with no transportation. It is ugly and very unrealistic look. But it can be done!

In fact, if you removed all of your transportation options from a larger city, you would find it runs better. Don't save the game though, or at least save it as a new name as to not overwrite the old one.

Originally posted by not a pirate:

i have a terrible spiderweb of highways and ramps

Yes, a little spaghetti roads are one thing, but a spider web of roads usually spells C.H.A.O.S.