Chronic Abandonment of Commercial and Industrial Zones

[Guepardian]

I have been having a serious problem with Commercial and Industrial areas getting abandoned en-masse. Usual culprit has been "not enough products to sell" for commercials and "not enough raw materials" for industrials.

I have attempted numerous fixes but none have worked so far.

I have expanded nearly all my roads and rezoned entire areas at a massive cost and upgraded the highway connections for fast access. There are still a number of busy zones but very rarely a red area. Not to mention, a significant chunk of the abandoned properties are nowhere near the busy roads. I have also done my best to create direct links between the commercial and industrial areas, but again, nothing.

I have improved out-of-town connections to help exports. Built some more ports and cargo train areas as well as creating direct highway connections to some industrial zones.

These have not done anything. Some of my highest rates of abandonment lie within spitting distances of ports, train stations and highway connections. So, by all means, products should not be an issue, but it remains such.

I have followed the advice provided by the game to provide new industrial zones. Specifically, I built upon the oil, mining and lumber resources so that these industrial would then provide raw materials to the rest of the industrial areas. But that didn't work either. The mining and oil industries are still being abandoned regularly due to lack of raw materials and the lumber industries are being abandoned due to no buyer found for the product.

Developing new zones, as a whole, has been really difficult. Demand for commercial, residental and industrial zones are all low and have remained low for better part of a decade. Abandoned properties get (usually) replaced, but any new development is stunted. Offices are the only ones immune to this. I reckon that because the abandoned properties get rebuilt, the game things commercial demand at the time has been met, and does not increase it further. In practice, this leaves me no room to grow.

I have seen advice towards keeping some of the education levels low, as factories have trouble finding workers. While this has been an issue, it has not been a huge issue for it to make a difference.

All the guides I found suggest one of these solutions but none of these have worked for me. Can anyone offer any advice?

[jgrahl]

The problem "not enough products to sell" for commercials is caused by "not enough raw materials" for industrials. Often this has to do with your transit network. Do cargo trains come in and do cargo ships come in? Check which mods you have. I installed the TGV train asset, then this problem happened. Once I removed it, my factories were being supplied again by trains.

[grapplehoeker]

For education, I would advise the complete opposite. Try to maintain the best possible education for every single child, teen and young adult. An educated workforce is one of the prerequisites for levelling up your generic industry to level 3 as well as providing full emergency services and cargo+public transport. Your educated workers will seek the best vacancies and once they are all filled they will take whatever they can get. It doesn't matter if your specialised industries want uneducated workers, when you have a city full of educated Cims, the vacancies will still be filled by 'over educated' workers.
It is up to you therefore to limit your office and commercial zoning and allow the Cims to seek vacancies in industry.

I have followed the advice provided by the game to provide new industrial zones.

What form of advice would that be?
Chirper? Turn it off. Never look at it.
RCI indicator? It's an indication, no more than that. Use it to get an impression of what may have the potential for growth. But do not consider it as an advisor. The fact that it is too vague and does not specify exactly what is driving demand at any given time, you cannot rely on the RCI to point you in the right direction.
In terms of industry, including specialised industry, it would be much more practical to use your import/export data. If, for example, the data shows that you are importing goods and exporting raw materials, then it would appear that you need more generic and less specialised. So, too, if you are exporting goods and exporting raw materials, but still have some orange demand, then it would appear that you have no industrial demand but demand for offices instead.
Hope this helps ;)

[Guepardian]

Originally posted by b4a.jgrahl:

The problem "not enough products to sell" for commercials is caused by "not enough raw materials" for industrials. Often this has to do with your transit network. Do cargo trains come in and do cargo ships come in? Check which mods you have. I installed the TGV train asset, then this problem happened. Once I removed it, my factories were being supplied again by trains.

I've been playing that city with no mods since I've been going for some achievements. I can see trains and ships coming in and usually they are fully loaded. Like I said, I do have some busy sections but no absolute congestion. Those busy bits are major crossroad areas and no attempt at rerouting would really solve anything.

Originally posted by grapplehoeker:

For education, I would advise the complete opposite. Try to maintain the best possible education for every single child, teen and young adult. An educated workforce is one of the prerequisites for levelling up your generic industry to level 3 as well as providing full emergency services and cargo+public transport. Your educated workers will seek the best vacancies and once they are all filled they will take whatever they can get. It doesn't matter if your specialised industries want uneducated workers, when you have a city full of educated Cims, the vacancies will still be filled by 'over educated' workers.
It is up to you therefore to limit your office and commercial zoning and allow the Cims to seek vacancies in industry.

I have followed the advice provided by the game to provide new industrial zones.

What form of advice would that be?
Chirper? Turn it off. Never look at it.
RCI indicator? It's an indication, no more than that. Use it to get an impression of what may have the potential for growth. But do not consider it as an advisor. The fact that it is too vague and does not specify exactly what is driving demand at any given time, you cannot rely on the RCI to point you in the right direction.
In terms of industry, including specialised industry, it would be much more practical to use your import/export data. If, for example, the data shows that you are importing goods and exporting raw materials, then it would appear that you need more generic and less specialised. So, too, if you are exporting goods and exporting raw materials, but still have some orange demand, then it would appear that you have no industrial demand but demand for offices instead.
Hope this helps ;)

I've been following the same approach with what you said about education. And although the issue of "not enough workers" popped up now and then, it isnt a leading cause of abandonment.

The advice mentioned was in the tooltip, when checking a building stating why a building has a problem. When products is a problem, it tells to build industry and so on. I gave it a shot as a test and it made no difference.

I hadn't really thought of the import/export data and will check it out, though I wouldnt expect that to me the case when raw materials missing is one of the core reasons behind my industry failing.

[Guepardian]

Ok, went over the data: Imports are three times higher than exports. Forestry exports and oil make the majority of exports. As expected since those are my largest industries, bar generic. No goods exported. So logic says generic industry is needed. But I have generic industry zones that are being abandoned or not developing too.

Major import by a significant chunk is goods. So it would suggest the problem is the imported goods not reaching their destinations. However, as I said, I have commercial zones right next to harbors, train stations and highways that are still being abandoned and I have redone a lot of the roads to enable easy access (to the detiment of city finances and population in the process. None of the rezoned areas have fully recovered yet, since overall demand is so low). So, either that is not the problem or the game is bad at optimising efficient routing and forces shops to get items from an entry across the map instead one that is nearby.

[shadowwolftjc]

Try zoning some specialized industry in places where the resource isn't available. From what I've read, some specialized industry is geared towards harvesting raw materials, while other specialized industry is geared towards refining them, particularly when said resource isn't available to extract locally. Maybe you're exporting raw materials and importing refined materials, because there's a lack of local industries that refine materials?

[Tytalus]

If commercial is going abandoned it is very likely traffic that is the problem. If you have 'red' traffic and some long queues then that is likely it.

Seperately, well educated sims does tend to lead to abandoned industry... easiest fix is to zone office rather than industrial once you get good university coverage.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Guepardian:

Ok, went over the data: Imports are three times higher than exports. Forestry exports and oil make the majority of exports. As expected since those are my largest industries, bar generic. No goods exported. So logic says generic industry is needed. But I have generic industry zones that are being abandoned or not developing too.

Forestry and oil then can be reduced to free up labour for elsewhere, unless you want to be a lumber&oil exporter and need the extra export revenue.
Examine the buildings for generic abandonement. If it is lacking raw materials then they aren't likely to be lumber or oil and so as far as specialised industry is concerned the ones that would need investment would be either or both agriculture and ore. Experiment with those and allow export to be your guide as to how much you need to expand. Try to limit your growth so that you export only a very little amount of specialised and no generic goods at all.

Major import by a significant chunk is goods. So it would suggest the problem is the imported goods not reaching their destinations. However, as I said, I have commercial zones right next to harbors, train stations and highways that are still being abandoned and I have redone a lot of the roads to enable easy access (to the detiment of city finances and population in the process. None of the rezoned areas have fully recovered yet, since overall demand is so low). So, either that is not the problem or the game is bad at optimising efficient routing and forces shops to get items from an entry across the map instead one that is nearby.

The issue has several factors:
You may actually have too much commercial.
There shouldn't be much detriment to population by overhauling your layout when it is close to your cargo port/train terminals as there shouldn't be any residential zones near them, nor anywhere close to your commercial zones. They are just too noisy.
Check your delivery vehicles and the routes they take to their destinations. If you do find that after disembarking from the port, for example and then have to drive across to the other side of the city, then you have to consider a couple of options. Relocate the bulk of your comercial closer to your main cargo port/terminals and/or implement a better way to get the deliveries from A to B (an internal cargo rail perhaps, if haven't already).
I wish you success with this, I find it one of the fun aspects of the game and when you do manage to successfully end up with a fluid and functional delivery system, it's extremely rewarding ;) Feel free to SHARE a save game from the content manager so we can take a closer look.

[mlind1981]

It seems like this is one of the problems we all had to go through and learn the hard way.

Lets get ONE thing straight Education is so important that it should never ever be something that anyone avoid.. Why?

- Higher educated people will spend more money and pay higher taxes, produce less garbage and use the more expensive public transportation the city has to offer.

Higher edcuated people will if there isn't any other jobs available work in farms, forestry oil or ore buisnesses. Aswell as the lvl 3 generic industry

Higher educated people will help your residential, industry, commercial and especially offices to reach maximum level.. (offices are a pain to get to max lvl but thats besides the point)

The whole not enough goods, raw materials and or workers is often caused by rushing things and not let the city develop in a more natural and realistic manner..

Think of it like this.. would it make sense to build an industrial zone to employ thousands of workers if a city only have demand for only half of it? Same goes for commercial or offices.. zoning huge chunks at a time will move workers from industry to commercial or office jobs and lead to the problems with supply and demand not being fulfilled aswell as worker shortage in the industry.

Factories that are not filled up with workers will work at lower rates and not produce at their maximum capacity.

Also it doesn't matter how many ports, highways or cargo stations a city has if it isn't doing what it is supposed to do.. I had an issue in my city with 2 cargo harbors shipping back and forth and they are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ next to each other.. its so stupid.. once I closed one of them down the import / export numbers changed drastically. and the same can be applied to a faulty train setup where the trains will move cargo around for no real reason and this will more often than not lead to not enough goods, raw mats etc.

To sum it up..

Educate you citizens at a steady pace.. Don't zone huge chunks of anything. let it develop and pay attention to how it goes and react accordingly.

Setup train networks so it makes sense.

-raw mats industry linked to generic industry or import / export

- Generic industry linked to commercial zones import / export

And keep track of what comes in and out of your harbor.. and ask yourself if it is what you want or need..

Allways keep a close eye on the import / export situation aswell as hotspots in your infrastructure..

Ignore the RCI indicator and get a habit of never zone to big at a time and by that get a feel for what is needed.

One more thing when zones get abandoned in huge numbers.. completly get rid of the zoned area to make sure nothing new is getting build until things settle.

I hope this helps and good luck :)

[Guepardian]

Cheers guys. Interesting points about the ports transporting between eachother. Will see what I can do.

Also interesting is the bit about not zoning too big too fast. I always went for that kind of option and it usually worked but the problems did start cropping up after zoning an entire region in a single go.