Hot to plan microdistricts?

[Havran00]

I consider myself quite an experienced player, but one thing was always problematic for me. I love to create realistic cities and I really want to create microdistricts with apartments, shops, cinemas etc but I always have problem with space managment, I put buildings too far from bus stops and then people cant get to work. Any tips for this?

[Havran00]

I also often encounter problem with lack of space, I use heavily modded game, and when I put all the buildings they need into district, those services are unreachable from some apartments.

[Duke Flapjack]

First off, are you using gravel paths? The AI walks (I believe) twice as far using them. Otherwise, I'd say build all your service buildings first into a cluster and then build the residential around them. I usually don't have *too* much trouble getting everybody within walking distance.

Personally I only really worry about putting certain buildings within walking distance: food, clothes, kindergartens. The others can be accessed via mass transit (or even simply placing them NEAR a mass transit station that is itself walkable). Citizens will actually walk to the station then walk from there to anywhere they want to go.

[rabbyt]

For me the people are first, a resource, second have maintenance requirements. While I initially place quick to construct food, clothing, medical, child care and education near the existing church, the primary item that requires the most thought is the placement of a suitably sized and quick to get in and out transit stop for distributing workers to construction sites and ultimately the resource processing locations. The services and supplies that the workers and their children require I place around these village clusters. Depending upon the shape of the village that is present this may require two or three primary schools, small shops and stores, clinics etc. I can always reduce the size of the work force in them if they are initially too large for the population served. I will remove the initial tent school and other services from the core to reduce traffic and congestion away from my worker pick up point, hopefully allowing my transit faster movement. Supply deliveries to shops would no longer be competing at intersections with my transit because they hopefully use a perimeter service route if I have adapted the village's layout correctly.

[arjen]

For real inspiration about micro districts, just search on google maps. There is also a very good explanation on youtube about this from Citybeautiful. And the limitations of this game can be a bit challenging but once you get the hang of it, it is not that hard to make a nice micro district. And maybe my screenshots give you some inspiration too.

[Onbird]

I almost completely use microdistricts nowadays. Micro, as in about 3000-3500 people. In the middle of it all there is one city block with the kind of expensive buildings that I only want to have to build one of, but everyone should be within walking distance of: Hospital, school, cinema, indoor pool, a culture attraction or two. Car dealership if that's your thing. In the centre of it all is a single public transportation stop that gathers all industry workers in the whole district and sends them out to where I want them, in the ratios I want them (set by adjusting number of vehicles per line). Housing is in a ring surrounding the central service block. Cheaper service buildings can either be in the middle, or then I make two of them among or outside the housing ring, on opposite sides for full coverage. Kindergartens belong in this category simply because a single one has insufficient capacity anyway. All this with just vanilla game buildings.

If you want mass car ownership, you can even put a ring of parking lots outside the ring of housing.

[Deco Boladasso]

The secret is that you don't need to get each kind of building on walking distance. Make your buildings as groups of flats for people, having more than 3x the number of jobs around it if you wanna place a bus or train station to take them to somewhere else to work. Having less or kinda equal number of people as the number of jobs around it is pointless, since you would get a population that wouldn't be able to be moved to work into a factory: they would only consume goods, not producing anything.

You gonna need schools and kindergardens really close to your flats. Its easy to do so, since you can get some small buildings when using mods. You must have a shopping district, I recommend the large buildings and the ones who can sell more than just food, but also eletronics and beer. Having bars, cinemas and sports around the flats is also a must - I recommend termal pools since they can be used during winter.

I like to have a power plant kinda near the flats, not risking power shortages. You can get a flat near the power plant to keep it manned, then you sports grounds and comercial district and only then the huge ammount of flats. This makes most of your population away from pollution, at least during most of the day. Solar and wind energy are great to avoid shortages when the main plant is low on manpower.

Police stations, fire stations, hospitals, they're not as necessary as you think. You can have less of them. Make good use of choppers. I recommend you having a small clinic near every flats agglommerate, and then having a bigger hospital in a central area if you want to.

A life saver is to have some storages closer to your borders. Do your imports there, than distribute the products yourself. If you're producing fuel, it means its almost free to transport those resources - since you have to pay transport for each purchase. But I usually automate at least part of the construction proccess, or else I fell its too expensive and slow - just my opinion here.

I tend to have a central district where I keep police, government, universities, the main hospítal, courts, and so on for the city I built. It means I can send workers from each part of the city to there, so no manpower shortage. I once tried it with the industrial zone, keeping it in the center. It was a disaster, since manpower got too spread and pollution went bananas.

Be careful with mines, they require A LOT of manpower to be usefull. Also, they pollute as hell. Its very hard to have the whole industrial chain near the mines, since it takes too many workers and pollutes too much. Even with trains I had a hard time keeping them supplied; changing shifts usually mean your productions is always changing on output, and that could be letal on long term.

Water distribution is super easy, I would take more care with keep the production of power stable and cleaning all that water. Seriously, a single cleaning station has a lot of capacity to clean sewage, but you could get some trouble taking the sewage there in an efficient manner.

ALWAYS build at least two roads, side by side. Traffic jam is a royal pain in this game and it could happen so easilly, specially during the winter. Don't forget to make connection between them. I always place gas stations in the middle of nowhere, to maximize vehicles reach (specially firetrucks). I also place a lot of parking lots around the city. Some mods allows you to have side parking lots, which means you can have a road which is also a parking lot. Very effective. Trams are also a blessing and I always have them circling around the commercial area, or as a direct line to a factory far away. Since they're elletric, you can get some clean transportation that would be actually very, very cheap when compared to importing fuel.

You should also keep in mind that you can't get everyone's needs. Some people would be bothered, yes. What you need is a main ballance to keep people going while getting money and resources. Having a deficit would destroy your republic. Always keep that as a focus: what's the best quality of life I can reallistic offer to these people?

Oh, and one more thing: I tend to keep the touristic areas separated from my residential ones. Tourists could easilly make your life a living hell, because they want so many things they'll cause a shortage of services. To avoid getting things out of the mouth of your citizens, I recommend to make an area dedicated to them. Avoid at all costs having them poking around the motherland.

That's what I think about now. I really hope this can help you to enjoy this game even more. Cheers, commrade.

[Onbird]

Forgot to mention, another advantage of a 3000 to 3500 person microdistrict is that you don't need to fit substations for water, sewage, electricity and heating inside it. A substation on the outside will reach all the way to the central service block, so you just need a ring of substations on the outskirts.

[Havran00]

Originally posted by Deco Boladasso:

The secret is that you don't need to get each kind of building on walking distance. Make your buildings as groups of flats for people, having more than 3x the number of jobs around it if you wanna place a bus or train station to take them to somewhere else to work. Having less or kinda equal number of people as the number of jobs around it is pointless, since you would get a population that wouldn't be able to be moved to work into a factory: they would only consume goods, not producing anything.

You gonna need schools and kindergardens really close to your flats. Its easy to do so, since you can get some small buildings when using mods. You must have a shopping district, I recommend the large buildings and the ones who can sell more than just food, but also eletronics and beer. Having bars, cinemas and sports around the flats is also a must - I recommend termal pools since they can be used during winter.

I like to have a power plant kinda near the flats, not risking power shortages. You can get a flat near the power plant to keep it manned, then you sports grounds and comercial district and only then the huge ammount of flats. This makes most of your population away from pollution, at least during most of the day. Solar and wind energy are great to avoid shortages when the main plant is low on manpower.

Police stations, fire stations, hospitals, they're not as necessary as you think. You can have less of them. Make good use of choppers. I recommend you having a small clinic near every flats agglommerate, and then having a bigger hospital in a central area if you want to.

A life saver is to have some storages closer to your borders. Do your imports there, than distribute the products yourself. If you're producing fuel, it means its almost free to transport those resources - since you have to pay transport for each purchase. But I usually automate at least part of the construction proccess, or else I fell its too expensive and slow - just my opinion here.

I tend to have a central district where I keep police, government, universities, the main hospítal, courts, and so on for the city I built. It means I can send workers from each part of the city to there, so no manpower shortage. I once tried it with the industrial zone, keeping it in the center. It was a disaster, since manpower got too spread and pollution went bananas.

Be careful with mines, they require A LOT of manpower to be usefull. Also, they pollute as hell. Its very hard to have the whole industrial chain near the mines, since it takes too many workers and pollutes too much. Even with trains I had a hard time keeping them supplied; changing shifts usually mean your productions is always changing on output, and that could be letal on long term.

Water distribution is super easy, I would take more care with keep the production of power stable and cleaning all that water. Seriously, a single cleaning station has a lot of capacity to clean sewage, but you could get some trouble taking the sewage there in an efficient manner.

ALWAYS build at least two roads, side by side. Traffic jam is a royal pain in this game and it could happen so easilly, specially during the winter. Don't forget to make connection between them. I always place gas stations in the middle of nowhere, to maximize vehicles reach (specially firetrucks). I also place a lot of parking lots around the city. Some mods allows you to have side parking lots, which means you can have a road which is also a parking lot. Very effective. Trams are also a blessing and I always have them circling around the commercial area, or as a direct line to a factory far away. Since they're elletric, you can get some clean transportation that would be actually very, very cheap when compared to importing fuel.

You should also keep in mind that you can't get everyone's needs. Some people would be bothered, yes. What you need is a main ballance to keep people going while getting money and resources. Having a deficit would destroy your republic. Always keep that as a focus: what's the best quality of life I can reallistic offer to these people?

Oh, and one more thing: I tend to keep the touristic areas separated from my residential ones. Tourists could easilly make your life a living hell, because they want so many things they'll cause a shortage of services. To avoid getting things out of the mouth of your citizens, I recommend to make an area dedicated to them. Avoid at all costs having them poking around the motherland.

That's what I think about now. I really hope this can help you to enjoy this game even more. Cheers, commrade.

Oh which building sells both beer and food? I know about food-clothes ones but not one that serves alcohol too.

[Deco Boladasso]

Originally posted by Havran00:

Oh which building sells both beer and food? I know about food-clothes ones but not one that serves alcohol too.

I got mods for that. I believe it was a shopping center of sorts.

[Dave]

I don't use very many mods so I'm thinking in terms of the vanilla buildings, but my strategy is this:

Cluster the mandatory "one-of" buildings (shopping, cinema, etc) in the center. Build housing around it. Build bus stops and the rest of the buildings, (kindergartens, fire station, police, university, etc) in an outer ring around the housing. I don't build actual rings, I try to make it look natural, but this inner-middle-outer idea is what I have in the back of my mind as I'm planning.

I do this because it effectively doubles the size of the area within walking distance. Instead of ~400m being the diameter of the district, ~400m is the radius.

To clarify what goes in the outer ring and why it goes there:

Kindergartens you need more than one so each one only needs to be in range of SOME housing.

Firemen and Police need workers, but they do their jobs with cars/trucks, so they have 2km range and only need walking distance to SOME housing.

Unless a town is building airplanes, you don't need everybody going to university so it only needs walking distance to SOME housing.

Bus stops are cheap, so no harm in building several of them and each one is only in range of SOME housing.

[Deco Boladasso]

Do two rings of buildings around the residential ring. This way is more efficient.

[MG83]

check some of my screenshots in my profile.
here are couple examples of my designs
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2719661955
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2808619750

[MG83]

i am currently waiting for tram/metro update so i can generate the plan that i had in my mind more precisely.

[MG83]

my cities has % 100 university education rating all workforce is university educated.
my cities has no 2. measures . all needs are fulfilled.

[MG83]

highest number of citizens i have achived is like 200k after that game was unbearable for me due to 3 fps. seems i need better pc in future :>