How to design cities to look good and also efficient?

[Bermag]

My citiers look awful. I usually place a shopping center, bus platform and other necessities in the centre and then place residential buildings around. Industrial zone 800-1000 m (planned) outtside city limits. Guess that is pretty standard.

Problem is to make placement of residential buildings look good. I have tried using a rectangular grid but looks unnatural and "blocky". I have tried various formations of houses but not satisfied how it looks.

Any advice how to place block of houses so it looks good?

One problem is that it is hard to make it look like you want (I want a dense city area with high rise buildings) because you need to research them first. So hard to plan your city from the start.

I think one mistake I do is I try to put stuff to close. But if you space things out it is always trhat then you are just to far away from that bus station etc.

Is it best to layoout your (final) road infrastructure first w/o placing buildings? I have tried that though and often then you start placing things you realize you need to move roads because there is not enough space for a building.

[Athex]

I made something nice, imo, I drawed a 600m pedestrian circle, put a road cross in the middle and added everyrhing needed in the circle, hospital, bus, train, school, univ, sports. And then build tower flats in a circle outside of the pedestrian. After that, I put a giant roundabout around all of this, allowing you to have parkings between towers and the road. All the road traffic will run around the town and not "in" once you declare the inner area as a town center. I ll post a screenshot tonight if I do not forget. But changing the core of the town is difficult due to the low walking range, or you have to build multiple small schools, shops, clinics etc..

[Lantantan]

I did indeed place and pave an entire city road layout before I started building. I find the trick to having a city look nice is to play on maps with some elevation and follow the curves of the land. Distance between parallel roads is roughly 150m. Add pedestrian walk ways down the middle radiating out from the train station and voila. Don't forget the roundabouts into your city from the highway. How does that sound?

[Bermag]

Please post a screen shot.

Yesterday I watched a video where he had a very different approach. He built pure residential areas centered around a metro and then had a shopping area (including other necessities) further away not in walking distance and people use transports to get there. Looked really good.

But I don't think taht approach works when starting with limited cash. You first need to get your city going and to setup industries etc and get a positive cash flow. Metro is very expensive to build.

[vajeeking]

Most important thing is shop and kindergarten in walking distance all the residents, they always look food and walk they kids first, after that they can walk another 400+- meters depends footpaths, to next objective thing they need fulfill like cinema, sports whatever. but yes most efficient is cluster shop,bar,cinema,sport close as possible, so peoples have more free time to listen radio, or tv propaganda to become more productive slaves in republic. the cities might not look so nice, because all clustered very close to shop, but that is how mechanism works in game.

[Athex]

Originally posted by Bermag:

My citiers look awful. I usually place a shopping center, bus platform and other necessities in the centre and then place residential buildings around. Industrial zone 800-1000 m (planned) outtside city limits. Guess that is pretty standard.

This is how I made one town : https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197986604562/screenshot/2514781045782179695/

Another one :
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197986604562/screenshot/2514781045782195733/

Tell me if can't view because not set as public

[MrKrabs]

I follow this strategy:
I plan ahead to a certain level.
ThanI start to build.
When I see problems I react.
This way towns grow little by little and hopefully look somewhat natural.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3288515308

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3285787518

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3285781436

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3283418868

[Velagor]

Do you want to build a beautiful and realistic city? the solution is the following:
1) we determine where the city center will be
2) we build (design) railways: from the center towards the customs, as well as a ring road at a distance of 1-2 km.
3) we build avenues from the city center in different directions using dirt roads
4) we build separate tram lines through the center in different directions to the proposed and existing industrial zones, we lay some of the tracks parallel to the avenues.
5) we build bus and tram stops, as well as final stops. Most of the stops will be in the field, this is normal.
6) we are building unpaved pedestrian paths in most neighborhoods
7) sewer networks
8) water supply
9) heating networks
10) electrical networks.
After all these actions, development will be easy and construction will proceed quickly, and the pre-prepared transport and engineering infrastructure will not be disturbed. but to complete the first 10 points you will have to sweat and spend decades. sorry for my English.