zoning

[dancognac]

Hi,

First sorry for my english as its not my first language.

One of the biggest difference I find from the real life (I own real detail store in real life) and the game is the zonage. Being not abble to built what you want and where you want is one of the difficulty in real life. When I see very small difference in land price fron downtown and suburd or manufacture being built in downtown, it take away a big part of realisme in the game. The traffic index is a step in the right direction but you should go further with zoning of indsutriel, commercial and residential. I dont know how it can be implented in the game but zonage reglementation should be a must in economic sim.

congratulation you and your team are very professionnel and you have a great product.

Daniel

[City Builder]

I agree, I'd like to see it where the game government dynamically zones the land on each city map every time that we start a game and possibly rezones it as time goes on, to say what can go where, perhaps that would also stop the AI from placing factories in the CBD.

[Inarius]

About Zoning, here is my thoughts (quick, because I don't have much time these days) :

-You should buy a Sim city 4 licence and merge with it :p

More seriously
- You should be able to buy slots, and after that affecting them to one type of activity.
- On these slots AI or player should be able to RENT them to you.
- The general ratio should be 20 years of renting= buy price, or something between 10 to 30 years like IRL in France, depending on activity.
- As a Mayor, you should pass some law that forbids to construct industry in a perimeter (to protect the city center), or to limit the number of supermarkets in the city center.

[City Builder]

The more that I think of this idea the more it makes sense to me and adds another layer of strategy or play to the game.

After all, a city is not likely to zone industrial land or commercial (farms etc) right next to areas that have apartment high rises are they?

It seems to me it would be best if the game starts as it is and places the cities with all structures, and then we have an overlay key that we can press that then shows all of the land and the zoning it has received, in that way even if I were to buy up a lot of land in the CBD, I could not decide to put a farm or factory if the area was zoned for retail, residential etc.

It could force the player to have to move his factories to those areas that are zoned for industry which could raise the prices of shipping and make it unprofitable for them to do that product.

It would be another layer of play to me, and a good one at that.

Edit: The fact is that in real life cities zone areas for what can be built there. I can not buy a plot of land on Main St. USA and place my farm on it, regardless if it's a 100x100 foot parcel or a 2 acre parcel, the city zones what is allowed in that space. Just like if I buy a plot of land in (let's say...) downtown Encino, CA., if the plot of land is zoned to allow horses then I can have a horse, if it's not zoned for it, then I can not. The city in Cap Labs really should zone the land,

BUT... It needs to be done in such a fashion that it makes sense inside of the game. If the game only randomly zones land that doesn't seem to make sense to the player then it's rather pointless.

For example if it zones a 12x12 area of land in the CBD for farms that makes no sense, on the other hand if it zoned a 12x12 area of land in the CBD as residential or even retail then it makes sense.

[Inarius]

Well, I do not agree with you. Zoning shouldn't be oriented. You buy lands, and you do whatever you want with it. You can rent a land, and do whatever you want with it.
Of course, farms are much bigger than a plant, and with the same size, you can't make enough money to repay the rent...

If you want to buy a large zone in the middle of the city to make a farm, you should be able to. But the cost (or the loss of a potential gain) is huge, so nobody should has an interest to do it.

It's not that I don't agree with you, it's just i think there are other ways to do it.

[City Builder]

Perhaps in other countries you can buy or lease land and place whatever you like there, I don't know as I've only ever been to 3 countries outside of the Continental USA. But here in the U.S. we have strict zoning laws, we can not place a farm in downtown New York, and we can't place a factory (industrial factory) on Ventura Blvd in downtown Encino.

That is where my thinking is coming from on this suggestion. Anyway, like I mentioned, personally I think it would add another layer of strategy that we must think about if the city were to zone the land in what may be built in certain areas, but as I edited my post above, it would need to be done in such a fashion that it looks to make sense to the player while still maintaining a reasonable amount of randomness so that it changes every time that city is played so that it's not always the same else it's kind of pointless to me as a pattern emerges for the player. However, even though I am for the suggestion of zoning, I'm not completely convinced that the game would be capable of doing it in a fashion that would actually make it look to make sense to the player while still maintaining any semblance of randomness each time a particular city is put into play.

Oh well, I guess we agree to disagree.

Anyway, it does not seem like it's such a popular suggestion since nobody else has voiced their opinion, yay or nay.

[Hyronymus]

Zoning laws exist in The Netherlands (my country) too. You cannot start an industry just whereever you like and once cities evolve even existing industries can be forced to relocate, with or without a financial contribution from a city council or higher government body. All in all I believe zoning is a very interesting addition.

I also believe it offers a clean solution to AI companies building factories in downtown areas.

[City Builder]

I personally would find it very interesting if I have a warehouse near the CBD and the city decides to rezone the area that I'm on because there has been or is a high demand for residential and commercial offices and I must then move my warehouse to someplace else in the city.

It seems to me it would play in very well with our ability to move our business's around on the map like what is introduced in Cap Labs quite well. Personally I've never had the need to move a building thus far, so I wouldn't mind it if the city sent me a notice that the land that I'm on has been rezoned to residential and I would have a purpose to use the function of moving my warehouse (or demolishing it but keeping the land to put up a new high rise apartment instead).

[azuzelych]

I personally would find it very interesting if I have a warehouse near the CBD and the city decides to rezone the area that I'm on because there has been or is a high demand for residential and commercial offices and I must then move my warehouse to someplace else in the city.

It seems to me it would play in very well with our ability to move our business's around on the map like what is introduced in Cap Labs quite well. Personally I've never had the need to move a building thus far, so I wouldn't mind it if the city sent me a notice that the land that I'm on has been rezoned to residential and I would have a purpose to use the function of moving my warehouse (or demolishing it but keeping the land to put up a new high rise apartment instead).

Tha's a sound thought. Land re-zoning does NOT happen all the time, basically, take any city in the world. City councils do monitor the development and they decide what to do with the land, not some hanky-panky Fortune Worldwide Inc. putting a farm next to a high-rise (except the devs do introduce a Corruption option in the game...ahh, that would be a great step towards realism!).
Perhaps on a yearly basis the AI part of the game would reassess the tendency of construction in a set area and, if the neighbouring zones showed a strong tendency of, let's say, CBD construction, then some more land would be reset to CBD instead of any other area.
Otherwise we are drifting to a SimCity 4, indeed.

P.S. My suggestion is -
1) the zones are randomly pre-set at the start of the game according to the city population; commercial, residential, industrial, farmland, perhaps environment protection as well;

2) -one is able to build a commercial building (store, office) on a commercial land patch at normal price (x1),
- should be able to build a commercial building on a residential land patch at high price (say, x2) and ONLY in case there is no free commercial land available in proximity of X tiles; otherwise "the city council" rejects the project and informs to move to the available land;
- not allowed to build a commercial building on a farmland;
- perhaps only allowed to build a natural resource extraction unit (like a mine) in that area if no other option is available in the city (including import) (example - you can't really build an oil shaft close to The White House, even if there is a source, but you can import it instead).
(that would also be true to other zones, of course)


3) over the game years the AI assesses the intensiveness of development and introduces changes in zoning; a few tiles of commercial to residential here, a few tiles of farmland to industrial here etc.

[City Builder]

The other thought that just crossed my mind would be that there would ultimately be a limited amount of "prime" real estate in areas where we would want to place our businesses. So it opens up some extra decision making such as,

It's later in the game, and the city has not opened up any new zones to retail, there are no more plots of land large enough in the retail zone to place your new large retail mall, do you think it would be better for your company if you were to demolish your two specialty retail shops to place that large new modern Retail mall, or do you leave the two specialty shops instead.

But of course that also would depend on the whole "traffic" numbers in the game actually meaning something, which to me so far they don't seem to matter a whole lot, not enough to be overly concerned about anyway, since I requested that they put the traffic % number on the "buy land" tool so that we can see what traffic land is getting when we are looking to buy it, but what I took away from that discussion was that it wasn't all that important. But.. It could be!

For me, ultimately what zoning would mean is that there is a limited amount of land that I can buy and place my shops on. What this translates down to for me is Quality over Quantity.

As the game is now, I've never run out of land to buy to put up whatever business I want, and I don't have to actually analyze the numbers to try to tweak my shops to get the most out of them, instead I can just slap down another shop someplace that makes up the difference between a finely tweaked shop or multiple shops that are just running at a profit.

When I'm limited in how much land I can purchase to put up shops or other businesses, then I'm going to want to tweak those businesses rather than just put down more shops to make more money. Quality run businesses rather than Quantity of businesses is how I would see zoning affect me the most and IMO, that would be a good thing.