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What do a bad opera singer, a controversial tax, a roadkill possum, and the best possible building site for your city center have in common? C'mon folks, work with me here—they're all flat. In this game, inclined space is wasted space. It often interferes with road building and powerline construction, and can't be zoned for development. Sure, that might be fine for your outskirts, where residential and commercial areas can be lightly populated, but for the very heart of your fledgling city, nothing but the finest of horizontal terrain will do. Choose the flattest spot on your city map, and judiciously use the leveling tool to smooth out any slight dips or hillocks in the area.

Offset your piping network from your roads, so that you can see both
City planning, or Little Town on the Prairie
Once you have a suitable spot for a brand-new 'burgh, pause the game and plan your layout. Roads, as it happens, are dirt-cheap and make an excellent tool for "outlining" the eventual shape of your city core. First-time virtual builders (and, in fact, some of the real world's most effective urban engineers) will do best with a grid-based city plan.

Build a five-by-five grid of blocks, each one consisting of eight open squares surrounded by roads. Consider the easternmost (or westernmost, if you happen to find that preferable) two rows to be future residential areas, the middle row to be commercial, and the last two to be industrial. If this layout seems to give less preference to commercial development, that's because commercial zones are the slowest to fill in. If they're not going to contribute significantly to your city coffers, they can at least provide a comfortable buffer between your residential and industrial zones.

Power plants also generate pollution. Keep them out near your industrial zone
If you'd like to spare yourself the inevitable Sim whining, you can build some necessary support facilities before zoning any blocks for housing or business. Place a few pumps near the closest source of fresh water, and place a power plant just outside the grid on your industrial side. Run high-tension wires between the areas you plan to develop first, to ensure power coverage for your entire city. Run piping from the pumps to your grid, and build a corresponding underground water grid. The best bet here, to keep everything straight, is just to offset the piping two squares from every road, so you can see both from the subterranean view. (Later, subway tunnels can be built directly under the roads, but we'll cover that in a bit.) Finally, zone one of your furthest industrial squares as landfill area, and you're ready to invite some Sims to your city.

Zone your residential area first, two blocks of it. If you're doing well on cash, zone high-density; otherwise, stick with medium. Zone one commercial district and two industrial areas. A word of insight: if you build them in a line, you won't need to run wires between the different areas to carry power from one to the next. (Save the very center block of your layout—it'll make a nice location for a landmark building or your future mayoral mansion.)

Your advisors don't always have the right answers. Use your own best judgement
As soon as your budget can comfortably handle it, build a school, police station, fire station, and hospital near your residential zone, since not even Sims should be expected to live without such daily necessities. Oh, and speaking of budgets, planning your city's layout is only a small part of the duties of a would-be mayor....

I owe, I owe, so it's off to deal I go
Now, in a perfect world, an aspiring provider of civic harmony and public works (that's you) could be assured of grants a-plenty from a benevolent federal government, or at least free reign to squeeze every last cent of income out of those good-for-nothing Sims who clutter up your beautiful city with their garbage and traffic. Unfortunately, the former are untouchably further up the food chain than your poor mayoral self, and the latter are likely to shriek bloody murder if you impose even a moderate tax. In this greedy, pinchpenny world, how's a city artisan supposed to get by?

Good, flat land is invaluable—zone for maximum density whenever possible
That, as Donald Trump would say, is the Art of the Deal.

A budding city such as your own is a potential motherlode of goods and services. Once you've established basic commerce, residence, and industry, and built a few connections to your neighbors, the offers will come pouring in! But be wary—nobody except you gives a fig about your welfare. They're all thinking solely of what a business proposition will do for their own interests. Some of these proffered deals, in fact, can be quite hazardous to your bankroll or public image, and should be avoided no matter how tempting they might seem.

One of the biggest double-edged swords, and one of the most commonly offered, is a power trade. Don't even bother running power cables to a neighboring city, as the risks are hardly worth the extra cash. Power plants are expensive, and as your city begins to grow, you'll need to continually add new facilities in order to support it. While your own Sims might not mind a brownout or two, the penalties caused by a neighbor running low can be catastrophic to your finances.

Do something wrong, and your Sims will scream. Do everything right, though, and they'll cover you with kisses
Consider, instead, selling excess water. Pumps are far cheaper than power plants, and can be added en masse when considering an expansion of housing zones. Even if you've run out of river- or lake-front property to develop for water distribution, it's simple to create a "pump farm" by lowering a small piece of terrain until water appears, then placing pumps all around the rim.

Other low-detriment deals include casinos and the ever-unpopular maximum-security prison. Stick 'em in the heart of your industrial district, where they won't affect residential land values. Sure, some people may gripe at you for increasing the city's crime risk, but their whining shall be mere music to your well-funded ears. Really Bad Ideas include selling your excess garbage capacity and agreeing to a toxic waste processing facility. At least in the early stages of the game, it's difficult enough to control pollution without adding new factors to the equation.

Make sure to leave space in your city plan for those eventual cool rewards, like this scenic geyser park!
I love the smell of progress in the morning
As long as we're discussing pollution, you should expect to hear a lot about it. Your Sims make excellent mine canaries—one whiff of sulfurous effluvium, and they complain as if it were a bad thing. Don't they know that a little airborne particulate matter… ummmm… helps build up a healthy tolerance for second-hand smoke? Ingrates.

Obviously, one of the highest perpetrators of pollution is the very industry you've worked so hard to bring to your city. For some reason, no hopeful company ever moves to a start-up city in order to manufacture hemp belts or five-grain bread—it's rubber processing and chemical solvents as far as the eye can see. As the timeline progresses, your goal should be to enact pro-technology ordinances and improve education, in order to encourage the construction of research industries.

Not all pollution solutions are a good idea. This one may actually discourage non-polluting industry
In the beginning, though, your best bet is to surround your industrial area with at least two or three rows of trees. Heavy zones and landfills may require even more foliage. Never place an industrial zone or landfill near a shoreline, particularly not one from which you intend to pump drinkable water. And keep them far away from any residential developments. One note here: although industry-wide ordinances which support pollution control may seem like a spiffy idea, they can actually work against you in the long run. No non-polluting industry wants to move into a city where they'll have to subsidize the cleanup of their naughtier brethren.

Overwork your power plants, and it's Lights Out for your popularity!
Another troublesome polluter is traffic. Apparently, your Sims all drive gas-guzzling clunkers. Short of outlawing the automobile or enacting one of those ridesharing ordinances which cause so much public irritation, your best solution is to provide an extensive mass transit system. Buses and subways move large numbers of people around your city, and reduce air pollution significantly. The drawback? They're as expensive as a rock star's illicit substance habit. Each bus stop and subway station you build adds to your city's overall monthly bill. A partial solution? Forget the buses and just build subway tunnels. The work will go much slower, due to high building costs, but this transit solution is far more effective in preventing pollution, and cuts down even further on the above-ground traffic.

One tiny problem, of course: your Sims seem to love their buses. No matter how glorious a warren of interconnecting tunnels you build, they'll still gripe about not having buses. So just nail up two or three bus stops, preferably in landfill country, and they'll shut right up.

Two variations on the "pump farm" principle—sink a hole, or create surface water
Building the perfect 'burgh
From here on out, it's just a matter of filling in your grid and making sure to build enough support facilities to keep your people happy. Near the center of any four-block residential square, particularly in high-density zones, you should have a police station, school, subway station, and park or playground. Intersperse a few fire stations in case of emergency. In commercial and industrial areas, substitute a hospital or auxiliary educational facility for the school—proximity doesn't seem to matter so much as population-to-capacity coverage. Make sure you always keep a little money in reserve—you never know when pumps or power plants will need to be replaced, and loans are a one-way ticket to bankruptcy.

As updated facilities become available, be careful to gauge your actual need against the "cool factor" of being the first city on your continent to have them. The best policy is to add the latest in technology when your expanding city requires additional support, but only replace the old facilities when they wear out naturally. One tip, though: if you decide to try nuclear power, put the plant far away from your city core. High-tension wires are cheap, new residential zones are not.

Good luck to you, new mayor! Remember, listen to your advisors, listen to your citizens, listen to your neighbors, and then use your own common sense and make your own decisions. In the end, it's your responsibility, and your beautiful city. Send me a copy when you're done—I'd love to come visit!

mmorphon00@yahoo.com

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Page Updated Mon Feb 28, 2000 8:25pm EST