Sim City Sim City... The name "City" may imply that this game is all about cities, but the beauty is that SimCity 4 also allows you to build vast farmland, charming little towns, and sprawling suburbs too. This Tutorial will show you how to get started to creating a successful small town, and then will explain some of the differences between the design of cities and smaller suburbs to help you make the most realistic towns and suburbs.

Getting Started:
Picking your land and naming your city.


It really does not matter what kind of land you select for your town, but once you have chosen the land and named your city, the next steps are crucial in getting your town off on the right foot.

Lay Arterials
The first action to take as Mayor of this future town is to lay some arterial roadways. These roads will serve as the primary passageways through your town, and allow sims to travel in and out to neigboring settlements. Choose Roads for this, as opposed to Avenues or other medium. With a small town as the objective, limit the number of arterials to only two or three Roads traveling north-south and east-west.



Lay Secondary Streets
After laying down your primary Arterial Roads, lay a light grid of Secondary Streets. These will serve as the streets where you will zone for houses and some commercial businesses as well. It's better to avoid making a "perfect" grid. Also, this grid should not be made too large, nor should it extend vastly over great portions of the map. Keep it small. You will have plenty of opportunities to expand your street  grid later as your town develops and grows in population.

Tip: Try to arrainge the Secondary Streets in such a way that there are a high number of 3-way intersections to balance out 4-way ones, like below. Break up the grid a bit. Avoiding long straight pathways in your Secondary Street network will encourage your sims to use the Arterial Roads to travel long distances as opposed to cutting through the residential neighborhoods.


Zone for Farms
You have just completed your "downtown" Street and Road network. Now, it's time for farms.
In the climb to their big megalopolis, many SimCity 4 players may skip right over the stage of farms and cut straight to zoning for industry and commercial business. I don't recommend skipping the farm stage.

Farms act as the springboard for your town economy, and I think many players don't realize how valuable farms are in the first years of a city. A new town should never be without farms. Zoning for farms allows you to fill up your entire map with low-maintinence development, and will allow your city to grow in baby steps. Farms are so easy to maintain. While providing jobs for new residents (who most likely will have low education and wealth level), farms act as excellent "placeholders" as you develop the denser parts of your city. Without any need for water, farms, with the exception of their need for power, practically support themselves!

Cover the Map with Cornfields!
Land is a terrible thing to waste. Why let all that empty space in the map sit idol when it could be making you money? Paint the town yellow and you'll get green!

Use farms to fill in the vast negative space in the map. This gives you a sense of control over your land. By occupying what would otherwise be empty space, farms maximize the use of that space, making it work for the betterment of your economy. Because they are so low-maintanence and provide a fair amount of jobs for new residents, farms invest in a new city and signify healthy economic beginnings. Their presence will also help prevent you from filling the space with more high-maintanence developer types. With little money, population, education and resources, expanding too quickly with any developer type, other than farmland, can have devastating results.

It's important to understand that when zoning for developer types, each will place new demands on your city. For example, industry (other than agraculture/farm), residential, and commercial zones will stress your water and power supplies. Residents will want schools, hospitals, and other various institutions. These things cost money.  When a premature city is unable to meet the needs of occupants, the result is often mass abandoment, delapodation, or an otherwise economic crash. For overly-eager mayors, expanding too quickly can be a dissappointing pitfall and it can be difficult for a city to recover from the economic depression. In short, it is crucial to take things slow and expand very gradually. 

Tip: Do not expand your city until you believe you are financially ready to provide for the needs of the occupants. Do not zone more than your city can support.



After you've zoned for the farmland, you may go to your Secondary Streets you placed in your town center to be. Zone for low density residential and some low density commercial. Never zone for medium or high density until your town is more firmly established economically to support the large population that comes with high density zoning.


Power, Water, and Garbage
Your town requires water and power, but here are the specifics. Many players expand too quickly here as well, by starting with large power plants and water pumps. This is a financial drain that can easily be avoided by keeping things small. The first power supply source in a new city should always be one Wind Power Plant. Place it anyewhere on the map. The first watter supply sourse should be one water tower. Place it carefully, as it will not function in areas of high water pollution. Water pollution is heaviest in the areas near certain kinds of farm crops. Placing the water tower within the boundries of the street grid you laid earlier should help keep the water tower safe from that pollution.
Once you see development, use the Data View tool to check the levels of water pollution across the landscape.

Tip: Run water pipes directly under the Streets and Roads to keep your pipe system organized and realistic. Keep in mind that your farms do not require public water.

To manage city waste, create a 4x4 tile Landfill in a location far removed from the center of your town, along the edge of the map. It must be placed far away from your town center because no one wants to live near a landfill. Your landfill requires street or road access to function.

Tip: if for whatever reason you need to shut down a particular landfill, delete all of the streets/roads that make contact with the landfill's perimiter. After that, wait for the garbage to decompose and dezone.




Start the clock!
Watch as your town center develops!





Your Main Street
Take note of your Arterial Roads that run through the center of town. Using the Data View tool, keep a close eye on the amount of traffic running through your town. Vehicles from the Secondary Streets, because of how the grid has been laid, will depend on the Arterial Roads to get anywhere long-distance. This means that the Arterials will very vulnerable to congestion. But this is OK (for the most part).

Tip: a crowded Main Street is in high demand for commercial development. As you rezone along the Main Street, take care to have a large amount of buildings facing that Arterial Road (as opposed to the intersecting Secondary Streets). This will allow for your Main Street to develop a very realistic look with all of the storefronts.



Control the Development
One elementary or high school, one police station, one clinic and a small fire station should be enough to give your town the land value and desirability needed to grow nicely. Use taxes to maintain the population you want in your town. I usually give dirty industry a 20% tax to thwart the possibility of dirty industry developing in any industrial zoning I may apply. The air pollution caused by dirty industry is why its a good idea to avoid inviting that developer type into your town. I also gave a high tax to low-wealth commercial service and low and high wealth residents, leaving the middle class the primary population in your sim neighborhoods. It's up to you what kind of population and appearance you want in your town.

Tip: If you want to intice rich sims and wealthy businesses to come to your town ($$$), you'll need to have parks nearby, excellent education, health, and safety scores and minimal levels of air pollution. By contrast, you need not worry about schools or any of the above if the sims you wish to attract are those within the lowest income group ($). It isn't necessarily a bad idea to dedicate a town to the lower class, as their minimal demand for services will save the city money. Just know that with poorer sims comes much more crime.

Your sims, like all of us, grow old, and they will graduate and outgrow your schools. Use the Graph tool to view your population's distribution of ages. Elementary and high schools cater to the younger sims, while colleges and museums cater to older sims. Libraries benefit all but the very old. It's important to have age-appropriate institutions located where sims of those ages are concentrated. The Data View can help you determine where the young mostly live, and where the old mostly live. When sims grow out of an educational institution, it becomes less effective at improving your education score. Also, because they have finished the curriculums, a quick click with the Query tool will reveal that fewer and fewer students are in school attendance. When a school teaches less than 10 students, it's a good idea to demolish it to save money. Those kids will have to be homeschooled.

Tip: When houses first develop, the families that move in almost always have little ones, making new neighborhoods the most in-demand for elementary schools.




Moving Beyond the Farm/ Small Town Stage
So you want to go from a town to a city? It's easy. As you become able, you can carefully allow your town to grow in size and population through commercial, residential, and industrial zoning. With this, naturally you will need to redevelop areas of farmland to convert them into housing, businesses, shopping areas, etc. At this time you will begin to expand your street grid as farmland is gradually rezoned. With the continuation of this pattern, eventually your farms will be no more. At this point and time, though, it's OK. The farms were a "placeholder," remember? They completeley served their purpose.

As you expand, remember that the demands of your growing population will also expand. You will need more schools, hospitals, police and fire stations. Your water and power supply will also need to expand. Eventually, you'll find it necessary to revamp your city's road and transit networks to develop high-capacity avenues, bus stops and a subway system. The game develops a whole new feel as your little town evolves into a megacity.

Tip: The small town doesn't always have to be a temporary stage- it can be permanent if you desire. You do not have to expand your city if you don't want to. There is no in-game penalty for choosing to keep things small.

Thanks for reading! I will continue to post tutorials sharing all my SC4 tips and tricks.
Any questions or comments, please don't be shy. Good luck and keep zoning!