Building an UK town - Sheep49's way

[Sheep49]

OK, since there were tutorials on how to build a port, American city, or even how to go regional, so why not making a tutorial about building the realistic UK town? I don't know. So, here you have the first on SC4D, British town building tutorial!


Part 1 - Getting Started

So what it take to make a realistic UK style town? I don't know, since I haven't been to Great Britain yet.

The first step would be to collect some pics and maps This is where Google Earth and Google come in handy. You should also read many articles about UK cities on Wikipedia or/and in traditional Encyclopedia. For this tutorial we're going to take inspiration from a typical English town - Amersham.

It's located north-west to London, and is a cute, little city with waves of row buildings. How about a panoram of it first?



And one more:


As you can see from that photo, UK towns are the total contrast to the ones in USA - You can hardly see the grid in the first ones. English towns also have a definitive central part, where most of the shops are located.

Let's see this city in Google Maps' map:

You'll get a cookie if you can find some typical grid here

Commercial buildings are located near the RW/LU station. Shops are also located along the main roads.

Conclusion: Towns are built around main road/s, and most of the time they have at least one RW station. Commercal buildings should be located only there (not counting things like Ikea, Tesco, Marks and Spencer etc.). Try to use grid as seldom as you can.

Coming next time - How the farms are located, and what buildings should you use.

See you!
Piotr

[MandelSoft]

Good first step. Before you start with something, you must analyse the subject, like you did. Please continue... 

[art128]

great beginning on your tutorial my friend 

[Earth quake]

Wow, I'm interesting to this tutorial and if you want, I can help you.

[zero7]

I like the way you're going about this.  Very sensible approach to recreating something from a country you've never been to.

You'll find a lot of UK towns have ribbons of development along the main roads - as car ownership started to become more affordable from the 30s through to the 50s there was a huge boom in house building; it's where all those 'gascooker' semis come from.  Ultimately the government stepped in and stopped the sprawl of many towns it by defining green-belt - a preserved area of countryside around the town where development was not allowed (or very limited).

I looked up Amersham on Microsoft Live - it's in bird's-eye view, so you might find it a useful addition to the Google views:

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=smc452gygf8w&style=b&lvl=2&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=22981826&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

[Sheep49]

Oh gosh, I'll have to finish this.

PART II: HOW ARE THE UK TOWNS BUILT?

There's an architecture degree that is all about planning the cities and urban areas. It's called Urban Planning. And that's basically what are we doing at this point: We're planning what we gonna build. Saying that you plan to build anything at least in half realistic in SC4 without any planning is pretty... unreachable. Just take a look at Dustin's (Thundercrack83) great MD, called The Commonwealth of Marathon. Most of the updates are showing author's plans and his way of thinking about the area he's going to develop.

Are you ready? Then sit back, relax, take a pencil and some notebook (if you want to write some notes from this lesson), and, of course, have fun.

PART IIa: THE BURGESS DIAGRAM

Now I know you think. When I first heard about the 'Concentric zone model/Burgess diagram' I was confused too. But it turned out to be a really helpful thingie, isn't important if you're building an UK styled city or any other city. Here you have it, in all it's oval glory...


Image courtresy of Wikipedia

...OK, but what do the colours mean? Here you have a short describtion of that model:

Bright Yellow (The outer one): Commuter Zone - This zone is dominated by the upper-middle class and high class houses. There are also several high-technology industries, located in so-called 'Industrial Parks'. You can also find numerous shopping centres, as well as large parks. It's also an area where the town's bypass road is located.

Green: Residential Zone - Home to the inhabitants from the middle class, this area is full of semi-detached and row houses of (usually) high quality. It generally has a good connection to the CBD of city, thanks to railway, trams, roads, and light railways/Underground. This zone is also a favourite of shops that (for some reasons) exited the cetral part of the city.

Blue: Working class Zone - Basically, low quality housing built for the workers of the factories in the next two zones, though nowadays it's starting to have higher quality flats and buildings. It's the most populated area in the city, mainly because of pretty low cost of land there.

Red and Pink: Transition and Industrial Zones - Here it is, a place where most of your Sims will get work. Nowadays it's starting to be an area, that mixes the residential buildings with shops and offices. Also, you can imagine how parks and green areas are going to divide this area from CBD if you want to have high-rises there.

Yellow (The inner one): Central Buisness District, aka CBD - The central part of whole city. That's where are concert halls, operas, city hall etc. located. It should be a place where the prices are high, just like the One Canada Sq! Also, don't forget about some kind of transit hub, like the central road junction, or railway station. After all, people from the outskirts have to travel to that zone now and then

Now, having that done, let's move on to the...

PART IIb: TRANSIT PLANNING

We have already learned that the CBD has some kind of bigger/smaller transit hub. This is essential for this part of your UK town transit planning. Now, I wanted to ask you a question: Do you know what shape can roads going out of the centre resemble? Of course, it's going to be a star. Now take a piece of paper and draw a dot in the middle of it. Then, draw 5 lines that go out in different directions, each crossing in that dot. If you want, you can make them wiggly, it doesn't matter. Now draw the circle in quite a distance from that junction. Finished? Good. Congratulations! You have drawn the most basic diagram of main roads in UK, or one of the European cities. Of course, depending on how big your city is going to be, roads may be replaced with avenues or motorways.

Ahhh, yes... Motorways... They're the most challenging to build part of your city's transit network. Mainly because of two things. One: If you're developing your city from the small village, they're going to be very hard to build, mainly because of the fact that most motorways in UK cities are elevated or sunken. Two: They're really, and I mean really, expensive to buy. But it pays to have a most efficient version of road-type transport.

Railroads in your town should work in a very similiar way to roads. Personally, I like an idea of having a circle around the CBD and transition area with three/four branches in the direction of center each ended with a passanger terminus. Also from the circle, there would be several branches in the direction of suburbs. That, in combination with trams and buses, or even light-rail, should make the commution from the residential suburbs to CBD really easy.



HOMEWORK
Yes, yes... Doing homeworks is the most efficient way of learning, isn't it?

Exercise 1: Answer those questions...
a) What do the letters CBD mean?
b) In which zone is industry the main function?
c) In which zone is the cheapest housing?

Exercise 2: Draw a simple land use model of your nearest town or city. Does it have any similiarities to the Burgess model?

Have fun with planning
Piotr

[rooker1]

Piotr,

Fantastic read. 
I agree with it all and I try to use a similiar principle.
As for the home work... I'll leave that for someone else. 

Robin 

[Earth quake]

a) What do the letters CBD mean? CBD mean Centra buisness district
b) In which zone is industry the main function? in the red an pink zone ?
c) In which zone is the cheapest housing? in the green zone

similiarities to the Burgess model: 


Really strange no ?

This town is more different to the burgress model.

The yellow colour = CBD for a classical City with the Burgress Model = a church for a village and for a town
And the industrail aera is next to a City or town. 

[jonnyrocks]

FYI, the Burgess model was actually based around Chicago

Nice start, am thinking of re-creating my home town of Salisbury sometime soon, this could prove useful!

[Luke09]

It could be nice and more easy if you post ingame pics of an UK town,small,medium and a CBD

[vershner]

I just stumbled across this thread a got a bit of a surprise. I live about 10 miles away from Amersham, and I regularly drive through it. Nice to see an article like this.

If you want any close up pics from parts of the town let me know.

[Muko]

thx fore a greate toturial i would love to see some ingame picturs of the city building concept if u have some.

im gona try to make a town like that it looks simple enofh ill post a picture ore to when im done.

[jmyers2043]

Hello Piotr

...Fantastic read...

I agree.

Oh gosh, I'll have to finish this.

I think so too, if you get my drift.


- Jim