Nyhaven: Views From Within (Nuclear City - 5/8)

[Themistokles]

You use an interesting mix of building-styles... in the last mosaic I find Dutch, German, New Yorkian and Parisian all within some blocks of each other. I think it looks good, because it somehow gives the area a soft and relaxed feeling.

[kbieniu7]

You did nice to fit the highway in the place in the first picture. Two overpasses needing a diagonal section between them, the creek and the fact, that it goes with four carriageways, not only two. I had similiar narrow places, that it seems "no problem"t to put, but they occur to be quite havy situations 

By the way, I think you should add more trees along the highway, it would look pretty with colorful trees, like in this creek valley 

[Bipin]

Wonderful work! You make consistently high-quality cities. 

[Kergelen]

Great combination of interchanges, suburbs and FAR work. As always I love your parks

[compdude787]

Those are nice interchanges! It would be nice to see a regional transportation map so we can see where these interchanges are located.

[Gugu3]

Very interesting interchanges!!!

[Nanami]

Nice to see you back into MDing here! It's always interesting to see stuff from your MD with those mixtures of styles. also I like how you use those FAR roads

[woodb3kmaster]

Themistokles: Thanks! I'm glad the different building styles mix well; they're meant to suggest something of the city's history and culture.
kbieniu7: Thank you! Yeah, that was a tricky gap to fill, so I'm glad you approve of the end result. I agree that more seasonal trees would help with the highways' beauty; I'll keep that in mind going forward.
Bipin: Thanks! That's high praise coming from such a talented BATter.
Kergelen: Thank you, Kergelen!
compdude787: Thanks! I'll see what I can put together as far as maps are concerned.
Gugu3: Thank you, Guglielmo!
Nanami: Thanks! I'm happy to be back MDing after my long absence.



For those of you who weren't aware, Nyhaven and Kendall are part of the same metropolitan area. In fact, they're the two largest cities in the metro area. The following animation shows my progress in building and merging the two cities over time (up to about a week ago):



I've done even more work on the metro area since the date of the last region view here, but Photoshop refuses to export an updated GIF (probably due to a memory shortage or summat). EDIT: After shrinking the image and reducing the animation length, Photoshop finally exported a new GIF. I've edited it into the space above. However, you can see some of my latest work in the Kendall thread. However, you can see some of my latest work in the Kendall thread.

At this point, even the two subway systems have merged, creating a 20-line monster that's so big, it would be a nightmare to try to name each line the way I'd been naming them. Hence my decision to replace the names with letters and numbers, as the latest subway map shows:
Click the images below for full resolution!



My latest work on Kendall was almost lost due to the city contracting prop pox. Thankfully, after doing a great deal of reading on prop pox's causes and preventive measures, I was able to continue from a recent, pox-free backup, and my preventive measures have kept the pox from reappearing. Here's some of that work, which includes my efforts to merge Kendall and Nyhaven into a single metro area.



The Lords of Parliament, Lower Columbia's two heads of government, now have a residence and office that suits them. The leaders of Parliament's two chambers live and work in separate wings of Columbia House, shown here. This executive mansion is right across Upper Columbia Avenue from Parliament House itself.



Based on earlier comments, I've worked on reducing building repetition around Federal Circle. I've also begun expanding the business district that surrounds the circle, so it hasn't completely filled in yet.



I also acted on comments regarding the proximity of the seaport to central Kendall and completely rebuilt the area. Now, housing projects rise where cranes and stacks of containers once stood. I also rebuilt Edmonds Junction, the rail junction connecting Kendall's Library Terminal to the port and points beyond, to take advantage of the new FlexTrack features in NAM 34.



The rebuilt Port Brunsmjöd now sits on its own island, with many more berths for ships and greatly improved rail and highway access. Pacifica State Highway 32 (visible in the top-right corner) runs through the port areas next to the port's rail line.



PC-32 begins at this rebuilt interchange with the R-50, where the latter highway turns south into central Kendall. Due to this interchange's proximity to another one, the R-50 widens to 10 lanes here.



That other interchange is where the R-250 ends. This freeway gives Kendall access to Nyhaven International Airport and runs through a number of new suburbs. The R-50, meanwhile, continues east into midtown Nyhaven.



The largest of those new suburbs is Clifton Mesa, a massive planned community near the formerly-small village of Clifton. Huge earth-moving operations leveled the hills that once stood here to collect land reclamation material for Port Brunsmjöd in the 1960s, and city planners took the opportunity to build a suburb that would serve both Nyhaven and Kendall. Clifton Mesa is home to one of the metro area's largest shopping malls, and is where several subway lines from both cities intersect.

[compdude787]

Nice update! I really liked that GIF showing the progress you've made with this region over the years. However, one freeway-related issue I noticed is that the interchange between R-50 and R-250 is too close to that folded diamond interchange to the south and this is going to cause some really bad weaving issues which causes a lot of traffic IRL. I would suggest putting in some collector-distributor lanes or braided ramps to alleviate weaving issues.

[M4346]

This is absolutely amazing!

[kbieniu7]

Nice! The gif is a good idea, interesting to see how much you've developped and how. In fact, looks like you didn't think about Nyhaven and Kendall as one metro area at the beginning, but it managed to be so within the time?

Great map as well. That's one of my favourite parts in MDs. I like to analyse them and... I think if a direct line between two centres would not be a good idea? An extension of line C or something like that? That's a huge monster, this network, indeed and I think, that there might be a place for such line - I bet, there would be enough traffic.

Something more: what I love the most in american-style creators are highways among trees in fall colours. It reminds me some pictures from my memory when I was in the US as a 4-years-old kid riding on highways in CT and admiring the colourful trees 

[Swordmaster]

Fantastic work Zack, especially the suburbs. Good use of the DDRHW as well.

Nonetheless, a shame of the rail viaduct ramps (sorry I moan on and on about these ) and I also think your container terminal has a little too few transportation options with so many containers being handled. The residents in those stately homes are surely gonna complain about the truck jams!


Cheers
Willy

[Gugu3]

Lovely update!Great intersections (i loved the rail one )

Guglielmo

[Themistokles]

Your RRW implementation is really great with all those tracks weaving in and out of each other. I also like the network map that you've done. And an el-rail over an avenue crossing, now that's cool

[noahclem]

Lovely work    I really like the Federal Circle, the park areas, the mall, and the transit map 

[woodb3kmaster]

compdude787: Thank you! At first I wasn't sure if I had enough room to implement your suggestion of C/D lanes, but I managed to squeeze them in after reading your comment. And to address your previous request for a regional transportation map, feast your eyes on this:



This map is somewhat out of date, since I made it before I expanded my region, but it's still mostly accurate. Railroads are in red, ricsways (Lower Columbian federal highways) are blue, Pacifica state highways are green, and freeways have a yellow stripe down the middle. Dashed lines indicate planned extensions.

M4346: Thanks for the compliment!
kbieniu7: Thank you, Kamil! I had actually planned on Nyhaven and Kendall sharing a metro area from the start; it not looking that way just tells me that I did a good job expanding the cities organically. As for the lack of a direct subway line between central Nyhaven and Kendall, I might build one, but for now, residents have several commuter rail lines to choose from if they want to travel from one city center to the other (taken from a much larger map that I'm still working on):



Swordmaster: Thanks, Willy! Yes, as convenient as those ramps are in tight spaces, even I have to concede your point about their unrealism. You'll be glad to know that I've replaced the one in the seaport with an avenue FLUP underpass, and turned some others in the region into earthen ramps (so as to use my slope mod). As for the port's transport options, I'm planning on building at least one freight railyard there (the port island is bigger than it looks), so at least it'll be the passenger trains that have to deal with extra traffic.
Gugu3: Thank you, Guglielmo! I enjoyed making that rail junction, so I'm glad you like it so much.
Themistokles: Thanks! I had no idea that that el-rail-over-avenue-intersection was even possible until I tried it. Suffice it to say that I was pleasantly surprised.
noahclem: Thank you very much, Noah!



Well, prop pox struck Kendall again, and there was nothing I could do to reverse its effects. Rather than limit myself to taking pictures of unaffected parts of the city, though, I decided I had to start over.

Rebuilding a city as developed as Kendall - with over 500,000 residents and most of the map developed - was a daunting task, to say the least. I was committed to recreating the city as accurately as I could, so I needed a guide to the old version of the city. Thankfully, SC4 Savegame Explorer has a feature that displays a map of all the lots, buildings, or props in a quad (depending on which subfile you open), so mapping out all of Kendall's lots and transport networks was fairly easy. The hard part was labeling almost all of them, so I knew what to plop where. I also needed to make an accurate subway map, so I referred to the in-game traffic volume data view quite a bit. My final map ended up looking like this:



By following this map, I was able to rebuild Kendall exactly as it was. But rather than slavishly recreate every detail, I took this opportunity to make a few improvements to the city. One of those improvements was rebuilding all of the R-3/50 freeway as a RHW (it used to be an overridden Maxis highway). Here are a couple pictures of how that effort turned out:



This is the freeway's interchange with Pacifica and Nicholasia Avenues. Based on fan comments, I decided to rebuild this interchange in a trench to minimize the freeway's elevation changes. The new version also keeps the longer offramps grade-separated all the way to their ends, which should improve traffic flow.



Further down the R-3/50, I built these overpasses. I ended up having to learn about the RULs the NAM is built on in order to fix a bug that affected the avenue overpass, which led to me becoming a full NAM Team member.



I also made a couple new lots to replace temporary layouts. Here's the new Arts Plaza, at the intersection of Puget and Nicholasia Avenues.



For the most part, though, I just wanted to get as much of Kendall to look as it once did as I could. I'm pretty satisfied with the results; the new Kendall is as vibrant and busy as the old one was.



My efforts even match up across quad borders, as this mosaic shows.

I made some improvements to the campus of Royal University, Kendall, as well. The flagship campus of Lower Columbia's federal university system, RUK was founded by King Edward as the Royal College in 1733. This legacy as a former college lives on in the names of College Street (which ends at the campus administration building) and the College Park neighborhood.



This is an overview of the whole campus and its surrounding area, facing west. The oldest part of campus is in the middle, with the residential annex at bottom, and several of the university's newer buildings near the top, along with some of the fraternity houses of College Park. The football stadium's parking lot is also partly visible at left. Farther down the mosaic, College Street crosses the channel into the Federal Circle business district.



The western half of campus is home to Mikaelslot, one of the university's largest pre-20th-century buildings. Originally built by King Michael I as an alternative to Kendall Palace, Mikaelslot and its grounds were gifted to Royal University by Michael's successor, Brandon I. Although the former palace was quickly used for classes and office space, the palace grounds were neglected until the 1950s, when the university needed to add new facilities. Most of Royal University's science and engineering classes now take place in the buildings that were built on the grounds.



The east end of campus is where most of the dormitories are located. This is another area that wasn't originally part of Royal U's campus; it was purchased from the city around 1960, when the student population outgrew the old dorms.



Finally, although Lower Columbia is an overwhelmingly Christian nation, it also has a growing population of Muslim immigrants. They recently built the Malkut al-Hijra Mosque on the edge of the Kendall Heights, east of Parliament House. Its construction was controversial, due to its size and prominent position overlooking the city center. It's here to stay, though.

[kelis]

It's sad to hear about your prop pox problems... anyway your entire region looks really nice and very well planned, so I don't think you will have problems to rebuilding that city from scratch, in fact I think you have a good change to make a new and better version.

[kbieniu7]

Yep, that's bad news :/ But I'm full of respect, that you've decided to rebuild it all over, a lot of work! Still, looking at your major points, especially around Arts Plaza... that's a really spectacular quarter, I try to imagine how it would look, if standing on a street there!

[Themistokles]

It's always sad to loose work that one has done, but you seem to have recovered very well. In particular, I like that train station.

[vester]

Great looking region you got there.

See a train station but not trains.
Maybe


A word of advice, try to host your pictures in another place. Dropbox is not the best way to share pictures. Loading the pictures take a lot of time (> 5 minutes)
I use imgur.com, which I only can recommend. Easy to use, easy drag and drop the pictures, easy to get links to the pictures as well.