How to increase residential demand in simcity 4?
I have a city in SimCity 4 that currently has a population of 1,463. After running the simulation for 5 years, I stil have exactly the same population. How do I fix this?
Right now, my city has:
- All residential areas covered for fire, police, medical, and education
- Enough industrial zoning to support growth
- Open space in residential zones for both low and medium density
- Medium density residential has water
- Sufficient power capacity
- Good Mayor Ratings throughout the residential zones
However, the taxes for my city are near maximum, because I can't figure out any other way to make money. Could this be keeping people from moving in? My RCI demand is negative 2,000 - 6,000 in all categories but agriculture.
If your taxes are "near" maximum, then you're running with taxes in the 18-20% region, which will not only dramatically reduce demand for R$-R$$$ but also have a knock on effect in that your current population will also begin leaving, resulting in less available potential workers for both commercial and industrial buildings.
At a guess - since you've stated that you have your taxes at maximum as a method of making money - did you build your entire city infrastructure before allowing people to move in or something? Essentially, if you're at the point where you've built hospitals, schools, police and fire, but are not making a profit, then you're probably trying to expand quicker than your population is increasing, resulting in far more monthly expenditure than your income.
To increase residential demand, ensure that your residential zones are some distance away from buildings which are a source of pollution - power plants, industrial zones, etc - that you have a good road network between your residential, commercial and industrial zones to keep the commute time down, and reduce your taxes for the residential zone type you wish to create demand for. You can raise your taxes right from the start of the game from the starting 9% to around 11-12% but going any higher than this without the luxuries of happy citizens, parks, stadiums, etc will simply result in your population moving out and your zone demands plummeting.
You don't need all those amenities right from the start, try getting rid of firestation, police station, higher education, etc
Taxes shouldn't be higher than 9% ever unless you want to get rid of residents.
You can easily grow a 5-10k population town without any amenities, just residential and industrial zoning is enough.
Try following a walkthrough guide like http://www.simtropolis.com/omnibus/_/simcity-4/tutorials/making-money-the-easy-way-r102 for an example on how to make a big profitable town.