Maxis’ latest entry in the SimCity franchise has come with significant issue and outcry from audiences for a variety of reasons. The launch was not particularly successful, the reviews haven’t been outstanding, there have been suggestions that the online service might not be necessary and users are finding new bugs and design issues every day.The latest is that seemingly it’s unnecessary to zone anything other than residential in your city.
Several Reddit users have discovered that consumer spending is fulfilled in parks and jobs are provided by city facilities. This is the case even in regions where no other cities have been founded.
User Vilavek offers advice for trying this out yourself:
First, plop down any road layout you want, because traffic will never be an issue. Traffic will never be an issue because your sims will have no jobs, and there will be no shops. They stay at home 24/7. Layout your roads to fit maximum density buildings. You can start out with low density roads if you want, but you'll be upgrading to high density the moment all your residential zones are occupied. When there are no longer any free Residential zones, zones start upgrading to higher densities so long as the land value is high enough (more on that later).
As far as services go, you'll want to plop down Power, Water, and Sewage. I didn't do this until sims started to move out of town. Eventually you'll need to plop a Fire Station, Police Station, and Medical, but only when the lack of such causes your sims to die, be killed, or move out (not merely threaten to move out). Sooner is fine too I suppose, if your nice.
Happiness will be an issue with the lack of jobs or shops. But that is okay. Because who needs a job or shops when you're surrounded by Amphitheaters? Place them so that the land value for all Residential zones are maxed out, and your sims will be happy for life as long as the above mentioned services are operational. I should note that the first medium density condos you see prop up will actually hold fewer sims than the single trailers or houses. This will make your population and income decrease at first. Don't be alarmed, just wait it out.
Finally, as your population goes up and your income increases, start lowering the tax rate for low, medium, and high wealth sims. This will also keep them happy, and keep them from moving away.
It's theorised that this works because parks technically provide your sims a way to shop and service facilities provide jobs. The combination denies the necessity for non-residential zoning entirely.
This has been proven to work in both sandbox and regular mode.
