More City sims !!!

Why don't we have more city/urban sims?

I'd love to see more city sims.
The new southern continent is a rpime candidate for a few as its still expanding.
I think the northern continent missed the boat

Because SL'ers prefer to live in the suburbs.

hmm..well.. not all i suppose.. most expensive land is urban

A lot of people 'put down' the concept, under the thought that with limitless tools available what's the point in recreating their real life - forgetting of course that not everyone has the privilege of living in a small suburban house with a yard and a white picket fence.

I would personally LOVE to lay out a sim (or more) with road networks, streetlamps (now we have local lighting) and allow people to develop 'small town america', with residential areas, small shops etc - but don't have the money to buy a sim and risk to become a mini land baron.

Linden Labs must know that their initial setup costs put off a lot of people from going down the 'self development' line. It would be good if they would accept applications (even just 2 a month) from people with proposals for creating and administering areas that are different from the sprawling mall/casino/nightclub/camping combination, and make grants of a free sim - even if it's just a recycled "old" sim - for people to develop as per their plan. Presumably it's quite straightforward for them to keep an eye on progress, and retract/wipe projects that fail or don't follow the initial proposal.

It won't cost anything - and shouldn't take a great deal of time either.

There must be plenty of people just like me with the vision and the talent to create great things in SL, but lack the financial status to be able to follow them through. SL is meant to be a user created world - so how about let's get some help with that?

Lewis

Do you mean city themed sims? Or the old double prim city sims?

On Project Grants: Yeh, problem is though, what will happen when the project is done? Linden takes back the sim and auctions off the land in it? Hmm... maybe, the person who built the idea and all sells it, but then has to pay Linden 3/4 of the income from landsales (after justified purchases, like uploads and paying someone who is an expert at X to do X for you, perhaps). I think that would still leave an incenitive to put up the cash - More risk, but more profit if it succeeds. This might be a good way to help the comunity.

That would be a great idea. I think it would add greatly to the feel of the game by having one or more city sims per contenant, depending on its size. Given that its easy to make more real estate here, I can't see any reason why not.

I like your attitude, Lewis! I also think this is a great idea.

ill tell u what.. we wait on LL what they do.. coz they made city sims before. If they wont do anything.. i will do it myself and buy a big private urban sim.

I do like city/urban sims the most. Definitely the sort of thing I would most like to build one day.

Stop by Los Angeles sim. Skyscrapers, parking garages, freeways, sorry, no smog

I was thinking along the lines of not being necessarily 'given', more 'loaned' for terraforming and laying everything out. I'd be quite happy to work for nothing, as long as I covered my costs (although as there are street textures and suchlike already supplied, I don't see them being necessarily high).

I know it can be done, because I was one of those who was given the go-ahead to redevelop an Infohub (Warmouth). As long as everything I laid down was under the 'infohub rebuilders' group, all Torley needed to do for me was turn on and off terraforming as I required it (to stop land vandals when I wasn't around, more than anything else).

I've said it before, but there is no real overall 'sense of community' in SL, and I believe that's a real shame. Sure, there are furries, goreans, vampi/yres, sci fi groups, caledon, neualtenberg and other roleplay groups - but they tend to mostly keep themselves to themselves as far as groups go, and there is very little except the occasional fundraising event that really pulls everyone together. People might be pulling in the same vague direction in many cases - but not at the same time, or on the same piece of rope.

Lewis

Prim limits is my guess. We need more sims with hugely increased prim limits. Actually, we just need Havoc 2.
Also, people owning parcels of land on city sims will have to want to build offices and high rises and such. For now I've seen "city sims" on a larger scale, i.e. one or two office buildings per island sim. If it was possible to consolidate that somehow (make a smaller parcel in a city sim be worth less than an entire island, but allow for same number of prims), then it could work. Until then it's more lucrative to pay for an entire island, and have the place to yourself with just one office building and no competing buildings and people to deal with.

(personally I love cities and also wish there were more of them here, but there would have to be $$$ or really strong personal incentives for people to lump their buildings together on a highly-primmed and thus laggy sim.)

It would certainly also add some kind of structure as well - much of the mainland is just a discontiguous smorgasbord of nothingness, and apart from the few waterside or roadside areas around (one of which I am lucky to have obtained), everything is just isolated parcels with their own thing on, with little to no concept of blending in with what's around it. Sure, people enjoy the freedom to build what they like - it's one of the big appeals of SL after all - but it doesn't lend itself to a necessarily pleasant experience if you're travelling around.

I've never really understood why there's such a demand for vehicles... when there's not really anywhere to go with them. One of the most amusing experiences I have had in months was driving round one of the Linden residential zoned sims with my 'short bus' looking for passengers.

Lewis

So start a movement. Find someone who owns an urban sim, offer to redevelop it for them for free, set it up as a large community event, spread the word around, and get a large SL community to come in and play with the temporarily donated land. The owner will get a benefit from it from having their land become much more well known, and will get free (or cheap) building. You will benefit from havingat least a temporary community with similar interests, and ability to excersize your city building skills. Only thing that's required is footwork and lots of talking.

I like cruising Midnight City. Not in an Al Pacino way, but in my Dominus Shadow.

I have YET to see one of those. Keep hearing people raving about it, but never saw it. Mosly cause I read the raves on the forums while at work, and forget about it / am too busy with scripting when I get on SL at home. Maybe if you and I meet up in SL some time (which, with me helping Bloop, will no doubt happen) you can show it off to me.
(p.s. posting links to where to get it here is useless (unless they're pictures), since they will get lost in the forums, and I'll forget when I get home )

Unfortunately my "popularity" on these forums is the wrong type to get anyone to actually want to do anything and work with me.

I wasn't really looking to start a group anyway, just to do the work for someone else who would then benefit from it, because it would be good experience and something to show to be able to 'hire myself out' for such jobs if others wanted these things done.

Lewis

Oh Rasah... IM me sometime. You have to see this. I've never bothered with any other vehicle, but this... beautifully crafted, scripted... you will definitely appreciate it. Hydraulics, the works. The baddest thing in SL.

I didn't mean "this forum." There aren't a lot of people on this forum. You had an event which attracted 16 people in SL. Have another one or more, but have the theme of it be city building. Then see if anyone wants to join a group for city building that you create. Keep adding more people, keep talking to them, talk to some city sim owners, and eventually you might just get lucky, with your group getting "hired" to build up a portion of a city sim as a community project sort of an event. Heck, if you're in it just for the building, you could even have the city sim owner save what was in that chunk of land, have you go at it with building stuff up, show your stuff for publicity, and then if it's not up to par, replace it with the stuff the owner had there before. No loss to the owner, and you got your own fun and publicity as well.
(I personally just don't have that amount of time for this...)

On this Lewis, I've found, if you like the idea of building a certain type of thing, build some similar things on your own land, however much you have to work with. I really like building tall, urban buildings, monumental kinda buildings, so I made heaps on my own land. Built em, looked at them, showed them to some friends, took them down and started all over again. They would always be in my picks as well.

Out of this, I was asked to build the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas, simply from someone looking at my profile one day, and I just finished an art gallery, amongst other things. You kinda have to stick it out there whichever way you can, and people do notice.

A few sims from now, demand willing, the Caledon sims will have a grand Victorian style capital city.

Void sims as well in the works, at 8-10 sims.

Thing is, it seems to make far more sense to let the country rise up to generate the need for such, rather than the other way around. More fun that way, too!

I fear that happening on its own will never happen as long as land is in an unlimited supply. If the amount of land was limited, more people would end up having to bunch op together, and with its prices going up, people would have to buy small plots and build up-up-up. Then again, USA has large cties despite the crapload of empty land, so I don't know. Anyone out there actually studied the social demographics of city-making?

prims are no problem.. id say lower prim limites on city sims.. so even with full sim there wont be lagg.

My largest building covers 800 sq m and has 2 stories.. yet only 100 prims.