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Minutes from the Dustberg Planning Council Meeting, June 17th, 2023
We're building on the Dust Bowl map because I asked a website to make the choice for me and that's the one it picked.
No, really.
Welcome to the first meeting of the Planning Council. As I'm sure you all know by now, I'm the mayor of this dusty little burg. Which, coincidentally, is the interim name given to this place: Dustberg.
My bosses back in the Capital haven't left me with any concrete instructions regarding the development of this city, and whenever I try to hire a professional planner, everyone always looks at me like I have five heads and tells me that's my job.
So in lieu of actually having a single planner, I've called together this council of community leaders. We're all stuck in this place together, so we may as well all have a say in the way it develops. So please, sit back, relax, and enjoy this brief power point presentation on the city's history. There will be time after for questions and suggestions.
The loading screen mod - don't play without it! Also Cities Skylines is hilariously unoptimized. While recording this, the game stuttered several times. This PC handled Cyberpunk 2077 maxed out with ray tracing with no stutters. So, yeah. Game run bad.
The Ogdenville Planning Department thought this would be a good place to lay down an initial plat for a then-unnamed city.
Money, I was assured, was no object. Dustberg is going to be using an experimental development style, and someone in the state government wants the project to succeed. So we'll get whatever funding we need, no questions asked.
We're playing with infinite money because the game basically enters Creative Mode as soon as you get access to tax policies. Legitimately, just set all taxes to 12% and never look at them again and you will have enough money to build whatever you want. The screenshot, by the way, is from the GameAnarchy mod.
I've also disabled birds with the HideIt! mod, because they tank performance like a rock. Like I said, this 2015 game is badly optimized.
For housekeeping reasons, we need to build a small road and immediately delete it.
Doing so unlocks a bunch more types of roads. Including, crucially, a four lane road. We'll be needing this in a moment.
I'm not kidding, either. We have a bunch of useful road types available now.
We quickly designated a main thoroughfare for the city. While this isn't meant to be Main Street, per se, this avenue was meant to act like an artery through the city, quickly taking traffic where it needs to go.
Other cities in the past could develop independent of highway connections. Funkytown in particular, just a few hours up the road, started with a group of settlers arriving by boat. But modern cities unfortunately require an ugly highway terminus leading into the city proper. These one-way streets aren't glamorous, but they get the job done cheaply and efficiently.
Although the finance department tells me we could save our benefactors a lot of money by turning Harvey Highway and Elisa Highway into more one-way streets. I've already earmarked the project for action soon. The reduction in maintenance costs, while not a great deal in the long run, does show that we're trying to not abuse the generosity of our benefactors.
And while the process of providing custom names for each small street in the city is way too tedious, I would like to collect suggestions on a new name for the main avenue through the city. Elisa Avenue feels like it was named for the exit ramp, despite existing first.
(Caption: Elisa Avenue, late April 2023, before any development had started.)
I hope the council doesn't mind that I like to occasionally throw in some glamour shots of the city.
Before I set down any zones, I had the region surveyed from the air.
The surveyor thought there might be crude oil deposits beneath the lake shore off to the west. He also found valuable ore deposits just north of that.
Although it doesn't look like a lot of oil, we're also really, really high up in the air. There's more than enough to have an oil industry area if we want later on.
Trees and arable soil are more immediately nearby, however. So in the future, we should consider which we would prefer to supplement our income with. I know it's almost heretical to not use Niagara Lumber from Ogdenville, but there's no reason Dustberg can't make a name for itself in that space either.
Moving on, we decided on a nonstandard block size that's worked pretty well in every city that's tried it. 11x20 has a non-insignificant amount of green space between the lots, which keeps residents and businesses from feeling boxed in like sardines.
It's a little difficult to see the green space at first, but just wait.
Neighborhoods are envisioned as being at least three streets deep and at most 40 grid units across.
Two such areas were laid out. I know some of you are going to grumble about keeping to a grid - and believe me, I share those thoughts - but it doesn't hurt to start off with tight grids. Residents can appreciate funky road designs later on.
To discourage people from building on the main thoroughfare, I've made a city-wide mandate that all construction on Elisa Avenue must be personally approved by me. I also want to keep the access roads clear of development. This should let traffic flow better if residents don't have to wait for people making turns.
Turning off zoning with Zoning Adjuster also prevents anything from being built on that road. That's fine with me, because I want Elisa Avenue to act as an arterial for the city. Folks should get on it only if they need to move somewhere else quickly.
With the initial zones painted, you can more clearly see the green space inside of individual blocks. I don't plan to ever make use of that green space, so the residents can feel free to use them however they see fit. There is an exception, however...
The stripes running down the middle of the blocks may look unsightly now, but I feel it's necessary for the blocks to have pedestrian-only areas. It will take several months to get the proper permissions, but I plan to eventually set down gravel paths in the empty areas. In the future when the dirt roads are paved over, it's important that little alleys between the houses exist and are usable by pedestrians. They cut down on unnecessary car trips by offering shortcuts, so to speak.
Because of how weird progression is, we don't get pedestrian paths until like the third tier of unlocks. That should be around 1300 population, give or take. Why then? Because it's under the landscaping menu. 
So we'll make do until then. And, yes, the reason we want to do this is because it gives pedestrians basically a ped-only highway through the residential areas. The plan is to eventually connect them directly with the industrial zone that we'll be putting in shortly.
Across the avenue from one of the neighborhoods, we also set aside land for general-use industry. The alley and path pattern was preserved to ensure residents can walk to work if they so desire. If I can be bluntly honest, dirty industry like this has no place in Dustberg. The only reason we even have it now is because we literally have no choice. My office is working hard to negotiate with the Capital to get approval for specialized industry areas. Like the pedestrian paths, that will take some time.
Industry specializations require the second tier of progression, so we need around 1,000 residents. That won't be too far away at all!
A couple of water pumps were installed along the riverbank to provide water for the town.
I have the no pipes mod because nobody in existence likes laying pipes in this game. So we just need to "connect" the water pumps with a single pipe and suddenly the whole city "mysteriously" has enough water.
These are just basic-ass vanilla pumps, each one with a capacity of 120,000 cubic meters per week. Two of those will be more than enough for a rather long time. They have some noise pollution, but nobody is ever going to live nearby, so it's not a problem at all.
Water Way, a cozy little street going to the riverfront, was put in to service the pumps. And while my office conducted some negotiations to get access to water clarifier blueprints, I worked with the DOT to adjust the roads in the city.
Please forgive the artist's rendition, but the roads were a mess. The main highway speeds had cars going at 60 - which is fine - then the exit ramp slowed them down to 50 - also fine. But then the two short highway segments brought them back up to 60 before immediately slamming them down to 25 on the one-ways. Then Elisa Avenue starts and they're back up to 30. It was promising to be a traffic flow nightmare.
So we adjusted the speeds to make things a little less chaotic. Traffic now flows quite nicely without turning the city entrance into a speed trap.
Elisa Avenue was also adjusted to further promote the idea of it being an arterial. It's 45 from the start all the way down by Water Way where the road terminates.
This is because Traffic Manager: Presidential Edition lets you adjust road speeds. It's one of the mods that actually makes this game play properly. This will not be the last time we use this in the LP. Hell, it's not the last time we use it in this update!
Finally, the roads that connect the neighborhoods with Elisa Avenue were granted slightly faster speeds. Whenever it comes time to pave over these roads, we'll probably bump up the speed to 35. But nobody I spoke with felt comfortable with traffic going much faster than 25 on unpaved dirt roads.
The next morning when I was checking over the city, I discovered some joker had earmarked every intersection on Elisa Avenue for having a traffic signal. Using executive fiat, I elected to remove the signals. Dustberg has no need for lights. Indeed, even the Capital only has three signalized intersections in the whole city. That's actually a fact that embarrasses my counterpart there. She feels, and I agree, that traffic lights are a failure of city design.
Finally we marked Elisa Avenue, all of Water Way, the highway on-ramps, and the connecting streets all as no parking. If we hadn't, some residents would look at the giant high speed arterial road and go "it's free real estate!"
I used the Zoning Adjuster mod to say "no zoning on these roads" but forgot that "no zoning" means "no building ANYTHING." So this threw me off at first and I wound up upgrading the road needlessly. I'll just leave it.
Late on the third day, the Capital finally got back to my office about the clarifier plans.
112,000 cubic meters of wastewater drainage per week for a pretty cheap price. Using these, we can avoid pumping our sewage into the river.
The clarifier is a modded building, naturally.
Apparently one of the future residents of the city approves of the water pumps.
We were all ready to open the gates when someone pointed out we didn't have power. While my office possesses the blueprints to an incredibly powerful power source, it's a mite expensive.
Perhaps someday!
Yet another modded building. 125k isn't even that expensive without infinite money. A few years in, a regular city could easily afford this and be set on power for a long time.
A road was extended off of the industrial district, and the new power plant was placed there. Like the dirty industry, it will be replaced as soon as we feasibly can.
Once the gates were opened, it did not take long at all for the first residents to buy property and start moving in.
Many others, including several businesses, followed suit.
The factory owners were quite eager to move in and throw up their giant, polluting smokestacks everywhere.
But the early days of the town were quite pleasant, despite the pollution barons. Every morning there were new smiling faces to meet and greet.
(Caption: Main Street Dustberg, early May 2023)
(Caption: Morello's Ice Cream Parlor, early May 2023)
(Caption: Landry's Books, early May 2023)
(Caption: Old Town Dustberg, mid May 2023)
(Caption: Industry Park, mid May 2023)
(Caption: Dustberg Riverfront Utility Campus, mid May 2023)
(Caption: Dustberg from the air, Memorial Day 2023)
That brings us to the present, and the reason why I called this meeting. As of this morning's informal census, the Capital recognizes that we've got almost 450 souls living in Dustberg.
We're now big enough to levy taxes, as well as educate our residents and offer health care services.
I need to go in the building assets and turn off the alternate schools, clinics, and emergency services. I don't like the look of the alternate versions and they clutter my build menu!
So, I need direction from all of you. We obviously need to establish elementary schools for our youngsters, and clinics to bandage up scraped knees. I've already got crews scouting out a good spot to build an "education park" so to speak, and I want to place the clinic on main street.
What I need from you all is a general sense of direction. I'm perfectly capable of designing and building a city on my own, but the project would go a lot smoother if I had input. I need a new name for the city, a name for the river, and a better name than Elisa Avenue. I'm also interested in any long term suggestions or plans that we can work toward over a long period of time.
The Capital sent over our next task with their congratulations. We need to double our population to 900. But the carrot they're dangling for this task is the industrial specializations that will let us kick the dirty general industry out of the city for good.
So, in addition to all that, where should we build? There is plenty of room back toward the highway, we can cross Elisa Avenue to build more houses up there, or we can keep creeping toward the river. I estimate we won't need more than one or two 44x40 neighborhoods to meet the next population goal!
Thank you for your patience, and the floor is now open for questions and suggestions.