Blogger City Anddul — Part 5

Well I say. Look at that above! Quite a bit has changed since the last title image. Including which image I’m selecting too. I don’t quite recall how I fell into the pattern of it — but I was using the end state image of the prior part as featured, and then showing the end state of the current post… Well; at the end. I suppose laying it out like that, I can perhaps see the logic that lead me down that path.

In any case — the featured image is now the end state of the current part.

This is where Anddul in Part 5 started from though:

With the third community area popping up, we ended Part 4 as a Busy Town with a population of 3,800. In order to meet the goal I set myself way back at the start of the month — that is, reach a milestone which explicitly calls Anddul a ‘City’ — I need to hit a population of 7,000.

Still a wee way to go then.

So growing population is still going to be a major focus for today’s goals. Pushing right though to 7,000 might be a stretch, but definitely aiming to Big Town status (5,500 pop). Getting to Big Town will allow the option of High Density zoning options… Buuuut… I don’t quite feel Anddul is ready for those yet. So I think we’ll hold that back until after I decide which way to start expanding our territory — something that will need to be done somewhat soon.

Also?

Anddul doesn’t have a park yet! Not a big, proper, zoned park at least. So will keep an eye out for a spot for that too.

Righto — onward!

High Density-Low Density: Redux

You might remember this concept, right the way back in Part 2 where, using some of the smaller road options that the Network Extensions mod provides, I built a denser neighbourhood — relying on (mostly) 2×2 sized properties rather than 4×4’s all over the place.

The experiment proved rather successful in that while each property could of course house less people — the overall property density did provide room for more families to move in overall.

On a small scale, for Part 2, it ended up looking like this:

I decided to take this concept and expand it out to the much larger and newer district created last time. I would have loved to run the narrower neighbourhood streets right under the bridges and connect all the way across, but unfortunately that wasn’t to be.

Not without either some fairly unnatural looking bends in the street or redoing the bridges themselves.

No thank-you.

So here’s a high-density low-density look at the district after giving it a bit of time to recover from bulldozing the premises and reconstruct the smaller, more modest properties.

And yes! I started providing names to entire districts. Rakuno has been in Anddul earlier — with a residence in the original area, plus owning the power plant(s) of the city. Sure those plants are pollution bombs at the moment, but over time we’ll replace those with clean, green, power machines. The Solar Updraft towers in particular, most likely!

Click through to the larger image and you might spot Rakuno Lane running the width of the district too. :)

Anddul’s First Park Zone

Right… there.

After drawing out the connecting road on the left between the two districts the area for the park really just drew itself.

Of course — it isn’t going to stay as ‘Fairview Park’. Pffft to default names.

But first a bit of an Interlude.

A Bit of an Interlude

You can see Tales of the Aggronaut to the North there. Belghast does a huge deal for the blogging community, running Blaugust year-on-year (or Blapril this year) all in an effort to keep people together. Belghast also hosts the Blaugust Discord and this year and given Blaugust as it normally stands came early this year — he has setup…

All of which is to say — Belghast is a central pillar of the community and many of our paths cross by power of the work Belghast does.

So.

I intend to make Tales of the Aggronaut (the district) as much of a central hub as possible. The centre spoke of the local Metro when I get there. The bus lines cross in Tales of the Aggronaut. Rail might join here.

Eventually if we keep growing Anddul — then sure; we’ll need more than one hub district. But this will be the first, as a small (very small to be sure) way of thanking Bel for all he does for us.

/interlude

Back to the Park! Solarayo Park.

Solarayo of Ace Asunder is the source of the name for the first city park.

It’s far from done. There is enough entertainment value in the park (in no small part aided by its sheer size) to see it rank up to level 5 and unlock everything possible for a city park once the visitor count hits 10,000.

Once there my plan is to place the things I think fit, and then plant a veritable forest. Really nature up the whole space, with a few clearings for park-sized chess boards, fountains and the like near the entrances. :)

Aiming for the Big Town

The densification of the Shards of Imagination didn’t quite get us to the 5,500 population mark. But it was close.

A new area was needed, so I drew out in dirt roads the outline of a new community. Paeroka’s community! :) The district is named for her blog, The Nerdy Bookahs.

It seemed fitting, being so close to Tessa’s Grand Library, the original schools of Anddul and now Anddul’s first University. Not a full university campus, mind. That will come later when the Fine Arts University Campus unlocks, and Tessa can upgrade from the library to the full campus. :)

The Nerdy Bookahs was enough though — more than enough!

For a moment, I wondered whether The Nerdy Bookahs might get Anddul all the way to 7,000 population. But no — it ended up settling around 6,200 when the rush slowed to a trickle.

It did provide enough of a population boost though, to let me at least start the Forestry area over on the left, as you can see in the ‘after’ shot above. I’ll hold back who that one was named after for now, for when the area is a little more built up. :)

Next time?

I’m going to use some of the tile purchases I’ve been saving up to expand the area of Anddul. There is perhaps one more area I could build a community into within the original tile — but it would block long range travel options more than I would like. I’m pretty sure I have at least 3 tiles available for purchase, so I’m going to go one west and then two north — create a giant cube of area in which I can build.

Then within that space, start a new area and construct some of the longer range transport options. :)

For now, here is the before and after shot for this entire part!