Poseidon Metropolis

[Sharkoman]

Here is my idea of an ideal historic central district. My grid size was based on the assets I liked and wanted to use a grid shape that would be easier to mess around with to blend it with other areas of drastic contrast and grid types. I tried to blend the traditional style placement of a Texas/Western American and European railroad towns while also trying to blend modern and traditional assets. Europe is a great place to look for how to blend modern plazas with older architecture and making it look nice.

I've seen some nice parks and plazas that revolve around their historic railroad depot in places like Texas, Arkansas and Colorado. Going to get find it and first person mod so I can detail the surroundings better. My next goal is to make a huge modern downtown with massive skyscrapers and blend the two regions together and I think using Denver's 14th Street pedestrian plaza as a key influence will be a great way to get my main connection between my 100% pedestrian historical district to a full scale modern downtown. Another goal is to shift away from a square grid into a freeform one which will be easier as a get away from flat ground with no topography. And final goal will be to create independent disconnected cities built on different industries of the area and grow them into bedroom communities or suburbs for the main city.

Buildings used for my town:

Historic Train Station
Historic Courthouse (Tax Office)
Current Courthouse, soon be be another historical one. (City Hall)
City Hall (The Breakers Hotel)
Arch of Poseidon (City Arch)
Supreme Court(Oppression Office)
Clock Tower
Gates of Poseidon (Brandenburg Gate)
Historical Society and Natural Museum (Theater)
Grand Central Library(Grand Central Terminal)
Cathedral of Poseidon (Cathedral)
No-named Ferris Wheel(London Eye)
Small, Large and Fantastic Fountains
2 Plazas with trees
Flower Plaza
3 Park Restrooms #1
2 Large Glass Roof Plaza and 1 Small
Post Office
Small Water Tower
Small Pedestrian Area Service Point
5 Gazebo #2
1 Gazebo #1
Large and Small Bluestone Pedestrian Streets with Trees
Amusement Park Path With Decorations
Some Small Rocks
ROJ Signal Equipment Box Large
All 3 ROJ Railway Signals at every corner
ROJ Rial of World Monument
About a dozen of the 2 ROJ Benches
Farm Fence
Over a dozen Stadium Lights covering all the dark areas and illuminating buildings better at night.
Trees: Mainly Small Beech and a few Alder, Oak, Wild Conifer, Flame Tree, Blooming Jacaranda and Silver Birch

Layout in cost of dirt roads: 840×1200

My urban growth and grid is based on North American Cities like Fort Worth, Dallas, New York and Montreal.

My highway infrastructure is also based on North America again using my area of Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston as key influence

What you have is a double semi directional T interchange connecting my old 2-way highway and my 2 new divided highway loop lanes to the main highway.

Here you have a modified stack interchange with an extra connection to my highway Loop to my 2 way highway(where Blue cursor is) that doesn't connect to the actual highway taking influence of a route I drove in Houston

This Route never gets on 610 reducing lane switching in vital highway connections.

With this you can loop around the city without ever getting on the highway and gives you 6 lanes going into your city and 2 lanes going out, great for areas where you have more traffic entering than leaving. Some very busy cities with no solutions for traffic will take away lanes from oncoming highway and flip the flow of traffic to accommodate for morning rush hour entering the city and evening rush hour leaving the city.

Highway project also included the conservation of the old bridges.

Railroad bridges were influenced by the Chain of Rocks Bridge near St Louis.

First time actually using this asset. Have a lot of trouble finding s proper place but this place was definitely nice. It respects the statues isolation and angle on the city. Plus you can see it from all over the city now.

City Grid is based on the width on my historical city center block with a very rigid core structure that eventually will break down and be s free form grid except for the 3 central roads that will lead straight to the lake which will be a huge nature reserve.

Population is currently at 130k and has been growing exponentially with a solid transit infrastructure. Every form of transit is utilized except for trolleybus which will be reserved for my park areas. Each exterior region will be served by a specific transit that leads to the city.

More updates will come soon.

 

[Sharkoman]

Decided to add mods and assets so I started a new city. So far I have two green corridors that give the city it's core character.

Located near a water source next to a nearby hill this valley was often flood prone and difficult to develop. The city wanted to completely drain the swamp and pave the entire place with development but the people protested about destroying the environment that gives the city it's character, a dense and lush forest of Silver Maple and wetlands in the drainage basins. The city made a hard fought compromise, the development for buildings was going to be a challenge because of the steep angles of the drainage basins which was deep because of the heavy rainfall from the monsoon season quickly carved out 2 distinct ravines which drained into a large round lake. The compromise included two major projects, the first part is the expressway and the second part is other ravine that was preserved and converted into a city park/nature reserve. This post will be about the expressway.

Here is a view from the end of the expressway looking towards downtown. First time using quays of any kind.

The design starts out very simple, a straight line of 4 lane highway with concrete walls with decorations followed by pedestrian streets and then 2 or 4 lane local road. The straight section has 3 bridges crossing over it with one bridge crossing with direct access to and from the highway.

Next it's time for the detailing, a thick and lush canopy of Silver Maple turns this expressway into an urban forest. Additional connectivity was added with 2 pedestrian bridges on each end of the straight section.

View from pedestrian bridge.

A little past a quarter of the way through is the First bridge across the trench, a large one lane avenue that is mostly used to connect the two neighborhoods.

Next is the busiest and currently the most complex intersection in the city. With highway ramps connected directly to the intersection no merging is needed with the local roads. (In real life this would work fine no problem but in the game you are pushing the limits because of the quicker game speed.) Cars can quickly stack up to several dozens and still completely clear the queue.

Without the trees you can see easier how the intersection is configured.

The trees gives the place much more life.

Next is the end of the straight section of the expressway and the beginning of multiple curves and bridges. This area was the main reason for the project to grade separate my two main arterial routes which everyone wanted to use because of the attractiveness of the route and area. By severing the connection between the two roads I can split that traffic into other areas with more room for connections. The First set of bridges consists of a pedestrian bridge, a tram bridge, an arterial bridge and a local bridge.

Here is some views passing underneath the arterial.

Approaching the curves and bridges.

View from the other side of the First set of bridges.

Underneath the local bridge. Truss bridges are excellent spans over roadways as the weight is distributed horizontally and doesn't require a middle pier for short spans. This local road used to be two cul de sacs that met the arterial with pedestrian connections, after grade separation a multi-purpose bridge was added to allow additional connectivity. The original Tram bridge remained the same to save a on the cost of the massive infrastructure project.

A grade separated pedestrian path was also added to give the citizens a lovely park-like feel while also reducing the amount of pedestrians crossing the arterial by making them going underneath the bridge into the trench at level with the expressway giving people a place to watch traffic and enjoy the scenery.

Aerial View of the core part of the infrastructure project.

Next is the next section which is a pair of truss bridges that used to be one route at grade with the arterial. In real life this would have easily been one bridge but I don't have any nice looking 6 lane truss bridges that I wanted so I split them into the next most realistic configuration you would probably see which would be the old smaller bridge being repurposed to only the tram and pedestrian traffic.

View from underneath the bridge.

And then Last but not least we have the masterpiece of almost any expressway project which is the Grand Mixmaster. By adding a thick canopy of Silver Maple you can easily recreate the illusion that the city developed because of the rich resources found within this wild forest.

The fire gives a nice smooth contrast of the road layout that is normally hidden under the canopy of trees. With tunnels connecting directly to the expressway, through traffic can bypass the traffic light of the first collecter. Additional lower priority connectivity was provided for the other side which will be mostly Lower density. Modern downtown will develop from the nearby single family neighborhood which will get gentrified overtime due to being sandwiched between the highway and the current downtown core.

Fire gives you a great layout of the city center and 85% of the expressway project.

Aerial view of the beginning of downtown expressway.

 

[Sharkoman]

Now for the second part which is the park.

On the left is the second ravine. This ravine was more flood prone because of it's proximity to the source on the hill.

In order to help protect and preserve the water source the city built a concrete gate that closed off the cave. By doing so it prevented people and larger animals from entering the cave while allowing the water out and giving smaller animals shelter like the unique Tadarida Perseus, the Percy Free Tailed Bat, several mole salamanders like the Ambystoma Poseious, the Poseidon Axolotl and the Polypterus Tartarus, the Tartarian Bichir.

The water flows out of the hill at an average of 500 cu ft/s but can flow at over 3000 during monsoon season. Major irrigation was needed to control this massive water flow. The expressway project altered the amount of water that could drain so measurements were taken to ensure proper drainage would still occur. As you can tell from the picture part of the expressway ravine was turned into a small reservoir.

The Large Avenue that crosses the expressway is one of the signature bridge of the park

The Large Avenue bisects the biggest and busiest collector in the city which is the other signature bridge of the park and rises above the park and river.

Other 3 bridges include a cyclist, train and metro with monorail passing by the front of the main park gate.

The road at the bottom is the second largest collector in the city that gives you access to the downtown expressway.

A closer look will give you scene of what fall season would look like with the Maples.

Further down into the ravine a path follows the river all the way up to the waterfall.

Towards the middle of the park is where the bridges cross the ravine.

Initially both signature bridges were Parker Truss Bridges like the one above which was a little different from the other Parker Truss that currently still spans over the expressway. After several decades the bridges started to reach the critical status and needed to be replaced. After a through comprehensive study the city realized The large avenue did not carry as much traffic as the other collector and the city decided to embrace the local collector with a large and beautiful avenue that would be used more by pedestrians and cyclists as you can see from the viewpoint above.

The other collector was widened to a 6 lane collector with tram tracks leading to the intersection halfway through the ravine and then turning left towards the trade school campus. The city had huge opposition to the demolition of the beloved signature truss bridges. After more compromises were achieved the city was able to replace the bridges in exchange to keeping and rehabilitating one of the bridges and also keeping the other remaining Parker Truss spans for future repurposing.

Scenes from the waterfall and underneath the, intersection, large avenue and main viewpoint.

With fall season comes the monsoons, torrential rain falls for days. The park and expressway were designed to allow the basins to fill up during flood stages.

In extreme floods before the construction project, the basin would often overflow because of the thick forest would get logjams and build up essentially a dam. These floods used to devastate the entire city, as is common with wetland communities. The picture above shows what flood stage looks like today, Instead of devasting the city the floods give the park a unique transition from a swampy canyon to a waterfront resort that you would typically see with much larger rivers.

During extreme cases like 100 year floods the project is designed to backflow and overflow into the expressway trench where the lush canopy of trees can attempt to drain and clean the water as it drains back into the aquifer that feeds the spring. During the most extreme cases like a 1000 year flood the project is designed to completely fill up both the park and expressway leaving the downtown area safe and a place for safe refuge.

Fire helps shows the outline and the width of both the expressway above, the park below and the large avenue passing over an untouched hillside that once stood between the entire length between the two ravines.

 

[Sharkoman]

This was my city before I added about 1000 more assets. Now I have enough assets to plop almost every building and decided to start a new city. Here are some pictures of my City before I started my other one.

Ended up completely getting rid of Founders Hill Park and slapped a historic downtown center with some of the new assets to try and get a feel for them .

Also ended up making a historical downtown for Persepolis across the river.

This was my other Downtown Core but both downtown cores were too close to properly taper to my liking.

Here is a sneak peak of my New City.

This city is going to look awesome! I redrew my grid to add a lot more North-South connections as my other city I severely failed to do so and got carried away. Now I'm plopping virtually every single building except for single family homes for now. Almost finished completely the vast majority of my historic and regular downtowns for Poseidon and a good chunk of it's World Fair Grounds. Historic Downtown Poseidon and the Poseidon World Fair has some good progress going. Canyon and Spring are essentially complete and the outlet of the spring leading into the canyon will soon be built and will empty out into a swampy and grassy wetland at a base of a hill at Grassy Mangrove Park. Trolleybus and Tram Transit is being added as all my city services started lagging behind quickly with my downtown core doubling my population and now I'm at around 100,000. But the city is looking really good and will have a story and background as well.

City will be a Tartarian Empire situated on a tropical continent past Antarctica with background history on a war between Admiral Byrd and how my Art Deco architecture was stolen whenever we invited Americans, Europeans, Muslims and Asians to our World Fair which they also ended up stealing the idea to illustrate to their world the architecture they saw and copied. Eventually War broke out because of families like the Rothschilds because their greed for our riches. This happened before with Atlantis which the powerful families of that time, most of which like the Rothschilds have always been around but just changed names from the Roman, Greek and the Persian Empire joined forced to invade Atlantis and stole a lot of their technology and architecture and we blocked communications with anything past Antarctica. After a while we opened back up communications to see the world in shambles because of Judaism and attempted to help the people out and set up a colony in central Eurasia to be as close to everyone as possible. The Chinese got a little crazy and the Tartarian Empire decided to build a massive wall in China which is why the Great Wall of China faces the opposite direction today. After a series of wars (World War I and II) we made the Antarctica treaty and blocked communications once again until they got rid of those pesky infiltrators under the Rothschilds who constantly attempt to destabilize my Tartarian Empire, especially prominent Rothschilds family members Karl Marx and members of the Rockefeller family.