Sim Toronto: The Birth of Queen's Park

So here is another installment of Sim Toronto. Currently we have a population of just over 28 000 Sims and the city is definitely looking to expand. I have decided to expand the city north ward up to Bloor. Currently the city limits are at Dundas, so this means including College and Wellsley into the picture and of course extending Bathurst, Spadina, University, Yonge, Church and Jarvis. The East west Limits remained the same, starting at Bathurst over to Jarvis. Since the last update the Southern Beaches community and "Cork Town" have been created but has yet to make its debut.

No that the new streets have been drawn; the main attraction in this new area is Queen's Park. As we know, Queen's Park is the provinces capital buildings for a very long time and has been a monument in itself showcasing the city's greatness.

As Spadina and Yonge expanded north so did the retail zones along its stretch. Residential zones have taken op the majority of the newly expanded territory along with a few small industrial zones created down by the waterfront. Two elementary schools and 2 more fire stations have also been added to the Queen's Park area to keep the community stable. I have also introduced medium level residential zones running along Church just south of Bloor down to College. These medium level residential zones are expected to grow to smaller apartment buildings ranging from 2 stories to about 20 stories, depending on the likeliness of Sims moving into the area.

So where is UofT? Well, being a YorkU guy myself I may not include UofT at all! Actually, I will include the university when there is a demand for higher education. I don't believe I have even created a high school yet for the Sims of this city, but eventually they will call for more education and I will be there to provide it. Just like in real life, the more educated the citizens are the easier your industries and commercial sectors will grow in turn, producing a wonderful economy for the city.

Here is the budget for this city before I expanded. As you can see I was only making a profit of about 2k a month from a population of 28 000. Notice too, my demand for commercial zones was in the negative, meaning no one wanted to do business in the city. Once all construction of roads and zones was complete I ran the Simulation for about 15 minutes on the highest speed possible, the results were surprising. The monthly income went up 5 times, my population went up to almost 50 k and my demand for commercial zones was high. There was a small amount of unemployment but it seemed to level off after a few minutes.

This is what the city looks like now, lots and Lots of residential zones. You can see there are a few blacked buildings which may be either abandoned buildings or slum areas. On a positive note I did notice the city's first Bank of Montreal, surprisingly on what is probably Wellington in between Yonge and Bay. Now, I had no hand in its development, it grew on its own. I downloaded several
"plopable" (The term used by SimCity gamers, buildings that grow based on demand) Toronto landmarks and banks were one of them. Let’s see which one comes next, RBC, TD or Scotia.