CJ Mixed Rural/urban landscape

This project was actually based on an area near Foshan, where a very mixed use landscape exists. China has something of everything and I have been to that fascinating country twice.
Because the map size is never enough for a full city, quite some time back I started making (part cities) instead. I wanted to create areas at the edges of cities where fringes meet other fringes and where many industrial parks string along main highway corridors.
I am considering returning to Cities XL after having now played 1000 hours on Cities Skylines.

Thank you :)

Hi. I have been playing Cities Skylines since release, but do miss many of the tools of Cities XL. Skylines lacks some realism and it lacks versatility in some areas.

Hi Moran,

It's a strange thing but I feel that because there was no city link, the map did not crash. This project was going smoothly and I then decided to start again from scratch to create the real dream project. I would not have deleted the city but for some reason I could not produce a spare map slot. So I deleted the whole project and started another one on the same map. This was going to be a very large Tokyo suburban area but it crashed.
It was the very last straw in literally years of issues, so I have uninstalled the game and quit.
I am now waiting for Cities Skylines and also playing a little bit with Cities In Motion 2.
My days of Cities XL are over. A great game with far too many problems.

Thank you. :)

Hi Kurtis. Thanks a lot for the comment. In the update there are one or two closer pictures. The key to meshing the rural with the urban is to use very small buildings, so that as you zoom out, there is a less definable line between them. For instance, as an extreme example, if you Google Earth Tokyo, at first the urban area has no form other than a misty grey mass with varying density levels. This effect can only take place over a large area.
In Cities XL with the 11.5km map size, this is impossible, but....using the smallest mods available, it is possible to get more realism. Also I am using footpaths to divide small rural plots, which adds more realism again. The finer the details, the more realistic and less game like it appears.
I use the very smallest residential mods and mix them together. It's a very long process and even with this project, I have lost some interest and have some new ideas using more of the Japanese housing mods. Also in this project, I have not even used the RHM. All I did was take a theme and spread it. There was very little planning done here. It also turned out to be less Chinese looking and a lot more latin looking. I simply need more suitable small mods. The next project is probably going to be suburban Tokyo (north and way from the CBD. I tend to really like creating suburban projects, rather than a whole city because of the map sizes and the lagging issues.

Thanks Nogerivan. Yes it is a Google overlay. The map is made by Moran, who I am grateful to, because I love this map and it does not crash on me, like so many others. I believe it is because the map has no road connections to the map edge. This means I cannot trade except with electricity production. Also, because I use a sandbox, it also means that I cannot sell any excess industry.
Although there is the Goggle overlay, I am not following that street pattern.

Thanks Peter. This is the peri-urban method where it is neither urban or rural, but both. However in this project, I think I am having a main city towards the port and a string of smaller towns intermingled with rural lots. I have not tried this before and think it's working out well. It's incredibly time consuming because everything is hand placed.

Thanks a lot for the great feedback. Yes It really is turning European, even though I'm on the Shenzhen map and I'm trying to create Rice paddys :)
Oh well, it becomes what it becomes and I could start using other residential mods. At the moment, I do not have the RHM installed either, so I have not added a highway network. I am thinking of some small wooded areas (especially out in the rural areas). As I built, I'm tending to get more detailed with smaller rural allotments and tighter street formations.
This is a style I have not really tried before, so I am learning as I progress.

Thank You. I really don't like the cuts that you mention between urban and rural and so this merging effect is exactly what I wanted to produce. Parts of it are a very scattered approach, but at the same time, I want there to be a few defined urban centres which are loosely connected.
At this stage, I am still undecided if the whole project will be a number of different smaller towns in the rural landscape, or whether there will be a steady densifying and a large centre down towards the water and future port areas?
I don't have a complete plan in my mind. All I am doing is steadily encroaching across the map as I see fit. I will add some closer pictures soon, after a little bit more work has been done.

Thanks. Indeed it is looking more Spanish than Chinese. Perhaps that is what it will turn into, but being on the Shenzhen map, I wanted to create a mixed Chinese setting. The problem is that there are not many Chinese buildings. The main old housing stock of the Chinese towns are the very small Latin pack buildings, because they are the only ones small enough to create that effect.
If I do merge into the European theme, then I might add some German houses too.

Thanks. I will add some forests. Good point.

Thanks a lot. I really try for realism as much as I can with the tools available. This project is very early and will be expanding greatly from this current stage. It will be a string of communities and one major centre.