I have a long running came going in which most of my railway lines are double-tracked. When the towns grow, they almost never grow onto the far side of the tracks (unless the railway is partially in tunnel) even close to the stations, which means all the stations are at the periphery of the towns they serve. Is there any way to encourage city limits to grow in a particular direction, or alter them manually, so that they grow in a more natural manner?
I don't think this has to do with city limits, but the rules governing city growth. The public player may have access to a city building tool, depending on the pak set. Once there is a building on the other side, there is a seed for further growth.
Indeed, you can use the public player to accomplish this. Once the city has extended itself to the other side it will continue to grow there just fine.
If there isn't a public player option available to manually place a house and a couple of road segments on the other side, you can also do as you suggest: build a short section of your track down through a tunnel and run roads over top of it to let the city naturally spread that way. Once the city is across your tracks you can bulldoze those buildings and roads (as long as one remains on the opposite side) and put your tracks back to where they were originally.
This is an issue that I have noticed, too. It might well be worthwhile looking into modifying the city building algorithm to improve this.
I wonder if the city code could construct a bridge across tracks... that might be revolutionary for cities. Now that they can bridge water. :)
AFAIK, although the game will bridge water, it only does so for 1 tile width, not two or more.
Yes, I tend to build bridges across rails, city grows fine on the other side then.
You can put in canals around the boundaries where you dont want the city to expand, leaving gaps for where you do want expansión. City will then - probably - go in the intended direction. Later you can remove the canals, if you want. Can also use power lines or fences. Just putting a road bridge over the railway doesnt usually seem to be enough, although occasionally eventually it produces a result.
Indeed, but here the question was the opposite: how to extend the limits...
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