[Suicide Junkie]

each square contained a six by six area.

That sounds very inefficient...
You do realize that the way you had it, each tile of buildable land was serviced by no less than 2 road segments?
Your city repeated every 7x7 squares, so for every 49 squares of land, you spent... 7+6 on roads, or 26.5%

Things to do:
- Eliminate many of the cross-roads, to form longer rectangular zones. Theoretical minimum land spent on roads vs total serviced area = 14.3%
- spread the zones to SEVEN by seven or higher...
(2x2 and 3x3 buildings can "ooze out" over the center area no problem) You can also place the support structures for your city in these areas that are unserviced by roads, such as; water pumps and power plants, and all manner of the multi-square buildings you place yourself.
- For THE ULTIMATE in zone density, use only subways and subway stations. No roads, rails or any form of trasnportation except underground.
For each 1 tile of subway station, you get 24 tiles of zonable land. The Station's service areas can be made to tile a plane perfectly, thus costing you only 4% of your space for transportation instead of the 26.5% you were spending on that 6x6 grid city.

This gets you a 30% increase in usable land area!

As a side bonus, during a firestorm, the subway city can be easily protected...
Just place a single police unit on each subway station that is in danger...
Any area that burns down will be rebuilt by the citizens, since there is a continuous grid of power available from the rest of the city.

[ June 13, 2003, 14:54: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]