The Ael River Valley is a test region I started to test a theory I read about somewhere in the SimTropilis Forums.  The theory put forth was that zoning city tiles with only residential, commercial or industrial and increase the population of the residential only tiles.  I had become frustrated with spending hours upon hours developing cities and only being able to achieve a population for a large city tile no higher than 475,000, 248,000 for medium tiles and 86,000 for small tiles.  I alway felt that way too much land gets wasted for industrial that could be better used for commercial and residential.  I decided to find out for myself if this theory was true or not, though I suspected it most likely was.

Thus the Ael River Valley Region was quickly created by my divine will, configured for one large city tile in the center [called Aelburg], surrounded by medium and small tiles.  The large city tile I decided to zone both residential and commercial, while the 8 medium tiles surrounding it I zoned for indutrial.  I started with the industrial zones first, zoning the entire map at once and then simming each one for 10 years and had an industrial population of a quarter million.  I then opened up Aelburg and began zoning both residential and commercial along most of the edges of the map and simmed that for 10 years.  I believe at that point I had 24,000 Sims living in rural low density areas.

For the next stage, I simmed each of the 8 industrial zones for another 15 years and increased the industrial population to just above 418,000.  I re-opened Aelburg, added in more residential and commercial [low density covering nearly 75% of the map] and simmed until year 25.  Residentail population now stood at 75,000.  The third stage of simming the 9 tiles went to year 40 with an industrial population [now all high density], of just over 550,000 and Aelburg's residential population at 418,000 [mostly all medium zoning for both commercial and residential with some high density mixed in].  By year 50 of simming, the industrial poulation had jumped to 650,000 and Aelburg's residential has increased to 825,090, as shown in the first image below.  The city is now all high density and continuously increasing in population.
 

Aelburg and it's indutrial zones on it's 50th birthday.

Aelburg midway through year 51 crosses the million mark, a first for me.

The next three images below show Aelburg during the period between year 40-50.  A massive population explosion took place during this time period.  As you can see, I use a lot of custom made growable Lots & BAT's from the STEX, including the palm trees that are used as natural sound barrier along both sides of the freeways in Aelburg.  In the image below, you may notice the post office BAT [near lower left-hand corner], that was made available at the STEX a couple of weeks ago and is the one with the transit enabled freeway running through it.  I also have dozens of NDEX BAT's sprouting up all over the place.  Also included is the Bell South Tower by SimGoober, KSIM Radio from JaWood, The Coliseum and Space Needle.