Two Ideas on "The Depression"

Why It Occurs
If you have played Sim City 3000 a good deal you may have noticed this: Every so often, your population will drop drastically, sometimes to a half or a third of what is previously was. Yet if you wait twenty or thirty years, the population will rise back up to levels beyond where it had been ( If you keep building). So it’s not that bad. Yes, but you lose money and for a long time all you can do is sit and watch your population go down, down down.
So, Why does this happen. It is actually pretty simple. The game is programmed so that when your work force (Found by opening the graphs, maps, charts window and clicking on the pie chart. then click on “population.” The work force is listed below the graph.) dips below fifty percent, the population drops. People move out, all your zones abandon, and your city looks pretty decrepit. But that is only part of the story. In fact, you population may begin to waver at percentages as high as 52. Between 50 and 52%, Your population may or may not go down. However, if it is below 50%, it will usually drop.
But why does it drop? Ever heard of the baby boom? It is times similar to the baby-boom that create the fluctuations that cause the population to drop. You can find out in the population window how many people of each age there are living in your city (Note that each bar in the graph is a five year period) If you have a lot of people give birth at the same time, a certain bar can be as high as seven or eight percent of your population. However, between these times, when very few people are giving birth, the chart can read as low as three percent of the population during a five year period.
How does this happen. Well, it is more complicated that it may seem. The percent of people working fluctuates approximately 12% between its highs and its lows. For instance, a city might fluctuate between a working population of 56% (about 40 years after a baby boom, when a lot of people are working) and 44% (When the boomers have retired and there is no one to take their place). There is no concrete reason that this happen, but there are hypotheses. One is that when the percent drops, many companies cant find enough work and all leave town at once, causing the Sims to flock after them. This, however, doesn’t explain why all the bars stay the same. It seems as though the simulator was not built accurate enough to have cities with many children when schools are good, or to have people come in and out of cities for work. The Simulator needs some work for the next version (See our list of ideas for the Next Sim City). The simulator does not fluctuate between 56 and 44 always, in some cases the numbers are much higher, say 65 and 53, and you do not have depressions. The reason for this lies in an unsuspecting area...The Life Expectancy.
The highest LE possible is 90, or eighteen possible bars of five year increments. If your life expectancy is 65 you have thirteen bars of population: 4 in school (0-5..15-20), 9 in the percent working (20-25...60-65) and none retired. Therefore, 9/13ths of is in the work force, which corresponds to 69%. Your work force will therefore stay between 63 and 75. If your life expectancy is 90, however, it is a whole different story. You have eighteen bars: 4 in school (0-5..15-20), 9 in the percent working (20-25...60-65) and 5 retired (65-70...85-90).Therefore, only 9/18ths (or, by year, 45/90ths) of your population, on average is in the work force, which is 50%. At a given time, you have the same chance of being in a recession as growing. It would seem that a high life expectance is bad, that if your citizens live to the ripe old age of 65, then you’d never have recessions. But you’d never have anyone in your city. So, you want an average of 56% of your citizens to be working on average. To achieve this, the ideal LE is: 80-81. You can work it higher, but you risk the occasional depression.
See Also: What Certain Percentages Mean.

What to Do When It Strikes If you've played Sc3k a lot, you've probably noticed that every 200-300 years your city suddenly starts losing people, money, and buildings start abandoning all over the map. This is called the Great Depression. It is caused by a reduced pool of workers in your city's population (<50% in the labor force). There are several techniques mayors can use to prevent and minimize the effects of the depression. The method to prevent the depression is to lower the LE of your Sims. Why? Sims older than 65 are not part of the workforce. By eliminating them from the population, the size of the workforce increases. A city with an LE of 65-70 will have very few if any depressions. Of course there are problems with lowering your LE. It lowers aura, population and population density. It can also be difficult to do. The simplest thing to do is to reduce or eliminate hospitals. This doesn't always do the trick, especially in a city with very low pollution. At this point you can either introduce pollution--probably a bad idea--or deal with the depression when it hits. When the depression hits, you probably cannot do anything about the abandoned buildings or lowered population. But you can get your city to keep making money. To keep earning money requires much mayoral savvy, but it is possible. If you have neighbor deals that cost you money, build facilities (power plants, incinerators, etc.) that allow you to spend less on neighbor deals, which are often far more expensive than taking care of power, water and trash within your borders. Another thing that can make a huge difference is ordinances. Get rid of as many costly ones as possible and enact money-makers such as Legalized Gambling. If you get rid of the right ones, you can make about 10,000 more Simoleons each year. If you can build a prison, mall, casino or chemical plant, do it. Another thing to do is to try to boost your land values. Build parks, hills and water and your Sims will give you more money in property taxes. (This is a good strategy, regardless.) If you're still losing money after following these suggestions, raise taxes and cut back on department funding. These should be last ditch options. Of course, don't cut back on your roads because they will become impassable. Once the workforce is back over 50%, reenact your ordinances and neighbor deals, and destroy the jail, mall, casino and chemical plant. You should be in fine financial shape as you watch the population rebound and the buildings unabandon.
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